The Rocketeer & The Spirit: Pulp Friction


By Mark Waid, Paul Smith, Loston Wallace, J Bone, Bob Wiacek & various (IDW)
ISBN: 978-1-61377-881-4

The American comics industry has generated its fair share of immortal heroes. However, whilst everyone is familiar with household names such as Flash Gordon, Superman, Dick Tracy or Popeye, there are also timeless champions who pretty much remain hallowed names known only to the in-crowd and cognoscenti: characters who have had their shot at global mega-stardom but for some reason never caught on with the masses. Characters like The Spirit and The Rocketeer…

Will Eisner was a pivotal creative force who helped shaped the entire medium of comics. From 1936 to 1938 he worked as a jobbing cartoonist in the studio-stable known as the “Eisner-Eiger Shop”, creating strips for both domestic and foreign markets.

As Willis B. Rensie he created and drew the opening instalments of a huge variety of characters ranging from funny animal to historical sagas, Westerns, Detectives, aviation action thrillers… and superheroes… lots of superheroes…

In 1940 Everett “Busy” Arnold, head honcho of Quality Comics, invited Eisner to take on a new challenge. The Register-Tribune newspaper syndicate wanted a 16-page weekly comicbook insert to be given away with the Sunday editions. Eisner created three strips which would initially be handled by him before two were handed off to his talented assistants.

Bob Powell inherited Mr. Mystic and distaff detective Lady Luck first fell into the capable hands of Nick Cardy (née Nicholas Viscardi) and later the inimitable Klaus Nordling.

Eisner kept the lead strip for himself, and over the next twelve years masked detective The Spirit grew into the most impressive, innovative, imitated and talked-about strip in the business. In 1952 the venture folded and Eisner moved into commercial, instructional and educational strips, working extensively for the US military in manuals and magazines like P*S, the Preventative Maintenance Monthly, generally leaving comics books behind.

In the wake of “Batmania” and the 1960s superhero craze, Harvey Comics released two giant-sized reprint editions with some new material from Eisner, which lead to a brace of underground compilations and a slow but inexorable rediscovery and revival of the Spirit’s fame and fortune via black and white newsstand reprint magazines.

Warren Publishing collected old stories, occasionally adding painted colour from such contemporary luminaries as Rich Corben, but from #17 the title reverted to Kitchen Sink, who had produced those first two underground collections.

Eisner found himself re-enamoured with graphic narrative and discerned that there now existed a willing audience eager for new works. From producing new Spirit covers for the magazine (something the original newspaper insert had never needed) he became increasingly inspired. American comics were evolving into an art-form and the restless creator finally saw a place for the kind of stories he had always wanted to tell.

He subsequently began crafting some of the most telling and impressive work the industry had ever seen: first in limited collector portfolios and eventually, in 1978, with the groundbreaking sequential narrative A Contract With God and thereby jumpstarting our modern comics phenomenon of graphic novels…

Although his output was far smaller and life far shorter, Dave Stevens had an equally revolutionary effect on the industry: his lush and lavish illustration style influencing a generation of artists as his signature retro-futurist character The Rocketeer became the first breakout star of the Independent Comics movement which stemmed from the creation of the Comicbook Direct Sales Market.

Due to Stevens’s legendarily uncompromising artistic vision – and consequent slow page rate – very few of The Rocketeer’s period exploits appeared before the artist’s death from Hairy Cell Leukaemia in 2008. Since then, however, diverse other hands have added to the canon, as with the miniseries collected in this slim but stunning hardcover edition.

Just in case these vintage adventurers are new to you, The Spirit used to be Denny Colt: Central City’s greatest detective and criminologist. After apparently dying in battle with a vile master-villain, Colt opted to remain officially dearly departed and battle evil in a semi-official capacity as a masked enigma, aided by girlfriend Ellen Dolan and her father the crime-ridden metropolis’ Police Commissioner.

