Over the years, Dave Stevens' The Rocketeer bounced through a lot of different titles and publishers. It started as a back-up feature in 2 issues of Starslayer (but I used an example from Ostrander and Truman's GrimJack back-ups for Saturday Splash Page #127.) Then there were a couple of chapters - but no splash pages - in Pacific Presents. The Rocketeer Special Edition, published through Eclipse, did have a splash page, of Cliff Secord's girlfriend Betty (who Stevens based on Bettie Page) in the near-buff, which I didn't feel entirely comfortable using for an entry.
Which brings us, finally, to The Rocketeer Adventure Magazine, a total of 3 issues published across two companies (Comico and Dark Horse) and 7 years. By this point, hotshot pilot Cliff Secord's kept both the experimental rocket and a new plane out of the hands of the Nazis. He's also royally brassed off Betty by sending two of the guys working for the rocket's creator on a wild goose chase to the door of the photographer "helping" Betty with her career (leading to the previously mentioned risque splash page.) Betty leaves with "Marco" for New York, with plans to fly to Europe, so Cliff hauls himself from a hospital bed, steals the rocket again, causes a big fire in the process of refueling it, and sets after her.
That's the thing about Secord as written by Stevens: He's kind of an idiot, but in a different way from how Bill Campbell played him in the movie, where he was well-meaning, but more a big lummox. Stevens' Cliff is a smaller guy, kind of a stringbean. Not the prototypical 90-pound weakling, but on the wiry side. He's jealous, insecure, petty, and short-tempered. His mouth (and his fists) tend to outrun his brain, to his detriment and others'. He doesn't trust Marco, which is smart, but expresses it in such a way as to both steamroll Betty's opinions and makes it seem like a lack of trust in her. For her part, Betty isn't shy about expressing her frustration with Cliff, though she usually ends up having to talk to herself or Cliff's mechanic, Peevy. (Cliff has a knack for making himself scarce when he's pissed her off.)
That said, Cliff also, when people are in trouble, doesn't hesitate to throw the rocket on his back and go save someone. Admittedly, most of the problems he deals with in Stevens' stories are those of his own creation. People after the rocket, people after him for stuff he did in his younger days with a traveling circus. Still, he tries to help! He's just not, you know, terribly good at it, which is how he gets beat up all the time. Betty does ultimately care about Cliff and not want to see him hurt, when she can get a chance to tell him. So it's not a constant state of war between the two.
Stevens, having created a character and setting out of the pulp era, uses other pulp characters, albeit without ever calling them by name. The creator of the rocket is Doc Savage, (though Peevy is convinced the two guys after the rocket, who are in Savage's Circle of Associates or whatever, actually work for Howard Hughes.) In New York, Cliff crashes with an old pilot friend of his, who works for a mysterious figure named "Jonas." Jonas tends to appear from nowhere, knows all kinds of things he shouldn't about what lurks in the hearts of men (including evil), seems to change appearance in the blink of an eye, and likes to carry two automatic pistols. Again, never mentioned by name, but come on, even if I don't know doodley-squat about Doc Savage, I know the Shadow when I see him.
No comments:
Post a Comment