Airboy returns to the Arctic in a two-parter featuring frozen dinos and mammoths. His last adventure had been in Airboy V6n5 (Jun 1949) when he encountered the caveman-like Ice People. Ten issues later (Aiboy v7n4 and v7n5, May and June 1950) he is off to the Arctic for “The Return of Zzed” parts 1 and 2. The man who wrote and drew this adventure was Ernest Schroeder (1916-2006). He was also the creator of the Heap, the prototype for Swamp Thing and Man-Thing.
Once again we are going to see the idea of a dinosaur frozen in the ice and revived but Airboy may have been the first to use a dinosaur. (Captain Marvel Jr. met a frozen mammoth in 1943. Mary Marvel found a Pellucidar-like world with cavemen and dinosaurs in 1946.) This story also predates Ray Bradbury’s “The Fog Horn” in The Saturday Evening Post, June 23, 1951. It was animated by Ray Harryhausen in 1953. After that, it was open game on revived dinos.
“The Return of Zzed Part 1” begins with a rise in sea levels. The change causes a disaster in the Bering Sea and around the world.
Airboy and Calhoun are called into a secret meeting. Airboy is to go to the Arctic to see if he can discover the cause. (No mention of global warming comes up.) Airboy flies off and lands when he sees ice melting rapidly on a glacier.
Airboy gets a hostile reception. Maluk, a local, tries to warn him off. He says the Master commands it. The rest of his bunch decide to cause an avalanche.
Airboy grabs Maluk and escapes.
Airboy gets a description of the Master from the Inuit boy very old, long white beard. He sounds an awful lot like somebody Airboy knows. He wonders if it could be….
The rest of the Inuit come to take Airboy to see the Master.
It is Zzed! Last seen in Issue #71 (January 1950). Zzed is evil incarnate, doomed to live forever. He has a new plan: to melt the Polar Ice-cap using an electric machine and drowned the world! Kalak, leader of the Inuit, gets a reward for bringing in Airboy. He can feed Airboy to his huskies!
Fortunately Maluk intervenes and Airboy escapes. They fly to the frozen volcano where Zzed is working his evil.
Airboy leaves Maluk at the top and descends on a rope. There he finds an icebox full of frozen critters including dinosaurs and mastodons. (Separated by 100,000,000 of years, this seems highly unlikely, but, hey…)
While Airboy is checking out the museum specimens, somebody comes for Maluk.
Zzed throws him off the volcano’s rim. Airboy is unable to catch him and the Maluk plummets to his death.
Airboy descends to the bottom to find the source of the heat, a strange red rock.
The warmth has revived the first of the frozen monsters.
Airboy flees into the storm to do battle with Zzed again in the next issue. Schroeder saves the majority of dino and mammoth action for next time. As I said at the beginning, this may be the first time a dinosaur was revived from the Arctic ice in a comic book. If you feel like a ramble through the dino comics of the past click here.
These and other Airboy comics are available free at DCM.
Next time…The Return of Zzed Part 2!