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Baxter, Barney. Barney Baxter was created by Frank Miller and appeared in the comic strip “Barney Baxter in the Air” (1935-1950).

Barney Baxter begins as a short, pudgy, freckle-faced twelve year old Coloradan who loves flying, but once he leaves Colorado and goes to New York, matching the strip’s real life success, he quickly grows up into a “young man.” Baxter begins flying, and this gets him into any number of adventures across the world. Originally Baxter is assisted by Hap Walters, another pilot who is Baxter’s age, and is taught by an older pilot, Cyclone Smith, who teaches Barney the intricacies of advanced flying.

In 1937 Baxter begins flying solo, across Africa and Asia and into the South Pacific, where he meets a native beauty named Maura, who becomes his on-again off-again girlfriend. Baxter’s enemies tend towards the nasty and brutal, with most of them being from south of the American border. At one point Baxter is forced to crash-land in Alaska, where he rescues Gopher Gus, a cartoonish and stereotypical gold prospector who becomes his sidekick. Barney enlists in the Royal Air Force in September 1941 to help fight the Germans, and after the war started is active in both theaters, though primarily in the Pacific.

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