Rocketeer: Cargo of Doom #1 – Review

By: Mark Waid (writer), Chris Samnee (art), Jordie Bellaire (colors), Shawn Lee (letters) & Scott Dunbier (editor)

The Story: Cliff Secord has to manage his relationship with Betty and villains both nefarious and common.

Review: This is a splendid comic that does everything you’d want in a first issue.  If IDW can keep the quality of the Rocketeer comics at this high level, they’ll get no complaints about playing around with the late Dave Stevens’ characters.

Mark Waid does a great job of introducing all the characters and showing us what they’re like.  Of special note is how well Waid nails Cliff and Betty.  They come across very much as Peter Parker and Mary Jane: earnest, good, decent, heroic guy who’s a little bumbling and clueless and drop-dead gorgeous girl who ALL the guys in town love but is smitten with her guy even if she’s always slightly annoyed by him.  That’s just about the right dynamic for this relationship and and just as Peter and MJ have intrigued readers for ~40 years, Cliff and Betty are equally enticing.

Rocketeer Adventures II #1 – Quick Review

By: Marc Guggenheim, Peter David & Stan Sakai (story), Sandy Plunkett, Bill Sienkiewicz, Sakai & Arthur Adams (art), Jeromy Cox, Dave Stewart & John Rauch (colors) and Scott Dunbier (editor)

The Story: Another anthology of Rocketeer stories from top-shelf creative talent.

Review: If you enjoyed Rockteer Adventures last time around, IDW is back with another helping of Dave Stevens-inspired goodness.  For those who don’t know, Dave Stevens created the Rocketeer character back in the 1980’s and even got a movie made of the character in the early 1990’s (which isn’t a half-bad movie, btw).  Stevens tragically died of cancer in 2008 at the age of 53.  Truly he was taken too soon, but one wrinkle when comic creators die is: What happens to their creator-owned material?  We all know what happens to Marvel/DC characters when Jack Kirby or Joe Simon die, but it is different with creator-owned characters.  Does anyone even have the right to legally publish the character?  Will creators see it as (a) continuing the passion of a dearly departed colleague or (b) treading on the grave?