“Rocket Riley”. That’s cheating, Rocket Comics, and you know it. We want actual rockets!
Rocket Comics #1
Hillman-Curl (February, 1940)
Let’s see. Planet Comics had planets. Fight Comics had fights. Jungle Comics had jungles. If this has rockets, and it looks like a sci-fi comic, explain Police Comics having so few police officers! I just want what it says on the box.
Yep, no superheroes in this one from what I can tell. Meanwhile it’s still the usual 60+ page count but according to Comic Book Plus we’re talking seven stories instead of almost ten. So maybe they’ll have the page count to tell some good stories. Now all they need is the talent.
Rocket Riley: “The Runaway Rocket”
Professor Sterling has succeeded in splitting the atom. Now he can power his rocket ship, but the evil Von Stangle (I kept reading his name as “Von Strangle”) forces the ship to launch while trying to steal the secret of atom splitting. This sends the both of them along with pilot Rocket Riley and Sterling’s daughter/Riley’s fiance Griselda (it was a fine name in the 1940s?) to another planet. Escaping that planet’s octopus men and are now headed for Saturn. This comic has so much 1940s style technobabble, nonsense, and just silliness I was actually riffing the comic as I read it. So we’re not off to a good start unless you want to try that Mystery Science Theater 3000 comic idea again.
Hurricane Hart: High Seas Helion: “Treasure Of Death”
I’m already seeing a familiar naming pattern. Hurricane Hart has a treasure map but is trying to solve the riddle leading to its exact location. He finds the location, and the warning that goes with it. Now if he can keep the treasure away from pirates who rather easily took over the ship. I’m guessing the rats are the only other “crew” he has. This story had good ideas with the riddle but otherwise it was kind of dull. Also lacking in rockets.
Red Roberts: The Electro Man
Lest you think we aren’t sticking to the pattern, he’s a red head. Still counting it. Also, still no rockets. I guess it really was just the first story’s character name. Instead, a man falsely sent to the electric chair ends up with electric powers so he can clear his name and avenge himself on the crooked mayor who framed him. Sounds good, right? Then you read the story and the execution is just plain silly. Red can travel through power lines and phone lines, we see him shoot electricity from his hands once or twice, and that’s it. The pacing is way too fast, the police suddenly round up all gangsters because their mayor boss, that they shouldn’t know is crooked, runs off. It’s like they just went for the first draft and called it good. Turns out, it wasn’t so good.
The Phantom Ranger
I don’t expect to see rockets in a “Lone Ranger” hero style story. Except he doesn’t wear mask but he does wear a green outfit. Coming upon a dying man who has enough time to tell his story before dying (people died slower in the Old West, you know), The Phantom Ranger, not to be confused with the guy from Power Rangers Turbo) and his white horse Demon (???) try to save a girl from mine claim jumpers. It means cutting off part of his arm because it has half of the map on it while she has the other half on her arm. He doesn’t mention that when he rescues here. This doesn’t even feel like a first draft. It feels like the comics I was making in middle school, and having just gone over my stuff recently I should know. They were not getting the good writers for this comic.
The Steel Shark: “Deep Sea Raider”
We have a villain-titled story next, in the far off year of 1960. The Steel Shark is attacking ships using some kind of device that puts people to sleep and disables communications from a distance. When he kidnaps an island base’s governor’s daughter and leaves an impression of a submarine in the head of her boyfriend, Lieutenant Dick Jones, Jones is given command of a sub to go after the villains. They even get a boy mascot, an orphan hiding in the torpedo rack…of a US Navy submarine going after a very ugly master criminal. (He has green yellow skin but doesn’t appear to be “oriental”. Actually he kind of looks like one of the octopus men Rocket Riley fought.) Between a spy on the ship and the Shark’s devices, the story ends on a cliffhanger as he demonstrates his power to force Jones into retreat. Will he? Do torpedos count as a rocket? I don’t care because I didn’t care about this story.
Buzzard Barnes And His Sky Devils: “Hell In The Heavens”
I see we’re back to the odd yet fitting names. Not back to the rockets. Instead we have a World War I era story about Buzzard, or possibly Boilmaker, Barnes getting in trouble with the brass but suggesting forming a “black sheep squadron” (long before the TV show in both story time period and date of publication), and has to win over four of his men to fight the pre-Nazi Germans. It’s the closest thing to a decent story and that’s only because I can forgive the usual packing to fit short tales of Barnes winning over each of the real troublemakers in his unit.
Lefty Larson: Legionnaire: “All Traitors Must Die”
I don’t even have to tell you about rockets in this one. Lefty is framed as a the traitor he’s been sneaking around to find, and then must save his unit from the bad guys preparing to slaughter them all. All the same issues show up in this story, though the pacing tries a bit better here.
overall
I think I’m out on this one. Rocket Comics has very few rockets, pacing issues, logic issues even by Golden Age standards, and the art is mediocre at best. I really have no urge to go further.
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