Hero Story: The Rocketeer. Part one
Superheroes are not what they used to be. Do you think I’m talking about the eighties here, or about the silver age of comics from the sixties?? No, and even pointing your finger at the forties, and the so-called “golden age of comics”, you will not find yourself in the time I’m talking about. No, I want to remember the very beginning of the twentieth century, when superheroes in one form or another presented themselves to the consumer not even in the form of comics, but in the format of radio plays or stories in periodicals.
The Shadow, the Green Hornet, the Lone Ranger, and even the well-known Zorro – all of them were born precisely through literature and radio shows. Of course, in a certain way they couldn’t be called “superheroes” – but largely only due to the fact that there was no such thing then. But there was, for example, John Carter from the novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs, author of the cult Tarzan. And he quite possessed super strength and other abilities – albeit due to the fact that he was an earthling who unexpectedly found himself on Mars. And the examples I provided above were some of the first popular incarnations of the “masked avenger” concept, which would later be adopted by many other “golden age” superheroes. Or did you just think that Bruce Wayne’s parents were killed on the night after watching the 1940 cult film “The Mark of Zorro”?
And from time to time, nostalgia for the so-called proto-superheroes finds its way to various creative people. In 1991, the Shadow returned to the screens again, this time performed by Alec Baldwin, a year earlier Sam Raimi, inspired by the Universal horror classic from the 30s and the same Shadow, released his “Darkman”, better known under the English title Darkman. In 2011, Sony returned The Green Hornet to the screens, casting Seth Rogen, Cameron Diaz and Christoph Waltz in the lead roles. And just remember what a sensation the return of Zorro to the big screens caused in the late nineties and how it propelled the popularity of Antonio Banderas into the stratosphere.
But not just cinema. Comics have also found their share of fame. If any of these heroes appeared in comics during the “Golden Age”, then there is a high chance that comics about them are still being published. Look, even Dick Tracy is quite afloat. But there were others who did not want to take existing characters, but wanted to create new heroes and new stories, while being inspired by the classics. Among them was an artist named Dave Stevens.
The name Dave Stevens is, in fact, inextricably linked with modern pop culture. Judge for yourself – he worked on advertisements for the very first Star Wars, and as part of a working relationship with Hanna-Barbera Productions, he drew storyboards for the animated series Super Friends, one of the early film adaptations of Justice League stories. And already in the 80s, in the same position as a storyboard artist, he managed to work on films about Indiana Jones and even on the video for Michael Jackson’s Thriller. And such big names fell into the hands of Stevens for a reason – he was a talented artist, well respected by industry giants, like the same Jack Kirby.
In 1981, Stevens was approached by brothers https://primeslots-casino.co.uk Steve and Bill Shanes. Their company, Pacific Comics, which had been distributing and advertising comics in the United States since 1971, decided to open its own independent publishing house. And even the brothers’ flagship projects were already in action – the aforementioned Jack Kirby, at the personal request of the brothers, wrote a new series, Captain Victory and the Galactic Rangers, for their publishing house, and artist Mike Grall, known for his work with DC Comics in the seventies, launched his first solo series Starslayer in Pacific. And the appearance of Stevens’ works in Pacific is directly related to Starslayer. When the second issue of Mike Grall’s comic was too small to publish, it was Stevens who was asked to fill the remaining pages with his own story.
April 1938. Pilot Cliff Secord prepares for another air show. The work is difficult and not particularly paid, which Cliff is clearly not happy with – after all, he wants to provide his girlfriend, fashion model Betty, with a decent living. And his life doesn’t get any easier when first some bandits and then the police come straight to his hangar. And it turns out that the bandits left something right on his plane. And not just anything – but a real jetpack. Cliff, like a real daredevil, is eager to test an unknown piece of technology, fortunately his familiar mechanic Peavy is also not against helping Cliff figure out the unusual device. But will the game be worth the candle if intelligence agencies from several countries around the world are hunting for the backpack, and the famous photographer Marco is trying to hit on Betty?. From Hollywood. And it rolls up quite successfully, while.
Yes, The Rocketeer’s story begins so simply. Cliff does not suffer from any internal demons, does not strive to eliminate crime, and he has no special abilities, except for the skills of a pilot. Moreover, over the course of the original releases of Cliff’s The Rocketeer, the story presents us with a completely unfavorable side. He is jealous and hot-tempered, smug and self-confident. He manipulates both friends and rivals equally successfully for his own benefit, whatever it may be. At the same time, he still loves his girlfriend Betty, has immense respect for Peavy, who serves him here as both a mechanic and a mentor, and puts such important things as human lives and his own honor above all else.
