Comic Book Resources

“t’s all about the coloring!”

“Bullroar!!!”
It’s ALL about the ‘Betty’!!!!! (pant pant)

You’re the first person I’ve seen who has pointed out that the story kinda sucked.

Thank you. I bought this when it first came out, didn’t much care for it, and have been nonplussed by people raving about it ever since. Yes, gorgeous art, yes — but /the story kinda sucked/.

Doug M.

The new coloring reminds me of 90s Image comics (hopefully obvious that’s not a compliment).

This comic should have the classic look of the era, stories, and comics that it homages, and the zipatone should show, not computer-generated special effects.

sgt. pepper: Ah, so you’d be one of those “wrong” people I was talking about!

The problem with your position is that this doesn’t really homage the 1930s, because it looks like a 1980s comic. It’s dated. The new coloring makes it look more classic. Even the older coloring is miles better than what we saw from comics in the 1930s. If it was colored like a 1930s comic, I might agree with you, but it doesn’t.

The new coloring is obviously far superior. But those wishing to live in the past are welcome to do so.

Even after seeing your two examples of a side by side comparison of the Betty photo-shoot scene I still prefer the original. I may be wrong as you suggest, but I am willing to be wrong here. I agree with your assessment of the new colouring being more 3-dimensional and cinematic. The modeling is very good indeed.

But for me the key to old school comic book colouring has to do with the superior texture that comes with flatter colours. It has a more organic nature that favours the artists pencils and inks. Maybe not as cinematic and ever closer in kind to newspaper pulp strips… but hey comic books themselves I suggest are a media more akin to such beasts of print than to the alluring creatures of film.

Stevens is an artist whose work lends itself well to the pulp sheen, but lets not forget what pulp in fact literally refers to… I’m looking at you lovely, smelly old newsprint. Stevens fits in to the old school just fine.

I just want to echo Greg and Doug M. The artwork was gorgeous, but the story was really underwhelming.

I think this is the only comic book, in which the film adaptation was superior. Of course, seeing as the film only made about $3.50 worldwide, I may be alone in that assessment.

I’m surprised at the lack of enthusiasm for the story. I’ve only read the first story (the second is much scarcer) and I thought it was great fun.

I’m of two minds about the story. On the one hand there I would agree there isn’t a lot there and it’s a vehicle for the wonderful retro art. On the other hand the use of all the Doc Savage characters (without naming them) is tremendously inventive and was, at the time, a really nifty innovation, and I think deserves to be mentioned and applauded

THE ROCKETEER had a great premise and astounding art, but you are right that Stevens was not much of a plotter. The story sort of just meandered about and not much really happened. I do not think that comic characters should necessarily change, but they should get little lessons even if they ignore them.

The art, however, is stunning. The new coloring really makes it pop. Those who are complaining about it are really missing the point. THE ROCKETEER was always about creating a lush visual landscape. Stevens researched the hell out it and put a ton of effort into every page. Martin’s new coloring makes the whole thing prettier and more engrossing. That was the whole point.

As to why it ended when it did, the story was always that Dave Stevens took forever to create a single page. He drew and re-drew them. Producing just the few issues collected here burned him out.

Pulp? I think you mean pin-up, because I’ve never seen a Pulp novella with anything approaching that kind of sheen, they were the cheapest of the cheap. Even going by pin-up, the new colors look far more like somebody going overboard on photoshop than they look like the work of a traditional airbrush artist. I was only introduced to the comic through the recolored edition that Dark Horse did, and I know that Stevens didn’t like the original Eclipse color plates, but seeing them for the first time here I find them much more to my liking. They’re not amazing, but I like the Smilin’ Jack vibe the color pallate is giving me and the dramatic colors in the fourth and fifth panels on the second page.

” Even the older coloring is miles better than what we saw from comics in the 1930s”. What are you talking about? There’s a bit more two toning than was conventional for the thirties, that’s it.

