Dave Stevens (1955–2008)

A fun collection of the Rocketeer comics that I remembered reading when I was a young kid (as well as the '91 movie). This says its the "Complete Adventures" but I'm pretty sure this is just the beginning history and the first of his pre-serial issues. I could be wrong and its been a long time since I've read the originals, I'll have to do some Googling/reading up on that.

This is just fun "pulp" "dated" (purely because its supposed to be dated) entertaining comics. Nothing too deep or personal, nothing too radical or amazing, just fun, pulpy, noir-ish, entertaining comics set in the late 30s written as if it was made in the 50s (but actually made in the 80s).… (meer)

Dark Horse Comics’ graphic novel The Rocketeer: Cliff’s New York Adventure collects the three issues of Rocketeer Adventure Magazine by Dave Stevens. The first two issues were published by Comico Comics in 1988 and 1989 and the third by Dark Horse in 1995. The story picks up after the the events of the previous volume, with Cliff Secord, the Rocketeer, traveling to New York City to stop his girlfriend, Betty, from boarding a ship bound for Europe. Not a great one for romance, he manages to cause more trouble than help, but he ends up working for a man named Jonas (really Lamont Cranston, the alter-ego of the Shadow) to stop a murderer who’s killing carnival workers.

The story has all the pulp adventure fun of the first Rocketeer story, with more of Stevens’ allusions to the 1930s and 1940s. Though he never identifies Jonas as the Shadow, fans of that era’s stories will recognize him. The killer, Lothar, is based on Rondo Hatton, a movie star from the period. As in the first volume, Stevens bases Betty on Bette Page. Further, flashback sequences of Cliff’s youth living and working in the carnival draw heavily upon Tod Browning’s 1932 film, Freaks. The 1991 Disney film, The Rocketeer, drew upon the first book so this story will be completely new to those familiar with the character from that movie.

The success of this character and his lingering place in popular culture ensured that his stories would continue beyond this final volume from Stevens. Following Stevens’ passing in 2008, IDW Publishing collected the entire series in 2009 before beginning various Rocketeer miniseries in 2011, with the sixth IDW miniseries appearing in 2015.… (meer)

Eclipse Comics’ graphic album The Rocketeer collects the first five chapters of the eponymous series by Dave Stevens. Chapters One and Two appeared as backup features in issues 2 and 3 of Mike Grell’s Starslayer from Pacific Comics. The publisher later printed Chapters Three and Four in Pacific Presents numbers 1 and 2. Following the collapse of Pacific Comics, Eclipse Comics published the fifth chapter in a special Rocketeer issue.

These five chapters introduce the main characters – Cliff Secord, a stunt pilot who becomes the Rocketeer; Peevy, the mechanic who helps Cliff figure out the rocket pack; Betty, Cliff’s girlfriend whose appearance Stevens based on Bette Page; Colonel Mayberg and Noah Dietrich, who seek to recover the rocket pack for Howard Hughes; and various Nazi agents working to steal the technology for Nazi Germany. As Harlan Ellison wrote in his 1985 introduction, “The Rocketeer is something special. For all the hopeful attempts at doing a period comic book that have popped up these last few years, popped up and vanished, only The Rocketeer captures the feel of those days. The artwork is modern, yet it has a tone of the Twenties and Thirties. The dialogue isn’t 100% of the times, but it’s damned close. And even if the first two sections aren’t as masterful as the final three – indicating that Stevens learned on the job – they are hip-deep in the right kind of nostalgia.” Fans of the 1991 Disney film will find all of the elements that made the story a fun adventure.

The success of the character led Comico Comics and Dark Horse Comics to publish a continuation in Rocketeer Adventure Magazine that Dark Horse later collected in The Rocketeer: Cliff’s New York Adventure. Following Stevens’ passing in 2008, IDW Publishing collected the entire series in 2009 before beginning various Rocketeer miniseries in 2011, with the sixth IDW miniseries appearing in 2015.… (meer)