The Rocketeer returns from the presses of IDW Publishing with an all-new adventure. This time he’s not alone but teams up with that other beloved dieselpunk pulp hero: Will Eisner’s The Spirit.
Which is great news for fans of both heroes, as this particular crossover is pretty brilliant.
Even though it combines two very different settings, the author and artists do a fantastic job representing both and combining these worlds in a realistic fashion that does the two of them justice.
The little winks to older issues of both, as well as the Spirit movie, are small strokes of genius. If the creators of these fantastic worlds and characters were still alive, they would surely feel that the team behind Pulp Friction did them more than proud.
This time IDW even managed to not screw over the chronology and the latest edition is indeed, time-wise, the latest in the series.
They did, however, hire three different artists for four issues. The styles aren’t that radically different, but still, it would be nice to see one artist for an entire Rocketeer storyline for once.
While this is, like the other issues of The Rocketeer so far, a stand-alone storyline, it does help to have read at least the original Rocketeer works by Dave Stevens so you know the backstory of the main characters.
The same goes for Eisner’s The Spirit, although you can get away with watching the movie from a couple of years ago to get yourself up to speed.
Putting these two heroes together actually makes for the best Rocketeer release to date and I hope that this will be the start of a separate IDW Publishing The Spirit series as well.
