THE AVIATION-THEMED passengers. Their troubles were sky pirates, crazed inventors, falling into the clutches of lost races of mankind, hidden trea- COMIC STRIPS OF THE sure. Bad weather, mechanical problems, and leaky gas tanks heightened the drama. To add a touch of reality, Forrest had his 1930s PREPARED A characters use contemporary slang expressions like “Jiggers,” GENERATION “Jazbos,” and “Cinch.” Forrest’s dramatics were not inspired, but served as the formula for almost all future aviation strips. It was a OF YOUNG good formula. The strip began in only four newspapers, but by January 1929 it was appearing in 60. MEN FOR THE The newspaper syndicates sensed a trend and began plotting COMING WAR new aviation strips, but 1929 turned out to be a bad year for near- ly everyone and they hesitated. Wall Street fell and the Great Depression took hold of the country. But with it came a demand BY JAMES SILKE for more and more escape entertainment of the low-cost variety. Hal Forrest’s Tailspin Tommy proved to wildly popular with comic The newspaper syndicates quickly set aside their hesitation and strip readers of the 1930s. began adventuring into new themes for the comics’ page. They had a sense of the public and knew nobody Post. and others had made flying a could beat their price. national craze. The motion pictures react- Up to 1929, the comics’ page had ed to this outpouring of public interest belonged almost entirely to the “comic” n the 1930s, most of us did all our flying on the funny pages, but with films like Wings, Dawn Patrol, Hell’s featuring a gag a day. The sole many of the writers and artists who gave us those thrills flew the Angels, and others. The pulp magazine exception was ’s , real birds. publishers created a new literary genre which was the first of the adventure strips. During the ’30s, the comics page of a daily newspaper was the with aviation pulps. The comic strips did Now the syndicates made a radical change I what the films and pulps did, only more and came forth with , Tarzan, least likely place for an imaginary aviator to go flying. The planes were usually about as aerodynamically sound as a rubber eraser, as big so, with “lickety-whop,” “zoom,” “swish,” and then and Terry and the as a pencil point, and flew around in a four-by-eight-inch panel of sky and “kawhump!” And did it for a nickel. Pirates. What writer Ron Goulart called the color of wood pulp. Even when totally absorbed with the aerial The lure and the price were irre- “The Adventurous Decade” had begun sistible. and with it came a horde of aviation strips. For those who couldn’t afford, or Skyroads appeared in 1929, the product didn’t have the daring to get into an actu- of writer Lt. Lester J. Maitland and artist al cockpit, nothing could match the thrill Lt. Dick Calkins, who also drew Buck of pretending you were a fly-by-the-seat- Rogers. Both were ex-aviators. Calkins of-your-pants aviator from the safety of was with the Army Air Service in WWI. your own room. Maitland made the first flight from Many of the creators of those first avi- California to Hawaii in June 1927 in a ation strips, however, had learned about Fokker tri-motor. The strip had the typi- flying from a far more realistic environ- cal heavies, smugglers, lost races, sky ment— the horror of World War One. pirates, but also featured a panel on how The first aviation strip, Tailspin to fly and the theory of flight. The strip Tommy, appeared in the Spring of 1928, had no central hero, but a gang of them: Hurricane Hawk, Speed McCloud, the year after Lindbergh flew across the Tailspin Tommy brought readers exciting Atlantic. It was written by Glenn Chaffin adventures revolving around aviation. Clipper Williams, and others. This hurt These three illustrations show how the very popular and drawn by Hal Forrest. Forrest, who the strip’s popularity but the Skyroads’ fly- Tailspin Tommy evolved from a Sunday comic strip in the newspapers, to pulp magazines, and to a popular movie had flown with the 144th Pursuit Squadron in WWI, and had ing club was the biggest in the country. serialization played at Saturday matinees. been a stunt pilot in the movies, eventually both wrote and drew In 1930, three new strips were started — Skylark, Flying to the strip. Despite his realistic background, Forrest had his hero, Fame, and Scorchy Smith by John Terry. All had undistinguished Tommy, spend little time on the mundane troubles of flying. but popular lives. Tommy, his sidekick Skeeter and girlfriend Lou Barnes, The most popular aviation strip, Smilin’ Jack, started in 1933 worked for Three-Point Airlines, but seldom hauled cargo or and dominated the decade. Zack Mosley, the writer/artist, was not a pilot, but instantly took flying aerobatics of Tailspin Tommy or Smilin’ Jack, your daily flying lessons once his strip was purchased and time added up to no more than three-seconds. Tops. had his wings by 1936. As with all of In the 1930s, however, during the boom of the aviation the more remembered and longer last- comic strips, in excess of a hundred million readers took off daily ing comic strips, Smilin’ Jack’s strength for destinations unknown via newsprint. Many young men that When America entered WWII, the would go on to join the Air Corps and fight in World War Two comics went right along — Roy Crane’s were influenced by these comics — and by the related aviation engages Japanese Zeros with his Dauntless. The artists went to pulp magazines of the time period. considerable effort to make their Charles Lindbergh, Richard E. Byrd, Amelia Earhart, Wiley aircraft as realistic as possible. 26 AIR CLASSICS/July 2019 airclassicsnow.com 27