IDW Announces New ‘Rocketeer’ Series by Mark Waid and Chris Samnee

Following the character's return to comics last year in the anthology miniseries The Rocketeer Adventures, Cliff Secord will be flying into his first full-length adventure in almost two decades by Mark Waid and Chris Samnee announced by IDW Publishing today at Wondercon.The new four-issue series will be the first big adventure for the Rocketeer since the final issue of Dave Stevens' Rocketeer Adventure Magazine back in 1995, and sees Waid and Samnee pitting the fin-helmeted aviator against all manner of trouble, including a large creature shipped to 1930s Los Angeles from a mysterious but familiar island, government bureaucracy that threatens to keep our hero grounded for good, and the debut of a new character who might be out to steal Cliff from the arms of his girl, Betty.

Waid, who was a fan of the original appearances of the character, told Newsarama.com that creating the story is "a big responsibility and I don't take it lightly at all," adding that he and Samnee "intend to come at Rocketeer with the same sense of respect and honor that Dave himself showed to his forebears." Samnee added that, for him, Stevens' original series "created such a wonderful world for these character to live in and some of the most beautiful work ever seen in comics, so it goes without saying that he left some pretty huge shoes to fill. That said though, I'm giving this book everything I have and trying my hardest to live up to what Dave created."

Stevens created the character, perhaps best known from the 1991 Disney movie adaptation starring Billy Campbell and Jennifer Connelly, for a back-up story in the 1982 comic Starslayer, before spinning him out into his own series in 1988. IDW published the first complete collection of Stevens' Rocketeer work in 2009, a year after the artist's death from Hairy Cell Leukemia, following it up with two anthology series, in 2011 and 2012.

Images from Chris Samnee's blog and Comic Twart.