Within a few years, TV was king, and with each passing year, the serial, with its 15 minute installments that end in cliffhangers, falls further into obscurity.
#ROCKET ER MOVIE#
These serials, King of the Rocket Men (1949), Radar Men From the Moon (1952), Zombies of the Stratosphere (also 1952), and Commando Cody: Sky Marshall of the Universe (1953) came at the end of the movie serial’s dominance as the Saturday afternoon entertainment of choice for kids. Stevens’ desire to jump straight to the screen makes sense, considering that the character was heavily influenced by Republic Pictures movie serials, notably four projects that all featured a helmeted man with a jet pack as the lead character. “I never really looked at it as just words and pictures on paper. “From the first character sketches, I always viewed it in my mind’s eye as a film,” Stevens told Jon B. It was something of an inauspicious beginning, and the lack of readily available collected editions in the 1980s made things difficult for fans hungry for more of Stevens’ striking art.īut Stevens always had cinematic ambitions for the character. The character first appeared as a backup story in Mike Grell’s Starslayerbefore migrating to another comics anthology, and that story was then completed in a comic released by an entirely different company, before a third comics publisher released Stevens’ final Rocketeer chapters. The Rocketeer was a small press comic book character created by writer and artist Dave Stevens, who had done some work in Hollywood as a storyboard artist (among other things, his credits include Raiders of the Lost Ark as well as the infamous Godzilla 3D movie that never materialized in the 1980s). It’s a shame that The Rocketeernever quite connected, and maybe time just wasn’t on its side. The Rocketeer never approached the box office numbers of those films ($46 million at the US box office compared to Dick Tracy’s $103 million and Batman’s $251 million), and failed to launch the franchise that Disney envisioned. The soundtrack was composed by James Horner which received positive reviews.Ĭliff Secord is revealed to be the main character's great grandfather.It has been over 25 years since the release of The Rocketeer, Disney’s 1991 attempt to capture their share of the post Batman/ Dick Tracy comic book movie resurgence.
Plans for a sequel diminished due to poor box office results. The film also stars Jennifer Connelly, Alan Arkin, Timothy Dalton and Terry O'Quinn.
#ROCKET ER FULL#
Other Media Film The Rocketeer Movie PosterĪ full length feature film was produced by Walt Disney Pictures in 1991. The Rocketeer's standard sidearm is a Mauser C96. Kurt Busiek, John Cassaday, Mike Allred, Michael Kaluta, Mike Mignola, Dave Stewart and Jim Silke are among creators working on the series.
#ROCKET ER SERIES#
A large number of comic creators have worked on the series as each issue switches to different creators. Each issue has a painted cover by Alex Ross. In May of 2011, IDW began publishing Rocketeer Adventures. Rocketeer was created by Dave Stevens, debuting in Starslayer #1. Using this jetpack, Cliff Secord fights crime as the Rocketeer. When unwrapping the package, he discovers a mysterious jetpack. Cliff Secord was a hotshot stunt pilot who one day discovered a mysterious package in his plane.