One last great comics book for 2009 arrived at my doorstep yesterday. The late Dave Stevens carved his name in the pantheon of comics history with his creation, The Rocketeer, back in the 1980s and into the 1990s. It's not that Stevens did that much work—The Rocketeer amounts to less than 150 pages of actual published work—it's that it was that good. Stevens' art is lush, design-oriented, and magnificent. You can look at it and see touches of Frazetta here, Russ Manning there, Doug Wildey over there, and there's a little bit of Jack Kirby, too. But his style was all his own, full-blown, rich and evocative. His time frame of choice, the late 1930s, added to his work, making it seem timeless. And oh, his women...no one could draw women like Dave (Frank Cho comes closest, but he's still miles away). Dave almost single-handedly brought Bette Page back into the limelight and we're all glad he did.
At last someone has collected all The Rocketeer stories into one sumptuous volume. IDW--fast becoming one of my favorite comic book companies, if only for their wonderful comic strip reprint volumes, especially Chester Gould's Dick Tracy--has produced the ultimate Rocketeer volume, The Rocketeer Deluxe: The Complete Adventures. Sure you can buy just the stories themselves, but hey...it's still Christmas-time, right?--go all the way and spring for the Deluxe edition and get over 130 extra pages of Steven's preliminary art, along with his covers and other Rocketeer oriented-material. It could more correctly be called "The Rocketeer Archives," there's so much wonderful material here. Sadly, Stevens left us in early 2008, dying at the too young age of 52, after a long bout with leukemia. He gave his blessing for this volume, and approved Laura Martin as the person to recolor the original Rocketeer stories. She does a fine job, as does everyone else involved with the production of this slipcased volume, especially designer Randall Dahlk, whose work does Dave proud. We'll never see the likes of Dave Stevens again, and anyone else doing The Rocketeer would be heresy, but here's a chance to visit the character once again, almost for the first time.
Received my copy of the Deluxe edition today, agree with everything you said - a gorgeous book!
Posted by: Bill | December 30, 2009 at 07:11 PM