THE ROCKETEER

LONGBOX HEROES (FRESH MONKEY FICTION)

“The Rocketeer is Cliff Secord, a stunt pilot who discovers a mysterious jetpack that allows him to fly. His adventures are set in the Los Angeles and New York of 1938 as he battles Nazis and monsters!

Published in 1982 by reknowned writer/artist Dave Stevens, The Rocketeer is an homage to the Saturday matinee serial heroes from the 1930 through the 1950s. Stevens gave it a retro, nostalgic feel influenced by the king of the Rocket Men and Commando Cody movie serials, along with pinup diva Bettie Page as the inspiration for Cliff’s girlfriend, Betty.”

Before being an underrated gem of a movie in 1990, The Rocketeer was an underrated gem of a comic book.  Dave Stevens’ creation began as a back-up feature to Mike Grell’s Starslayer in 1982, eventually growing into its own standalone property, and gaining a lot of critical success.  The troubles of independent comic publishers and Stevens’ own perfectionism meant that it was a slow-rolling and ultimately rather short-lived series, but it nevertheless made an impact on the pop culture landscape.  It was without much in the way of merchandising during its first few decades of existence, but in the last ten years or so, there’s been an upswing.  It’s largely been movie-based, of course, but that changes today, with the first offering from Fresh Monkey Fiction’s Longbox Heroes!

THE FIGURE ITSELF

The Rocketeer is part of the the launch line-up of Longbox Heroes, a Big Bad Toystore-exclusive line of independent comics figures.  Where FMF’s prior Amazing Heroes line was clearly patterned on Secret Wars, Longbox Heroes is inspired by the *other* big ’80s superhero toyline, Super Powers. The figure stands 4 1/2 inches tall and he has 9 points of articulation, gaining an extra swivel point at each knee over his Kenner ancestors. This is partly due to his modular construction, which, much like Amazing Heroes, allows all of the figures in this line to have their parts swapped at the joints. All of the figures in the Longbox Heroes line were sculpted by Jason “Toyotter” Geyer, who has been a major fixture of the online toy news and toy archiving scene since the ’90s, notably running the Super Powers Archive, amongst other things, making him a natural choice for such a project. His sculpt for Cliff is honestly pretty perfect, really. It’s very cleanly detailed, and really captures the Dave Stevens illustrations of the character, getting all of his important design elements, while also very much feeling like it’s a proper vintage Kenner sculpt. The one area where this guy is a little more removed from a Kenner offering us the paint work. He’s entirely painted, which isn’t *quite* the way they would have done it. That said, it’s a pretty solid paint job. There’s a spot of black in the wrong place on his legs, and some of the edges are a little fuzzy, but generally things look alright. Cliff is packed with his pistol (patterned on the Mauser C96, which was also the basis for Han Solo’s gun), and a Longbox Heroes display stand. Given the interchangeability angle, an unmasked head would have been cool, but not really expected given the style.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

Super Powers is one of my very favorite toylines, the Rocketeer is one of my favorite comic/movie characters, and I really love Amazing Heroes, so there was pretty much no way that I was missing out on this guy.  As such, I jumped on his pre-order through BBTS pretty quickly.  This guy is a ton of fun, and a fantastic throwback to the Super Powers style.  I can’t wait to get the rest of the figures I’ve got pre-ordered.