The Rocketeer

[Ben]

I'm sure the comic shops in London would be carrying this, but at an extortionate price that may even be more than the US list price in pounds, which is what they do here (London prices also generally more expensive anyway due to bigger overheads).

I suspect that they will print more or that a Euro edition comes out, at least that's what I'm going to hope for. There's no way I am going to leave it to chance and order from Amazon only for UK customs to charge me an arm and a leg to bring it home.

Rand...I would grab it while you can if you see it (and get me one too, would'ya!?)

[Randall]

I'll keep an eye out.

Update: Now in stock at Amazon.com, so there's hope!

[GeorgeC]

I've been lucky these past two days in my quest to finish my collection of Spirit Archives...

I hadn't gotten another Archive since Dark Horse released Volume 27 of the Archives run. The last DC Spirit Archive (volume 26, the newspaper strip Archive) I'd gotten from e-Bay months earlier than that...

Anyhow, I stepped into a Half-Price Books (used bookstore chain) off of Ohio State University and located 3 near-prime condition Spirit Archives! The dustjackets had only minor wear/crinkle damage that a good jacket protector will hide and keep from increasing in the future. The interiors of the books were still near-mint!

Best news yet -- on top of the 50% discount I got from the store which was well worth it for such excellent condition books --, I got 20% more off! I bought two of the books yesterday and went back today to get the last one they had. I didn't get the extra 20% on the book I bought today (the special sale ended yesterday) but the book was still worth it for 50% off.

This brings my Spirit total to 11-12(?) volumes now. Roughly 40% of what DC and Dark Horse reprinted. I've got Volumes 1-2, 6, 8, 9, and 22-27 I think. I'm working my way in from the opposite ends to the middle for this collection!

It's a good thing I pay attention to my instincts when I want to check out used bookstores. I usually find something on the days I get my little "premonitions." I 've gotten about 7-8 DC Archives in very good condition for 50% off on those days.



P.S. -- One Half-Price Books location that I used to go to more often had some neat stuff for sale these past few months. I saw a copy today of Applewood Books' "The Birth of Spider-Man" giftset. This is the collection that includes a boxed, full-sized reprint of Amazing Fantasy #15 (first appearance and origin of Spider-Man) photographed from a prime condition copy. It also has an insignia ring and special audio CD which features a reading of the comic by Stan Lee!

Now, since I'm on a budget and have a billion reprints of AF #15 already I didn't get this book as much as I'd like to have that audio recording...!

The neater thing this bookstore had before it got sold(!) was an early first(?) edition copy of Disney's The Illusion of Life slip-cased and signed by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston! It was on sale for $350. That's a bargain because you usuallly see those on sale online for 2-3 times that price!

Again, an instance of where I had something already that I don't need another copy of... (I've got the 1995 reprint of "The Illusion of Life." Yes, I know it's "inferior" but frankly it's good enough for me!) As much as I'd love to own signatures from Frank and Ollie, I can't afford to pay even bargain-price for that!

[Randall]

Amazon.ca now says this book ships in 3 to 4 weeks. Yay!

[droosan]

Good news, Randall!

I've been on the 'lookout' for you here in L.A., too, Ben .. with no luck, thus far.

There is a copy on eBay at the moment (the first -- and only -- one I've noticed) .. but the auction has four days left before closing, so the price could go fairly high.

[Randall]

There's an Amazon Marketplace seller trying to get $174.49 for a copy!

Ben, would you like me to try an Amazon.ca order for you? (No bilingual packaging on books!) It's listed at $49.94Can.

[Ben]

I was up "in town" (what we just-out of Londoners call the city center) on Monday and made it a mission to check out the specialised comic stores. Forbidden Planet, Orbital and three others all only had one or two in stock on release day and of course they have long gone.

The best bit of news was that one store said they had recived word that IDW had indeed underestimated demand and was looking at another print run, so there is some hope.

Amazon.com seems to reflect this with a "temporarily out of stock" note, and Amazon.co.uk now states "sign up to be notified when available" instead of the "discontinued" of before, which seems to indicate more are on the way (somewhere).