But yeah, Cliff doesn’t have much in common with a typical superhero. At first he fights evil insofar as. The beginning of the series, or to be precise, the entire first issue, is devoted to getting to know the characters, trying to understand how the backpack works, and the process of creating the iconic Rocketeer helmet. Cliff makes his first flight literally at the very end of the first issue, and then he goes on a flight only to correct his own mistake. And over time, Cliff’s motivation won’t become much more heroic. At least it will change a little.
Especially considering how the scale of history will change over time. Or what, you thought Cliff would just be allowed to walk around with a jetpack on his back?? And as the stakes within the story increase, the degree of danger of the situations in which Cliff will find himself will also increase. True, according to the first, the readers did not see the very intensity of the story.
Dave Stevens originally only drew two short issues of The Rocketeer to, as mentioned above, fill space in the Starslayer comic. But the adventures of the pilot with a jetpack became quite popular among readers, and therefore the Shanes brothers decided to ask Stevens to launch a full-length comic book series about Cliff Secord. Dave refused, and for several reasons at once. On the one hand, he did not believe in the long-term popularity of the character, and on the other, which is especially sad, he believed that his screenwriting skills were not good enough to keep a full-fledged comic series afloat. The parties came to a compromise – it was decided to release new issues about the adventures of the Rocketeer as part of the Pacific Presents anthology. The continuation of Secord’s story, in which the FBI, the Nazis and personally Doc Savage, one of the heroes of magazine prose of the thirties, entered the plot, followed in the first two issues of this anthology, which were published in 1982 and 1983, respectively. And it seems – and the anthology sold quite well, not least thanks to the success of The Rocketeer, and Stevens got a taste for. But the setup came from where we didn’t expect it.
The cover of the first issue of Pacific Presents – in addition to The Rocketeer, Steve Ditko’s comic The Missing Man is presented. Remastered cover from 2015.
Organizational difficulties with the release of a new issue of the already familiar Starslayer led to Mike Grall moving to the publishing house First Comics. And considering that Pacific did not buy the intellectual property from its own authors, Starslayer went to another publishing house along with Grall. And the company collapsed like a house of cards. One by one, the authors moved to other publishing houses. Moreover, Stevens remained on the sinking ship until the very end and hoped to publish the ending of Cliff’s story in the fifth issue of Pacific Presents. But, alas, the planned anthology never saw the light of day, as Pacific officially closed in 1984.
Without thinking twice, Stevens followed other authors from Pacific, such as Bruce Jones and Mark Evanier, to another publishing house – Eclipse Comics. The working conditions were the same – intellectual property rights remained in the hands of Stevens. And since the last chapter of The Rocketeer was already ready, then why not release it, right?? Eclipse clearly thought the same thing, which is why The Rocketeer Special Edition was born, a one-shot with the final chapter of Cliff Secord’s adventures. The release turned out to be extremely popular, and therefore Eclipse, together with Stevens, released all five chapters of the Rocketeer’s adventures under one cover in the form of a collector’s edition of The Rocketeer: An Album. The original issues of the comic were slightly modified by Stevens, both from the plot side and from the graphic side. Well, like Stevens – the artist himself, of course, put a lot of effort into the book, but other people also worked with him. Jamie Hernandez, a Kirby Award nominee for his work on Love and Rockets, was responsible for refining some of Stevens’ sketches, and Bruce Timm, one of the founders of the cult Batman: The Animated Series, was responsible for the colors. In addition to this, the foreword to the book was written not by just anyone, but by Harlan Ellison himself. And it is thanks to Ellison’s story that we can at least roughly understand why The Rocketeer came out the way it did.
Ellison grew up in the thirties and forties, and saw the rise of the comic book industry and the decline of the proto-superheroism I mentioned at the beginning with his own eyes. And with all this, Stevens understood the culture of that time almost better than the famous science fiction writer. He knew things that only a person born in those years could know, he could accurately name a performer from the twenties by the first notes of the melody, and in his drawings and scripts he perfectly conveyed the spirit of that very magazine literature that the creators of all the cult superheroes of the forties were clearly engrossed in. He didn’t just know how to show it all – he literally lived this culture. Well, Dave Stevens’s wife Charlene Brinkman, aka Brink Stevens, by 1985, however, already ex, was a famous model for pin-up magazines – as well as one of Stevens’ idols, Bettie Page, nicknamed the “pin-up queen” for her photo shoots in the fifties and her role in the “sexual revolution” of the sixties. And is it really surprising that after this, a slightly embellished image based on both Brinkman and Page made its way into The Rocketeer in the form of fashion model Betty, who is capable of striking any man on the spot??
