Writer: James Robinson
Artist: Greg Hinkle
Publisher: Image Comics
Release Date: June 3, 2015
James Robinson is one the comic medium’s most important storytellers. The writer behind some of DC’s most revered works including Starman and JSA as well as more recent Golden Age throwbacks like Earth-2, All-New Invaders and Fantastic 4, Robinson is known in the comics community for his thoughtful marriage of modern sensibilities with classic continuity and character. Robinson is a writer who remembers where the heart of comics and superheroes originally lies, and he’s able to tap into that sentimentality with ease.
The only inherent problem is… James Robinson is just so fucking sick of all that shit.
Enter Airboy, a loving tongue-in-cheek takedown of James Robinson’s career by James Robinson. Tasked with reviving yet another Golden Age hero—a World War II kid pilot first published in 1942— for a modern audience, this new Image series finds Robinson and artist Greg Hinkle as the lead characters of the story, embarking on their own Fear and Loathing-style adventure into the heart of comic’s inherent darkness. Like a modern day Raoul Duke and Dr. Gonzo, Robinson and Hinkle travel through the San Francisco nightlife in search of something new to do to something old, and the road is paved with booze, drugs, dick jokes and the general brand of humor typically reserved for the lowest common denominator of comedians. Yet to call the book anything but hilariously genius is underselling it.
It certainly helps that Greg Hinkle is a master of both crude and subtle humor. Hinkle presents both himself and Robinson with a bit of bite; that the book opens with a shot of James Robinson on the toilet tells much about the tone to come. Hinkle is a talented cartoonist, someone who can breathe just enough realism into his work while still presenting his figures as caricatures, and that is played up with great effect here. No corners are cut when presenting himself, Robinson or anyone else in the book; personality stands at the forefront with the characters, and everything from Robinson’s vanity to Hinkle’s naivety shines on the faces of their in-comic personas. Where most books featuring meta-representations of the authors tend to display their avatars as triumphant gods walking within their stories, Hinkle drags himself and Robinson through the grime and the dirt, ultimately magnifying the comedic nature of the story ten-fold.
