The illustrator and comic book artist Dave Stevens died earlier this week at the age of 52 after a long struggle with leukemia. Stevens was best known as the creator of the Rocketeer, an adventure character that first appeared in various titles published by Pacific, a short-lived independent comics company in the early 1980s. (After Pacific went out of business, he jumped to other now-defunct "independent" comics publishers--Eclipse, Comico--before winding up at Dark Horse.) Set in Los Angeles in the years leading up to World War II, the comics centered on Cliff Secord, a scrappy young stunt pilot who battles Nazis and performs other acts of derring-do after stumbling across a portable jet pack that turns him into a two-fisted flying fool. The comics inspired a 1991 movie, directed by Joe Johnston, that worked hard to capture the look of Stevens's comics, and with a cast that included Bill Campbell in the lead, Jennifer Connelly as his girl Betty, and Alan Arkin, Timothy Dalton (in a role modeled on Errol Flynn), and Terry O'Quinn, of Lost, as Howard Hughes.
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