A Shield Against the Darkness — Todd Downing

"If you're looking for a good adventure story with all the best elements of classic pulp, along with dashing Heroes, women with agency, a little romance, and a whole lot of suspense then this is the book for you Couldn't stop until I'd read the last page, and you won't be able to either."
- Trish Heinrich, Author of The Vigilantes Trilogy
"Airship Daedalus is a fantastic throwback to the days of high-action pulp fiction and weekly comic strips filled with intriguing plots, sharp heroes, and mysterious villains."
-Matt Forbeck, Author of Mutant Chronicles, Brave New World, The Avengers Encyclopedia, and Halo: New Blood
April, 1925 finds ace pilot Jack McGraw fleeing hostile fighter planes and a mysterious zeppelin over the skies of New Jersey. Then a woman from his past invites him to dinner at Thomas Edison's home and drafts him into the A.E.G.I.S. foundation.
And that's just Monday.
Jack's mission is to fly an experimental aircraft and lead a crew consisting of his comrades from the Great War against a well-funded secret society bent on pillaging history's great treasures and amassing dangerous power.
Together with their crewmates, Jack McGraw and Dorothy "Doc" Starr encounter sky pirates, Haitian voodoo, terrifying creatures of the deep, an Amazon tree-city, rocket zombies, and an ancient temple where Aleister Crowley attempts to open a dimensional portal and summon a bloodthirsty demon
Based on the Airship Daedalus comic strip by Todd Downing and Brian Beardsley, A Shield Against the Darkness is the origin story of the Daedalus crew, and a prequel to Assassins of the Lost Kingdom by E.J. Blaine.
It's a retro-pulp action yarn in which mages, mad science, secret societies, occult threats, and lost worlds meet globe-trotting, sky-high aerial action and two-fisted heroism, like the pulp novels of old