A forgotten Disney Superhero with a stolen Jetpack, a pulp magazine origin, and a Hollywood destiny that almost didn’t happen, The Rocketeer is not just a cult favorite for audiences; it’s also one of the most fascinating near misses in comic book history.
Originally created as a homage to the 1930s adventure serials, Dave Stevens intended this character as his love letter to the heroes of old. But the character would rocket from indie comic pages to the big screen in a big-budget Disney adaptation that would unknowingly set the tone for the future of superhero cinema. The thing is… Despite being an iconic cult classic, The Rocketeer was initially a commercial failure that nearly ruined the character’s legacy. So, how did it go from a flop to being the blueprint for movies like Iron Man and Captain America? Let’s talk about it in today’s episode!
So, you might think that this pulpy 1930s pseudo-superhero was created. Well… in the 1930s. But you’d be wrong. Unlike other pulp heroes like The Phantom or Mandrake the Magician, Cliff Secord (AKA The Rocketeer) was actually created in the early 1980s, long after modern superheroes like Spider-Man and Batman. The character was created by Dave Stevens. An artist from Lynwood, California, who started his career in the mid-70s as an artist on the Tarzan newspaper comic strip. Drawing had been Dave’s passion his whole life, making it his full-time job at just 20 years old. He would later get jobs in Hollywood as a storyboard artist, drawing boards for movies like Raiders of the Lost Ark and even the iconic short film/music video for Michael Jackson’s Thriller. His work would stand out because of his attention to detail and his vision for composition. This also helped him break into the animation industry, back when animation was all done by hand.
In 1981, just 7 years into his career as a professional artist, Dave was approached by a publisher at Pacific Comics. They love his work and want him to design a creator-owned character and story to serve as backup entries for their comic, Starslayer. Dave grew up enjoying 1930s pulp serials like the Phantom, The Green Hornet, and Commando Cody, and he wanted to pay homage to those characters and their old-timey aesthetics by setting his story in the 30s with a WWII backdrop. Dave also loved traditional art deco design, and he drew on it as an influence when coming up with ideas. He would sketch a character with a metallic jetpack and rockets on the back, wearing a shiny copper industrial-style helmet with exposed screws and bolts. And with one sketch, the story and character became clear on the page. He would call this creation The Rocketeer.
The Rocketeer, also known as Cliff Secor, was born on a train on its way to Chicago in 1911. Cliff was raised in Michigan, where he worked as a carny in his teens, helping with stage displays at the carnival. During the Great Depression that real-world America faced during the comic’s timeline, Cliff (empty-handed and down on his luck) watches a stunt plane show in Detroit that inspires him to pursue a career as a stunt pilot. In 1931, Cliff would enter his first race. From there, he’d gain a reputation as a daredevil stuntman with reckless ambition. One day, he’d stumble upon a jet pack made for experimental research, and just like that, the hero is born.
In 1982, The Rocketeer appeared in issues 2 and 3 of Starslayer at Pacific Comics. The original story is as simple as a stunt pilot in the early 30s discovering a prototype jetpack and using it to fly around and fight crime. Readers are instantly into this small backup story. The character’s design and the nostalgic Americana feel of the world Dave created resonated with the public and gained widespread favor. People are into this. The next year, The Rocketeer stories would be moved from Starslayer and published in “Pacific Presents” comics, short anthology comics meant to be purchased cheaply, read in a day, and discarded forever. That might sound bad, but that’s just how comics were in the age before the 90s collectors’ boom. The story would continue from its original premise, with Clint and his team fighting the mob, petty thugs, and other wrongdoers. Characters like Betty, Clint’s romantic interest, were written, designed, and drawn beautifully by Stevens. Pacific Presents published a few more issues featuring stories of The Rocketeer, and Dave had been working to elevate his story into a long-running arc. Audiences were loving it, but there was a problem…
Pacific Comics would discontinue the title in 1983, when the business was forced to shut down, leaving his story arc unfinished and kind of blue-balling readers about where it was all heading. Hope was not lost for long, though, as Cliff would return the following year in “Rocketeer Special Edition,” which was a dedicated title published by Eclipse Comics in 1984. This changed everything. There was limited material on this character, but it seemed that every story, every issue, every panel, had readers wanting more. So, in 1985, Eclipse Comics released another book. This time, it’s a collection of all the published Rocketeer material to date, with the now-completed story arc. Have you heard of it? It sold in stores and features multiple prolific artists and pinups to complement the stories. This thing is a gem, and it won the 1986 Kirby Award for best Graphic Album. This book is really the catalyst for the character’s future, both in print and on the big screen. I don’t have a copy of this, but that’s mainly because I want to eventually buy a signed one, and I know they’re out there waiting to be released.