Cliff Secord is an itinerant West Coast pilot who – circa 1938 – found a fantastic jetpack outfit and ever thereafter stumbled into a succession of criminal plots and capers. With the eventual permission of the flight engine’s inventor – one of the greatest heroes of that or any other era – Cliff still finds himself regularly battling bad guys as The Rocketeer. When that’s not occupying his time, he’s busy looking for work or being given the run-around by his star-struck, fame-obsessed, trouble-magnet girl Betty…

Team-ups are part-and-parcel of comics extravaganzas and both heroes have had their share of cataclysmic and catastrophic clashes with the valiant giants of the period and the industry.

This yarn however – collecting a 4-issue miniseries by Mark Waid which ran from July to December 2013 – concentrates as much on humour as bombastic action and begins on the East Coast in February 1941 where business executives and government meet to decide the future of the Next Big Thing…

Alderman Cunningham is stridently opposed to letting business cartels control the new medium and argues that, just like with radio, public airwaves must not be owned by any individual or corporation seeking to monopolise recently invented Television…

Mere hours later an early morning fashion shoot on a California beach is ruined when beautiful Betty finds the idealistic politician’s mangled corpse…

When the stiff is identified as Cunningham, Commissioner Dolan and Spirit are baffled. How could the victim have travelled more than 3000 miles in one night? Determined to investigate, they book passage on a trans-continental plane, having reluctantly crumbled before the forceful Ellen who demands to join them and see Hollywood…

In Los Angeles, Cliff Secord is again being ignored by the traumatised Betty. He mopes dejectedly until his grizzled old mechanic Peevy points out that whoever killed the Alderman might also want to silence the girl who found the body…

Nearby, a very wealthy entrepreneur places a coast-to-coast call to The Spirit’s greatest enemy to discuss his incredible new invention, the pursuance of their plans and how to stop a certain masked interloper from interfering…

Said hero – still wearing his mask – is stiffly staggering off a plane at Chaplin Field with his equally exhausted cross-country companions. In a weary, unguarded moment he mentions Betty. Learning of the “slip”, an already paranoid Cliff panics and, assuming the masked killer has come for his girl, dons his rocket-man suit to attack…

After a spectacular battle, Ellen finally manages to convince the two testosterone-soaked mutton heads they are on the same side, and a tentative alliance is formed… at least until Spirit interviews Betty and the flighty starlet finds she’s in love or thereabouts with the hunky masked cop…

Illustrator Paul Smith gives way to Loston Wallace & Bob Wiacek as the second chapter opens with the fractious, clueless allies heading for the LA Morgue to examine Cunningham’s body, even as television wizard Benedict Trask and The Octopus discuss how best to get Betty out of the picture and deal with the interlopers meddling in their affairs. Their solution is unique indeed and everything would have worked out swell if not for inveterate tinkerer Peevy who has built his own prototype TV receiver and intercepted something he shouldn’t have…

The villains respond in typical manner but their big mistake is believing the planes sent to strafe Peevy’s hangar are enough to stop Rocketeer and The Spirit…

With J Bone stepping in to limn the final two chapters the high-octane tale ramps up into top gear as Cliff travels back to Central City with Spirit and the Dolans to find Betty, expose the sinister scheme of Trask and the Octopus, uncover the crooks’ treacherous connections to a certain Fascist foreign power, prevent America’s airwaves from being subverted and even save President Roosevelt from being assassinated by television in a rocket-paced, breathtaking rollercoaster ride that delivers non-stop thrills and chills…

Accompanied with an Introduction from Denis Kitchen, filling in all the necessary back-story on the iconic characters, and visually embellished by sketches and a large cover gallery by Darwyn Cooke, Smith, Jordie Bellaire, Bone and Chris Samnee, Pulp Friction is a no-nonsense fun-filled action frolic to delight lovers of the good old days of Thud and Blunder…
© 2014 The Rocketeer Trust and Will Eisner Studios, Inc. The Rocketeer is a registered trademark of, and all related characters, their distinctive likenesses and indicia are trademarks of The Rocketeer Trust. All Rights Reserved. The Spirit © 2014 Will Eisner Studios, Inc. The Spirit and Will Eisner™ Will Eisner Studios, Inc. ® in the US Patent and Trademark Office. All Rights Reserved.