There are few crimes a comic can commit that are less forgivable than being boring. The comic medium is one of the least restrictive, and can do absolutely anything its creators want. The only limits are the page count and the talent of the writer and artist. And so, when an issue spends most of said page count retreading everything that happened last issue, it is hard to feel anything but disappointed.
Written by Stephen MooneyCover by Gabriel Rodriguez
Illustrated and colored by David Messina
Lettered by Shawn LeeCliff is frantic when he discovers that his mentor and close friend, Peevy, has been snatched by Nazis. The goose-steppers are hell-bent on creating an army of Rocketeers! But with his jet pack out of commission, there is no hope for him to rescue his friend… until the mysterious inventor of the pack steps in to help!
The main thrust of this issue is to allow Cliff to discover that Peevy is missing. The readers know where he’s gone and who took him, because all of that was shown in detail last issue. I understand why we need Cliff to discover this on his own, but when a quarter of the page count is dedicated to something the reader isn’t curious about, it slows the issue down.
That is further compounded by another quarter of the comic is dedicated to his feelings about dating Bettie which, again, was covered last issue. Throw in a flashback, and there’s only about eight pages of this comic that isn’t going over something from last issue. And what’s extra frustrating is that all of the ‘new’ stuff is interesting. There’s a nice callback to the prior miniseries, some good stuff with Peevy in the clutches of the Nazis, and even the scene where Bettie and Cliff discuss the situation adds some depth to the story. But especially with a miniseries, pages are at a premium, and so the idea of so much recap/rehashing is a huge turn off.
Artist David Messina nicely matches the tone, both in script and in past artwork, of his writer Stephen Mooney. Messina’s work has a clean line which falls easily into the style of the 1940s that Rocketeer stories live in. His characters are square jawed, broad shouldered stereotypes of men in the Roosevelt/Truman era. His Cliff retains a certain boyish playfulness, identified by his sly smile and his hair that isn’t quite as pasted to his skull as so many of the others here. Bettie is, as always, Bettie Page, and Messina manages to draw one of the most objectified women of all time in a way that doesn’t run away from her sexpot history but also doesn’t linger too long. This is the most chaste you’ll likely ever see Bettie Page, but it works in the context of the Rocketeer.
One of the shames of this story is that, because Cliff hasn’t had the jetpack at all, Messina doesn’t get to show him flying around very much. In the one page of flight we do get, Messina gives Cliff both the heroic pose and a sense of motion that doesn’t feel stiff. So many times when there is an iconic pose associated with a character, all attempts to draw it look like an action figure set upon a comic page. Messina uses a creative layout for the flying sequence that moves the eye around the page and helps the implied sense of motion.
The evil female Nazi introduced at the end of the issue is clichéd and not all that interesting, but the situation that Peevy finds himself in should lead to some fun down the road. As with so many stories of this ilk, half the fun is being in this world, enjoying the classic look and feel of the story, and when the action shifts to Berlin, it is hard to not get Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade vibes. There’s a lot of fun to be had in this story when there is story to be told. But, sadly, so much of the issue is spent spinning its wheels, and so the effect of the issue, cumulatively, just isn’t much.
Final Verdict: 6.2 – When it’s not recap, it’s a lot fun.