Now, after years of being a background story in the shadow of other comic book titles, despite the few dedicated collections released during that time, Stevens knew the character could be MORE. He signed a deal with Comico in 1986 and continued the serial stories in a very famous comic book run called The Rocketeer Adventure Magazine. These things were in every dentist’s office, every comic book shop, and every corner store in the country. You could find these things everywhere at the time because, frankly, they were cheap and easily read and discarded. The original run of these books was planned 2 three-issue-mini-series’ that would pick up where the character left off with Eclipse. And then… uh oh… another problem.
Delays in publishing stall the books, and they don’t hit the shelves for 2 years after they’re created. These delays are caused by two main factors- Stevens’ perfectionism, which forced him to take his time writing and drawing the stories, and a copyright dispute with none other than Marvel Comics. Here we go.
Marvel and Comico could not come to an agreement on what was or wasn’t infringing on Marvel’s IP. See, it was more about the publishing and distribution than the character himself, but everything was made more complicated by one simple fact
I casually mentioned earlier that this was a creator-owned character. When the original publisher (Pacific Comics) folded, Eclipse picked up the printing rights, but Stevens still owned the character. Marvel had acquired some smaller companies, with the publishing rights eventually being transferred to Marvel, while Stevens was still writing the comics for the character at Comico. It was messy, and it slowed down production on the books.
By the time it was figured out, Stevens was working on the next big storyline for the character at Comico in 1989, but would have to halt the story and (once again) leave readers on a cliffhanger when Comico went bankrupt. Frustrated, Stevens was feeling the slow and daring process weigh on him, but he wasn’t ready to give up. He needed to continue this story. And, he would, but not yet.
First, he’d be approached by Disney Studios. They want to adapt his iconic pulp hero to the big screen with a high-budget feature film, and they’re willing to pay out BIG for this deal. Without hesitation, Stevens sells the film rights, but keeps ownership of the character in print. Disney knows that the story they want to adapt remains unfinished, but this works BETTER for Stevens AT FIRST. This is how Stevens would finish the story. If Disney makes the movie and it does well, Stevens would surely have to write more stories for ten to adapt, which would feed readers’ need for new comics following the character and keep the money flowing while Dave worked on them. A perfect self-sustained machine. Only…
Okay, let’s talk about the movie.
The 1991 cult classic adaptation of this comic offers a softer and more family-friendly approach to the material, but if you ask me, that’s exactly WHY it works so well. In the film, Billy Campbell plays Cliff, and he’s joined by an absolutely stacked cast including Alan Arkin, Jennifer Connelly, Timothy Dalton, Paul Sorvino, and one of my personal favorite actors of all time, Terry O’Quinn. The movie changes some of the lore around and definitely alters its tone. Some of this is to suit the target audience, and some of it is… just because? I guess?
For example, rather than leaning into the grittier pulp aesthetics and tone, the movie opted for a more golden-age vibe, making it feel nostalgic yet modern. But in the case of Cliff’s comic book girlfriend, Bettie Page, who was more of an independent and strong female character, she was written out of the movie to be replaced with a simpler love interest named Jenny Blake, who is still a bit of a badass, but significantly less of a femme fatale type. Connely herself is wonderful in the role, and (as I’m sure you all could’ve guessed) she is also strikingly beautiful and swooned over by just about every male character in the film. And I don’t blame them.
The character of Cliff Secord is also a bit different from how he appears in the pages of the comic books. In the film, Cliff is a clean-cut pillar of morality who wants to do the heroic thing right off the bat. In the comics, he’s a bit more morally ambiguous at times, with his motivations always being more geared towards his own personal benefit. He’s a little more like the earlier Iron-Man comics in that he’s a bit selfish and reckless. Again, I think this works for the movie adaptation as the villains are sort of evil for evil’s sake, and require a foil that’s a touch more moral.
Billy Campbell is truly ideal casting for this role as well. He literally looks like he crawled out of a 1930s serial. His rugged good looks and intense eyes make him a great candidate for a superhero with a beating heart for justice, and he plays the more comedic style of this version of the character extremely well. I love the scene where he’s undercover as a waiter while Timothy Dalton (the villain of the piece) wines and dines Jenny Blake. I love his style in this role. Years later, his performance here would set the tone for Billy Zane’s brilliant take on The Phantom with a nice balance of comedy, corny heroism, and pure, straight badassery.