Thanks for looking out Droo, and for the offer Rand! The 3-4 weeks noted on Amazon.ca could well be the time they reckon this might be back in print, so what say we wait it out a bit and see what happens? If it comes back in stock near me then great, but if not then if it does appear at .ca then I will probably take you up on the offer!

[GeorgeC]

Chalk the underprinting up to the economy...

A lot of companies overestimated the economy the previous year (2008) and a lot of stores were left with mounds of unsold stock.

Fastforward to this past year and a good part of the reason why stores did better was that they didn't order as much for inventory.

How does this affect this particular book?

Comic shops have been feeling the economy for years now. They don't stock as much as they used to, period.

I've been seeing fewer new statues in stores and they don't go crazy on orders for hardcovers or reprint series (DC Archives, Marvel Masterworks) either. If you don't pre-order a novelty item from your local store or pre-order it online from a specialty webstore, chances are you won't be able to get it in-store and could end paying a lot more on the aftermarket (ie, e-Bay, Amazon.com stores).

Comic companies have been printing far fewer copies of their comics for years now. It's mostly all print-to-order size rather than the traditional guess-timation plus over-print. They just don't do returns anymore on comics since every distribution alley for comics except for the Direct Market (comic shops) has basically vanished.

One fatal flaw with this practice is that you get the situation where an issue or series does better than expected and stores just can't get in reprints fast enough. They lose potential sales on those issues and a lot of people wait for the reprints months down the line now... or they don't bother to go back to the store, period.

There is a market for overpriced, "limited print" comics on e-Bay but what the suckers that buy those copies of "Death of Captain America" don't realize is that those books WON'T hold their value years from now. The only comics that do that are the individual issues printed between 1938 and 1983. Everything else after 1990 (with a few exceptions) basically isn't worth that much!

IDW isn't a big comic book company... They won't have first priority for reprints like Marvel or DC would. It will take a while -- probably 2-3 months minimum before they can do a new print run of The Rocketeer Deluxe HC.



More people were looking forward to the Deluxe edition of The Rocketeer than IDW/The Dave Stevens Estate realized.

I have seen the Regular hardcover in store but I'd bet no place in Columbus has the Oversize edition, either.

(BTW, the recoloring of the stories is brilliant! Good move on Stevens' part. He chose an excellent an excellent artist to recolor the stories!)

I think a second printing of this Deluxe willl do well!

The Rocketeer isn't as popular as Batman or Watchmen but it obviously has its fans.


P.S. -- I haven't gotten my copies, either. They're still being processed and I'll get a ring whenever DCBS ships them to me unless they got short-ordered....


I'm also 99% certain IDW will reprint the Oversize edition of The Rocketeer. I've got a good feeling on that!

(They should do a cover alternate just to stir up the aftermarket! LOL)

[eddievalient]

You never know, though. I've been waiting to get the second hardcover of Ultimate Spider-Man for months, but I haven't been able to because it's apparently between printings and the secondary market price is ridiculous. It's been so long that I'm starting to get worried that it may not get reprinted at all (as in, Marvel decided that anyone who wants it already has it).

[Ben]

Y'know, just on the offchance, I may go ahead and order that standard edition. I was kind of wanting to get both anyway and if it doesn't look like I'm going to need to shell out on the oversized deluxe edition any time soon then it won't pinch so much!

[GeorgeC]

It's a good choice either way, Ben.

I think you'll really enjoy the series.

It's an expanded version of what we saw in the movie but with Bettie Page set about 15 years earlier in an alternate reality. The character Jennifer Connelly played in the movie is basically Bettie but minus the nudity and trademark hairdo. Disney just didn't want to have deal with possible lawsuits and trademark infringements so that's why the character was changed for the movie. Around the time The Rocketeer movie was released, Bettie Page came out of seclusion to tell everyone she was still alive and that's when the lawyers started scrambling for cash!

(To his credit, Dave Stevens became a real friend to Bettie Page and tried to help her out when he could...)

