“Airboy Fights the Ice People” appeared in the June 1949 issue of Airboy (V6#5). It had one of the most unusual versions of the lost Vikings of the North in comics, combining Vikings and cavemen, two different strange Northern themes. The author of this fifteen-pager is unknown but the art was Ernest Schroeder.
Airboy is in Alaska. He goes missing near Point Barrow. He is found by the Sightless People, ancestors of the Vikings who have lost their eyes.
The Sightless People have enemies called the Ice-Incas. These primitives attack and Airboy helps fight them off.
The Sightless People duck into a secret spot and unleash an avalanche on their foes.
Going into a secret cave, the travelers enter the Hidden Valley. Airboy meets the leader of this icy Shangri-La, Zirac.
In a flashback, we learn that Airboy was testing a new scout plane (which he calls “Birdie”) when a storm knocks him unconscious. He lands in the Hidden Valley.
The alarm goes off. Airboy learns from the beautifu Tintia of the Food Gulls. The Ice-Incas send them every year to steal the Sightless People’s crops. Zirac has developed a strategy of using whips to defend the gardens.
The Sightless People want peace but the Ice-Incas are too savage. A plan is developed. Airboy will fly over the Incas with a soldier named Tamerac. With this intelligence, they can devise an invasion plan. Airboy has doubts about the Sightless People.
Not trusting Tamerac, Airboy ditches him and flies onto the Ice-Incas alone. He will learn if they are as bad as the Sightless People say.
Airboy tries to broker peace between the two factions but is taken prisoner by the Ice-Inca leader, Torko.
They tie Airboy up. On the morrow, he is to fly Torko to the Hidden Valley. Airboy feels he is being used by both sides.
Tamerac shows up and rescues Airboy. They escape in the plane but the Ice-Incas release the Food Gulls.
Airboy and Tamerac fight the birds in a desperate air battle. Tamerac sacrifices himself and falls to his death. Airboy wants to return to Zirac and warn him but the gulls turn on their masters, the Ice-Incas.
Airboy returns to the outside world. He ends up in hospital. No one believes his story of the sightless Vikings and the Ice-Incas. Airboy knows better because he has the necklace Tintia gave him.
Conclusion
The idea of a secret world in the Arctic is as old as the Greeks who called it Hyperborea. The idea that it belonged to the Vikings come from garbled accounts of their travels in North America and the Arctic. Pulp writers used the idea of lost worlds often, with even a 1960s novel taking one last stab at it. The Lost Ones (1961) by Ian Cameron was later re-titled The Island At the Top of the World for the Disney film. Which just goes to show that you can’t keep a good trope down.
The idea of the Sightless People having no eyes is a little harder to glean. Perhaps it was inspired by H. G. Wells‘ “The Country of the Blind” (The Strand, April 1904), where a South American valley is inhabited by blind people. (They have eyes; they just don’t work.) Ziroc’s Asian outfit suggests James Hilton’s classic Lost Horizon (1933), which gave us Shangri-La. The choice of calling the cave people “Ice-Incas” is just plain silly.
“Airboy Fights the Ice People” struck me as interesting is the fact that Airboy doesn’t champion the Sightless People entirely. If this story had appeared in an earlier comics (say Planet Comics), the Sightless People would have been completely blameless good guys. The Ice-Incas would be complete bad guys (I guess they still were). Airboy perceives that politics is going on here and doesn’t like being a pawn for either side. Ultimately, he doesn’t have to choose. He returns to the outer world, leaving the Vikings and cavemen to their fates. This level of sophistication would not have happened before World War II. The “was it real or a dream?” ending is as old as those Hyperborean tales.
This comic is available free at DCM.