Now this was a book that we fans had been waiting for ever since the Rocketeer had first debuted in the back pages of STARSLAYER #2 and #3 a short while previously.
The strip had caused a huge stir in fandom, largely because it came seemingly out of nowhere and was so accomplished. Rocketeer creator Dave Stevens was an absolute unknown quality, but his artwork was so delightful that it captured the attention of the fan audience. As Pacific Comics was attempting to establish itself as a viable alternative to the mainstream, this was something they were all in favor of, and they quickly prevailed upon Stevens to continue his story as a headline feature. Stevens was a perfectionist, though, as well as not being incredibly fast, so this resulted in the Rocketeer sharing a split book, PACIFIC PRESENTS, with another feature, so the demands upon Stevens wouldn’t be insurmountable.
They wound up still being pretty insurmountable, though, and so the Rocketeer was only featured in the first two issues of PACIFIC PRESENTS. An eventual conclusion to the story was released as a one-shot thereafter, but by that point Pacific’s plans of being a publisher had gone belly-up, and so the ROCKETEER SPECIAL wound up being released by Eclipse instead, even though it had been commissioned and underwritten by Pacific. Even here, in an inside front cover editorial, publisher Bill D. Schanes reveals that Stevens has another commitment that will keep him from focusing on the Rocketeer, and so issue #2 will be released months after #1.
The Rocketeer was a pulpy adventure series set in the late 1930s about a down-on-his-luck aviator, Cliff Secord, accidentally falling into possession of a rocket pack that enabled him to be able to fly without a plane. Secord uses the rocket pack to make a name for himself, attracting the attention of assorted parties who have an interest in the stolen device. Secord’s girlfriend Betty was based directly on vintage pin-up model Betty Page, someone that most readers of the time weren’t initially aware of. Stevens visually based Cliff Secord on himself, and Cliff’s friend and mentor Peevy on fellow artist Doug Wildey. None of the three leads is especially altruistic, they’re all motivated by self-interest, which is one of the factors that gave the strip its appeal. The whole thing was also a broad homage to the Rocket Man/Commando Cody serials of the 1940s.
In this 12-page adventure, Secord is caught after a crash-landing and herded into a car which is promptly run off the road by another vehicle. He survives the crash, but the driver doesn’t–and Secord is astonished to learn that the man had been an FBI agent, and the guys who sent them plummeting to oblivion were Nazi fifth columnists. Secord uses the rocket pack to escape, but the device is banged up along the way. Eventually, the Nazis show up at the airfield and, unable to locate Secord or the rocket pack make off with Betty as a bargaining chip. Secord gives chase in his “Blind Bulldog” racing plane and forces the fleeing Nazis to crash. So Betty is saved, but the bad guys get away, and they still have designs on Cliff’s rocket. To Be Continued. It was a fun, fast-paced outing with some wonderfully rendered artwork, even if the pages sometimes felt a bit cramped and claustrophobic with dozens of panels. Stevens worked to get a lot of story into a relatively short amount of space. Later on, when the material was collected in a single edition, Stevens went back and expanded on a few of these sequences, with help from Jaime Hernandez.
The issue also included a biographical feature on Dave Stevens written by future San Diego Comic Con officer Jackie Estrada. This was the first inking that most fans of the time had as to Steven’s bona-fides.
The back-up feature–which was longer than the lead, as things turned out, was Steve Ditko’s Missing Man. It was another one of his “odd hero” features, this one concerning ace troubleshooter Syd Mane who could transform himself into a weird torsoless crime-fighter by donning a pair of special glasses. Apart from the weird visual, it was difficult to say whether Mane gained any other abilities from this transformation, as he leapt around and fought like a typical Ditko hero. None of this was the stuff that Dirko was most interested in anyway. While the series wasn’t steeped in Ditko’s Objectivist belief system as some of his other self-helmed projects became, it also wasn’t especially deep. Pretty much what you saw was what you got, as the plot was thin and the characters simple types rather than fleshed-out individuals. The Ditko artwork, though, was pretty strong.
Perhaps the most noteworthy thing about the story is how perfunctory all of the dialogue and copy is. Calling it functional would almost be an exaggeration. It’s pretty leaden–you can see why the publishers had asked mark Evanier to come in and redialogue the character’s initial outing in the back pages of CAPTAIN VICTORY prior to this (and without Ditko’s consent, a fact Evanier was unaware of.) The strip is also full of weird names of the sort that became something of a hallmark of Ditko’s self-published efforts. There’s crime boss I. Headman, mob goons Bo and Mo, would be underworld ruler King, a thug named Mr. Bulk and a detective agency run by an older woman known only as Ma. The whole thing in aggregate gives the strip a strange air to it, as though it’s meant to be a larger allegory of some sort.
The story proper is about King trying to take over I. Headman’s rackets though the use of Queen Bee, a singer with a sonic voice whom King has tricked into thinking that Headman was responsible for the demise of her lover, Ned, who was actually ambushed by King and who has been comatose in a hospital eve since. Syd as the Missing Man battles both King and Headman’s mobs–though he’s relatively unnecessary to the story’s resolution as Ned gets his memory back and Queen Bee learns that she’s been tricked. She turns on King’s mob, neutralizing them with her voice, but it’s Missing man who gets to punch out King right at the end. It wasn’t a great strip, and the clunkiness of the dialogue definitely detracted from the overall effect. But it wasn’t bad.
The letters page in this issue included a missive from artist Kevin Nowlan, who was just on the cusp of breaking into the industry himself. Nowlan was impressed by Stevens’ artwork, as you might expect.
The back cover featured this much-repurposed Rocketeer full page pin-up image.
The Tom Brevoort Experience 