The original Rocketeer comics published in the the early 1980s (along with Bettie Page fanzine reprints of her photo shoots) helped revive Bettie's popularity as well as get people interested in the older Rocketman/Commander Cody movie serials that influenced the comics as well.

It's a collection that's long overdue.

The last reprint collection of the Rocketeer comic was done by Dark Horse in the early 1990s around the same time as the film version. It covered the second and last finished story arc of the original comic series. The Disney comic book adaptation of the film, which was the last "new" Rocketeer comic published during Stevens' lifetime, also got released around the time of the Dark Horse reprint.

There was talk of new Rocketeer comics being done by other comic pros while Stevens was alive but I don't what will happen now that he's dead... Who knows what his Estate's executors have planned?

The situation with Will Eisner's "Spirit" is different. The rights to publish new comics of that character as well as reprints of the original newspaper comic and daily strips were negotiated with DC well before Eisner's death. This deal didn't cover the 1990s comics which were dealt with separately and ultimately reprinted by Dark Horse. I presume DC has a set time to do something with the character before their license deal expires and the Eisner Estate (executed by Dennis Kitchen, publisher of the deceased Kitchen Sink Press) negotiates with another publisher... This is probably why DC is set on doing a new Spirit monthly series even though the last monthly went downhill after Darwyn Cooke left the series. Even his issues never set sales records at any rate!

[Ben]

Oh, I know the comics George.

I grew up with the Rocketman/Cody/King Of The Rocket Men serials on TV as a kid (and tried to make my own ham-fisted version too!) and was going ape over The Rocketeer movie when it came out. I must have seen the Dark Horse 1990s versions, as I went hunting for them after the film, but didn't actually get around to buying them back in the day (bah!) for whatever reason, though I remember the reasons why Bettie was swapped for Jenny.

I never saw the comic adaptation of the movie apart from a few promotional panels, but was it Stevens that drew that? The art seemed different to his original stories...a bit more "commercial" and like other comics of the time rather than the details he put in. As for new comics, it's clear this reprint has shown there's a lot of interest in the property, for Stevens himself or for the character.

That doesn't pass anyone's eyes quickly without dollar signs flashing up, so maybe we'll see some more even if it won't be the same. At the very least, it would be great to see a proper retrospective edition for the movie on BD (along with Disney's other retro-deco films of the time).

[GeorgeC]

Stevens didn't draw the movie adaptation. That was a different set of artists.

As for Stevens' participation in the film, he really didn't make any big money from it. When the movie didn't hit big, Disney pretty much shut the idea down for sequels and the Rocketeer withered away.

Stevens afterwards did occasional drawings of the characters for paintings and con sketches but not much else. He seemed to have lost all heart in it. Darn shame, too.

As for Disney, they pretty much shuttered away the props and costumes and occasionally took them out to put them on display in the parks and most recently sold some items on e-Bay. (I saw a badly beat-up Rocketeer puppet on e-Bay a while back. It was one of the puppets used for the flying sequences. Stitching from the leather jacket was coming lose and whatever kind of stuffing it had seemed to be coming out, too.) Anybody that's been on backstage tours at the DisneyWorld resort within the past 14 years has probably seen Rocketeer movie props and costumes...

There have also been replicas made of the jacket, rocket pack and helmet Cliff Secord wore in the film. Droosan said a few years back that he had some of those things once.

I know that Master Replicas did a run of the Rocketeer helmet in the last few years. Grand Jester and Electric Tiki have also both done recent statues. The GJ bust (which I have) is already sold out and I'm sure the Tiki statue will become hard to find soon, too.

It's too bad Dave Stevens didn't live to see this but I don't know how much he would have profited from it to be honest.

I hate to say it but I think he signed a poor licensing contract...

[Randall]

Now Amazon.ca says, "Sign up to be notified when this item becomes available." OTOH, they haven't cancelled my order yet.

And the saga continues.

[GeorgeC]

That....


...is not sounding too good, Rand!


Wow, did IDW underestimate demand for the Deluxe Book.

I'm hoping I still get mine!

(Not shipped to me yet... Hope it's in a warehouse somewhere in Indiana...!)