Which coloring is better overall is a matter of taste. But to simply assert that people who prefer the older coloring to the new are “wrong” is to ignore important differences between them, at least based on the examples shown. (I’ve only read the older comics.) The newer coloring is obviously better at modeling shapes 3-dimensionally. However, it uses a more limited palette (within a page or page spread; I’m sure it varies throughout the book). Aside from flesh tones, the two-page spread uses almost entirely shades of blue and violet. And the last example is almost entirely yellows and browns. The older coloring creates an entirely different effect on the spread by using reds, greens, yellows, browns, blues, purples, and pinks (for flesh), and even uses white more adeptly. (A lot the newer computer colorists don’t seem to appreciate the value of white, perhaps because it’s so easy or tempting to fill “empty” space with other colors. Frank D’Armata’s early Captain America coloring is a good example of this, though he’s improved.) The older coloring also uses warm vs. cool colors and degrees of saturation to create depth in space, if not on the forms themselves. For example, for my money the older coloring of the top right panel of “Monk” staring at Betty does a better job of separating foreground from background than the newer coloring. The older coloring also achieves certain effects by being less literal in places. As Julian points out, on the second page, “Monk” is yellow in the fourth panel, and Betty blue in the fifth, while the newer coloring continues to just render them as flesh.

Finally, to compare Stevens’s art to pulps (which had black-and-white illustrations), movie serials (a big inspiration on Stevens storywise, and also black-and-white), or even early comics is off-base. Stevens’s artistic models are people like Frank Frazetta, whose comics artwork had better coloring (look at EC reprints) than 1940s comics.

Apparently, Stevens had plans for a miniseries that would have wrapped the series up; he had enlisted several collaborators (including Mike Kaluta and the guys who wrote the ROCKETEER movie) to ensure the project would get done. The catch? Well, the series had always featured thinly disguised versions of period characters (and real people, too); but this final story would involve a character that simply COULDN’T be disguised: Superman! Negotiations with DC were so drawn out and difficult (Stevens was insistant on depicting Supes exactly as he appeared in the Fleischer Bros. cartoons, and DC wasn’t even comfortable with the idea of putting him in a period piece), that the project was eventually abandoned.

The problem is that one must analyze the period of publication and what was running or what was the rage at the time (Byrne’s X-men and Giffen’s Legion). So you have new proposals like Rocketeer mimicking the 30′s and making various pictorial homages, or Mr. X (first run) or Cerebus or Love and Rockets.

At that time this titles were alien to the public and, further, create a new public.

It is like analyzing Jimmy Corrigan from 30 years out of its present time.

Plus, the new coloring is great.

Now That,is VERY interesting ,CST! I recall reading that some other artist was to have taken over after issue three or so, then NOTHING,year after year after year.Supes,is a VERY big league character,and would have transformed him into the star of the story.Comics being comics, many a story has had to be re-written for one reason or another,to see print.Supes was’nt needed for the story.I simply would have had a big ww2 last story to both marry Secord off to Betty, give him a son,at wars end,then kill him off, leaving the rocket to the boy.As is, I doubt the story will ever be wrapped up by anyone..

Laura Martin is one of the best artists in comics today without a shadow of a doubt. I was re-reading the The Stand hardcover the other day and was just astonished at how much she added to to tone of the book. An amazing eye for how colour can be used and one of the best in the business.

I’ve just done a comparison of these shots with the 1991 copy of The Rocketeer that I’ve got and my copy is very similar to the newly coloured version – I had to look very closely to find any differences at all.

TBH I’d say this isn’t so much a recolouring as a translation of the 1991 edition’s colours onto a computer. I’m not really sure why they bothered

I loved the Rocketeer movie when I saw it in the theater. Not so much on video. I had two issues of the comic. I bought the Eclipse reprint of the first series two years ago. I was disappointed by the actual finished story. I’d had it built up in my mind from the two segments I’d read combined with my memories of the movie. I don’t think my disappointment with it was the fault of the material though. I thought the story was headed for a big clash of good and evil. It wasn’t. It’s one of those likable stories about likable characters who get into adventures and everybody makes friends with each other by the end. Kind of like “Spirited Away.”
I think most people encountered the Rocketeer’s story in fragments. There was a long gap between each of the original issues. The art and ambiance caught reader’s imaginations long before the story was ever completed. Narrative fragments can be very powerful.