I still remember finding the first Rocketeer comic book abandoned on the shelves of the Comunardi bookstore in Turin.
I was in my last year of high school or first year of university – it is a known fact that I spent most of those years lurking in bookstores.

With Dave Stevens’ Rocketeer it was love at first sight – the comic featured everything I loved about pulps and period adventure.
And Betty!

Admittedly, the film was somewhat a let-down – I blame the Disney production, that blunted some of the more mature and exciting elements of the original.

Now, I’m having a roll down nostalgia way with IDW’s Rocketeer – Jet-pack Adventures a collection of ten pulp stories by a group of excellent authors – including Nancy A. Collins, Cory Goodfellow, Nancy Holder and Lisa Morton.
And it’s quite fun seeing the Rocketeer themes and concepts work nicely in prose.
Granted, as with all collections of stories there are some that I like better than other, but the general quality level is very high, and the book is lots of fun.
We get an assortment of bad guys for Cliff to handle – Nazis, of course, mad scientists, ancient Egyptian curses…

And, considering Hollywood’s recent passion for properties and super heroes and comic-book characters, it would be a nice time for a movie reboot – making it closer to the original, ignoring the children-friendly rating thing and going for full pulp adventure mode.
After all, if we can have Alexander Skarsgard playing Tarzan and Dwayne Johnson playing Doc Savage, why not Ryan Reynolds playing Cliff Secord?