Warning: some images in this article are Not Safe For Work and may be inappropriate for young children
About a year ago, “Airboy” burst onto the shelves from James Robinson, Greg Hinkle, and Image Comics. A combination of autobiography and fantasy, the book caused some controversy which, sadly, derailed much of the critical assessment of the piece. A year later, Image is releasing the book as a deluxe hardcover, and the conversation hopes to shift back towards what the book actually is, versus what it should have been.
Written by James Robinson
Illustrated by Greg HinkleWhen acclaimed comics author JAMES ROBINSON (Starman, Fantastic Four) is hired to write a reboot of the 1940s action hero Airboy, he’s reluctant to do another Golden Age reboot. But it’s nothing that a drink can’t fix. Then, after a night of debauchery with artist GREG HINKLE, Airboy himself appears and suddenly no one in this story has their life go according to plan. Read the whole unexpected miniseries, as well as bonus material and conceptual art from Greg and James. Collects AIRBOY #1-4
Let’s get this out of the way: there is a scene in “Airboy” issue #2 that caused a great bit of controversy – controversy that we discussed on this site last year. This review is not a time to reopen that conversation – this is, instead, a discussion of the book as it is – a four issue miniseries about what it means to be creative and, more importantly, what happens when you lose that ability.
The story, in its simplest terms, is about Robinson’s attempt to reboot Airboy, a Golden Age hero that has fallen into the public domain, for Image Comics at the behest of Eric Stephenson. Now, this probably didn’t happen – Image isn’t in the business of assigning folks work, and an Airboy reboot is about as far from Image’s usual fare as you can get. But it sets the story in motion – much like Adaptation being a film about adapting “The Orchid Thief,” “Airboy” is a book about trying to reboot Airboy.
That alone makes the book unlike just about anything else in superhero comics. There have been hints in the past of autobiography, for sure, from Grant Morrison writing himself into “Animal Man” on down, but this is something different. There’s nothing about this story that works without Robinson as the main character; this is a book about him, not about Airboy. Even Hinkle, the illustrator of the book and Robinson’s partner in crime (literal crime) throughout the book, is more of a sidekick or an after thought than Robinson is. This is the sound of Robinson trying to find his muse again.
It is amazing how brutally honest Robinson is at points, talking about the younger writers that he believes have passed over him in terms of respect and admiration, or the feeling that his work has slipped. Sure, the attention the book gets is due to the sex and the drug use, but the most shocking part, to me, is how Robinson sees himself as less successful than Scott Snyder. While in terms of numbers of books sold per month might be true, it is odd to hear someone with twenty plus years in the business talk about feeling like a failure. Between that and the Comic Book Villains chat, this, at times, felt a bit like Robinson’s therapy.
But the beauty of the book is how it is balanced out by Hinkle’s stunning artwork which, though grounded in reality, takes a trip to the absurd in almost every panel. From Hinkle giving himself a gigantic dick to the stylized bars of San Francisco, the book’s tone, visually, is always a hair lighter than the tone of the text. Hinkle accomplishes that by treating everything he can with an absurdist bent to it. Everything is slightly more pronounced than it should be, like, say the anatomy of the women the boys pick up on their first night on the town:
But that’s only part of what Hinkle does – as the sole visual artist on the book, he controls every aspect of the look, which becomes all the more apparent when Airboy shows up. Airboy, colored vibrantly and drawn like a male model, stands out in every conceivable way from the world Robinson and Hinkle inhabit. As you’re reading, you expect that, if you ever see Airboy’s world, it would be the converse of ours – all shiny and perfect. Hell, Airboy himself more or less says that at one point.
And yet, when we get there, either Robinson and Hinkle are so vile that they corrupt the world they walk into, or Airboy is an iconoclast even in his own time and place. The story’s most surprising turn, to me, was that Robinson begins the book by feeling like he’s out of sync with his life, and every single character we meet winds up feeling the same way. No one, even Airboy, feels at home in their own skin. Now, I know that’s the reality of everyday life, but to see that come across in a comic that is in many ways a comedy about the Golden Age of aviator heroes was a bit surprising.
While the book ends in the only way it really could, it doesn’t feel cheap. The story was about Robinson learning to take control of his life again, and that’s exactly what happened – by the end of the book, Robinson’s life, though no less messy, seems to have an arc and a plan again. Hinkle, the Sancho Panza to Robinson’s Don Quixote, doesn’t really learn anything (except not to snort heroin) on this journey, and we as readers aren’t given any reason to feel differently at the end than we did at the beginning. But this story isn’t about Hinkle, or about us. It is about Robinson, and his change is all that we need.
