These are just posts where I share something I see that goes beyond I want it and I’m copping it, and are more along the lines of I’d go Order 66 on the world if I have to score me a copy.
I guess it was unofficially started during Noir Sunday last week with the next Pynchon book, but I thought it may be fun to do some brief highlights of products that get me pumped when I see them announced. A project like The Complete Rocketeer is the quintessential example, and thus a good way to kick off Tomio’s Wantlist.
This was the press release (last month) from IDW:
IDW Publishing is proud to announce the upcoming release of The Complete Rocketeer by Dave Stevens, collecting the classic series in its entirety for the first time ever.
After more than a decade out of print, The Rocketeer makes a triumphant return to stores this October with a comprehensive hardcover edition featuring artwork digitally re-mastered from Stevens’ own lovingly maintained collection of originals, and all-new coloring by Laura Martin, the Eisner-Award-winning colorist handpicked by Stevens himself.
The Rocketeer, a rollicking tribute to pulp novels and Saturday morning matinee serials, follows the high-flying adventures of stunt pilot Cliff Secord and his girlfriend Betty, after Cliff finds a mysterious jet pack and takes to the sky. The graphic novel went on to become a much-loved major motion picture directed by Joe Johnston.
In addition to the mass-market hardcover, a very special deluxe edition is planned. Presented in a larger format, the deluxe edition will be filled with behind-the-scenes material, a treasure of additional pages featuring previously unpublished Rocketeer designs, preliminaries, and sketches by Dave Stevens, many taken from his personal sketchbooks.
“It is an honor to work on The Rocketeer,” said IDW Special Projects editor Scott Dunbier, “I’ve been a fan of Dave Stevens and The Rocketeer since I first read it in the early 80s. It was a dream of Dave’s to see his creation return to the shelves in a complete collection. We are dedicated to making this the definitive edition, a book Dave would have been proud of.” This October The Rocketeer will fly once more
Comic book fans (all of but the most passive) know who Dave Stevens is. Fans of the Rocketeer (1991) film (which had Jennifer Connelly and Alan Arkin in it among others) have enjoyed his work and may not have known the creator/writer/artist behind the concept and comic. Rocketeer is visually a steampunk tour de force. I’m not sure if it’s going to end up on any official best movie list, but man, if you are a creative person and you watched this movie in 1991, it had to give a hint of the possibilities we are seeing in film now – with so many comics successfully making the transition to the big screen.
What makes this collection handy is not due the scarcity or prices of its collected content. It’s more about convenience as The Rocketeer showed up under many publishers (Comico, Dark Horse, Pacific) etc, and the truth is that while you may find them in dollar boxes (or I guess ebay now), you’d be doing yourself a favor to see the body of the work in one volume. It simply merits it. There actually is a Rocketeer hardcover through Pacific that will grab more in price (in high grade) than what you will pay for this IDW version, which is claiming to be comprehensive.
I also want to point people to one of my favorite reads of the year thus far:
Brush with Passion: The Art and Life of Dave Stevens was published late last year by Underwood Books, and it’s more than just a book about a creator and his legacy. It’s an incredibly emotional book, and an unprecedented inside look into not just Dave Steven’s work , but his triumphs and tribulations all the way to his death last March. I highly recommend this book, whether you’re are a comic book fan or not. There was a nice piece at Tor.com about the book by Arnie Fenner (who edited the book) that’s a damn nice read, and gives a hint of the layers of appreciation that Stevens and his work attracts.
As a comic book fan, and through the perspective of one (or just my perspective) Stevens is a creator who was known for his glamor or cheesecake art, but was yet still very much an artist’s artist. Nobody was fronting like they didn’t dig Stevens, even when you never really saw regular, continued work by him from a month-to-month basis for extended periods of time. As an art collector, his work was on your want list as something that you wanted to be represented in your collection, and one of those few that it really didn’t matter what page, or from what title, or what run it came from. A Dave Stevens piece, was unequivocally a Dave Stevens piece. He’s one of those artists that you honestly could love even if you didn’t care at all about the actual book he was doing– an artist whose pin-ups were events.
When I think of Steven’s work I think of a creator of beauty, of somebody who inspires daring and fun adventure, and books like A Brush with Passion show you the levels beyond that, the price and rewards, the pride and tears. I can’t wait for The Complete Rocketeer so I can read the story again, but in a way – I think – for the first time, as the post-Brush Stevens is a different person to the reader. It’s a moving work, just by the measure in how you realize how he moved others.
Throughout you read about a quest of and for perfection, and after seeing a tribute piece via a King Kong drawing by a friend of his – that will absolutely bring you to tears – you have to come away thinking that he did it.
To inspire such expression in others is a form or act of human perfection.
- Jay Tomio
Jan-ken-pon is the time traveling, force-walking, multiverse crossing column of Jay Tomio, owner of 1/3 of everything you see currently on screen, and the editor of Heliotrope. Some call him the Bodhisattva.