The film adapts the original run of comics and tells the story of a stunt pilot who happens upon a prototype jetpack and uses it to stop the mob (and a nazi spy) from carrying out their evil misdoings. The set pieces and production design of the film have a warm, grand, and timeless quality that you almost never see in movies like this today. The utter indulgence, decadence, and rich colors of every set make the film feel like a classic nod to Hollywood’s early blockbusters. Look at this restaurant, now look at this mansion, now look at this thing… everything in this movie was dripping in sauce.
The movie had a budget of somewhere between $35-$40 million, and while plenty of the money was allocated to securing a great cast and beautiful sets, the visual effects of the movie were also somewhat experimental and challenging to produce. The thing is, this did more for OTHER movies than for THIS one. What I mean is, if you look at the shots of Cliff zooming through the skies with his jetpack, the effects are obviously dated, but this shot served as the blueprint for how we would see Iron Man take to the skies years later in his first outing. The similarities are many if you watch these two films back-to-back, making this movie a loose logistical template for high-flying superhero films. Ironically, this movie is far more influential than you’d think. Looking at its underwhelming box office performance (this movie was considered a financial flop), you’d think there must have been something wrong with it, especially when compared to the money Disney makes with its MCU films now. And you’d be wrong. The director of this movie, Joe Johnston, not only pulled off a quality superhero movie with The Rocketeer, but he also applied the same eye for heroism to his MASSIVELY successful 2011 film, Captain America: The First Avenger. 20 years after directing this movie, Johnston would go on to bring another nostalgic 1030s hero to our screens with Cap, and this time, it would stick. I genuinely think that if you love this Captain America film, you WILL enjoy The Rocketeer. They are very VERY similar.
So, how can we look at this movie that had a strong cast, plenty of money invested, a proven character at the center, and a director who clearly understood the assignment, and it STILL bombs? I don’t know, but life is unfair.
While doing my research for this movie, I not only went back and watched it a couple of times, but also read or re-read many of the comics from the earlier run, and I have to say, I like the film’s vibes MORE than the comics’. I think this is largely due to the era of superheroes I grew up in, where I appreciated the golden age more than the pulp era, but I also think the type of story this is works better in a campy adventure style. This movie fits right in with films like The Mummy, Dick Tracy, and even The Phantom, which simply would not be as culty to audiences without that corniness.
So why did it fail?
Well, simply, this was an experiment that was (I’m sorry to say) ahead of its time. Disney expected to make this film into the next big blockbuster for their studio, and they had the makings at their disposal. Not only did they spend big money on the movie, but they also went ALL OUT on the marketing. We’re talking brand tie-ins with Pizza Hut and M&M’s, and a television documentary detailing the making of the film. It’s estimated that Disney spent about $20 million on creating t-shirts, toys, trading cards, lunchboxes, and even a tie-in video game to promote this film. The game was considered terrible and failed to impress audiences, and its merchandise sales were underwhelming, mirroring the movie’s box-office performance. Disney just couldn’t figure out how to make this character stick the way Batman and Spider-Man were sticking in the 90s.
Part of the problem IS the comics. And I don’t mean that as a testament to their quality. As I mentioned, I like the comics. But the pulp era the books drew inspiration from was not the kind of thing young adult readers were interested in at the time. We’re nostalgic for the 80s and 90s comics now, but in the actual 80s and 90s, the stuff that the big two publishers were printing was cutting-edge. Especially the 90s, that was a VERY weird and divisive era for comics. I think a lot of it was awesome, and some of it was just too wild. This character, though, was not in that club. It was old-timey, detective noir type stuff that just wasn’t hot with fans of the medium during this time.
Ironic, because I think if this movie had been released like 10-15 years later, it would have been a huge success for Disney.
So, what started as a loving homage to the creator’s favorite era of heroes slowly became its own thing in the pages of indie publishers, and eventually received a high-budget, bombastic adaptation that ultimately led to the character’s demise on the big screen. To me, that’s not only a damn shame, but it’s also an injustice to the movie that would later play a part in bringing us the age of superhero cinema that we love so much. Now, Disney happens to own Marvel, and since we know how much they love sucking up all these non-MCU movies into their catalog, I say we start a petition to have Cliff Secor appear in Avengers Secret Wars as an Elseworld’s Iron-Man/Captain America hybrid. Keep the same exact costume too. The helmet on this guy is one of my favorite superhero masks of all time. It’s gorgeous.
And just as I said with The Phantom, this movie could so easily be remade and re-adapted in a heartbeat. The comic books have enough lore to craft a new and fresh take while still delivering on the aspects of the character we all love, and not to mention that we’re overdue for some good non-Marvel or DC cape flicks. In fact, I’ve got my own idea of how a remake should go, and I’ll sell the idea to Disney for a million pennies and a seat in the writers’ room.