This Is Not The Greatest Song In The World: Rocketeer Adventures Vol. 2 #1 Review

When I was a working comedian, some inconsiderate dickface sent some True Believers (and if Stan Lee hasn’t sued the Christ out of that dickface’s estate for trademark infringement, then comics’ lawyers are spending too much Goddamned time keeping me from reading new Miracleman stories) onto flying machines to do something unspeakable. And in the face of this tragedy, we working professionals needed to figure out how to be effective in addressing the scenario in a way that didn’t feel disrespectful to the people affected it. What we did was to write material about the fringes of the tragedy. We didn’t write about the guts of it, we wrote about what people were doing in the face of it. We wrote about how people were reacting to it, and how it affected our understanding of American myths and legends.

Dave Stevens, the creator of The Rocketeer, died of leukemia in 2008 after having written and drawn only a very few stories about a character so compelling it spawned a movie – sure, a movie that John Cartered, but what the hell; it’s still more than Wonder Woman got. IDW Comics is now publishing a Rocketeer Adventures series, and they’re doing what we comedians did right after 9/11: they’re telling stories about The Rocketeer by telling stories around The Rocketeer. And those stories are generally pretty Goddamned cool.

We see The Rocketeer in actual action for about four pages in this book, which is in the first story, “The Good Guys.” And this story is drawn in the most Stevens-like style by Sandy Plunkett, with some deco-style panel layouts,  flight visuals very reminiscent of what we had in the original 80s books, and killer facial expressions. And even in this story, Cliff is put out of action relatively quickly, with the story instead focusing on a small town where he happens to crash land, and how its citizens struggle over what to do with what amounts to a vigilante who’s landed in their midst.

Which is an interesting way to tell a superhero story, and a facet of these types of stories that is often undertold, but it is unfortunately also the weakest of the three stories in this issue. Because writer Marc Guggenheim’s story hinges on the opinion of a child who argues for allowing The Rocketeer to go free because the world needs good guys, when I think we all know that a real child would rather say, “I will tell the police any Goddamned thing you want; just show me where on the doll I should tell the cops he touched me, so long as after they clap him in irons, I get that jetpack.” And further, I don’t know why the townspeople are so worried about a vigilante when the reason he crashed was that he was fighting Nazi aircraft. Nazi aircraft over Kansas. Seems to me that these people have bigger fucking problems than a dude with a German pistol.

The second story, The Ducketeer by Peter David with art by Bill Sienkiewicz, is a cartoon. A really, no-shit cartoon. A Daffy Duck cartoon, to be exact. It’s Daffy as The Rocketeer, a la Duck Dodgers in The 24th And A Half Century, complete with a Nazi Marvin The Martian to fight. David writes a spot-on riff on those cartoons, from the goofy names of government agencies to slapstick falling off buildings. The only issue I have is with Sienkiewicz’s art, which is interesting and abstract as usual, but isn’t what you generally think when you think Looney Tunes cartoons. But while the look seems a little off, Sienkiewicz does, in his wild-assed way, capture the kinetics of a Daffy Duck cartoon extremely well. And as an overall story concept, the whole thing makes sense; if he existed in the 1940s, of course there would be a Looney Tunes riff on The Rocketeer… just like if he existed in the 1980s, we’d be PornTubing “The Cocketeer” right now.

The final story, A Dream of Flying (Not to be confused with Miracleman #1, which you’ll have to take my word for since it’ll never be reprinted – thank you, lawyers!), is more cartoony in style thanks to art by writer / artist Stan Sakai. It’s a simple tale of a kid taking potshots at The Rocketeer to try and get his hands on the rocket pack (Toldja!), another kid helping Cliff out, and Cliff takes kid number two on a flight in gratitude, leading kid number two to dream of someday flying himself. All of which would add up to a slight little tale if it didn’t occur on a farm, with kid numero dos’s father and mother. His mother named Martha. All of which adds up to a clever way of fitting Superman into the Rocketeer mythos, all while winking at the debt of gratitude that character owes to pulp heroes along the lines of The Rocketeer. It’s not high art, but it’s clever, and it’s cool, and it honors the character of The Rocketeer as much as any long-form action-packed story could.

Normally I would be hard-pressed to recommend a comic book comprised of stories that hardly feature the title character at all. If this was, say, a Spider-Man comic book, I’d advise you to spike it. But considering that this is what amounts to a homage book about a legendary character created by a dude who died too young, it feels like everyone has handled everything exactly right. If you want full-on Rocketeer action, go get last year’s IDW hardcover of Stevens’s original stories. But if you already know those stories and want to celebrate them with something new and appropriate? This is a book worth picking up.