Allout Media Assault

Thanks to a tip from Janine Dawson, I found out that Rocket Rabbit was featured in the RADAR TRAP puzzle page section of the Sydney Morning Herald a few weeks ago. My brother Dominic provided me with this scan. The topic for the puzzle was “Obscure Super heroes” and some of the other mighty characters featured in the actual puzzle part were BIONIC MINNOW, and the EMERALD MANTIS… but who better to actually illustrate the theme of super obscurity than everyone’s favourite nuclear powered robot rabbit?

Anyway, that was a pleasant surprise… I contacted the editor to ask how he found out about Rocket and it turns out that he did all his research at the INTERNATIONAL HERO website. Speaking of Rocket Rabbit and his appearances in the press, RR#1 was just reviewed By Randy Lander in his SNAP JUDGEMENTS column on The Fourth Rail:

ROCKET RABBIT #1
by James Baker (Nerve Bomb Comics)

Don and I first reviewed Rocket Rabbit and the Professor in Nerve Bomb about two years ago. At the time, we both found Baker’s work visually appealing but unfocused in terms of story. Rocket Rabbit #1 is a step in the right direction, retaining the impressive art and making much more of a stab at a coherent story, although Baker’s balls-to-the-wall comedy approach still retains a flavor of something overly familiar. However, it’s familiar in a good way, and I certainly found plenty to chuckle at in these pages, as well as enjoying the visual spectacle.

Rocket Rabbit and the Professor are do-gooder heroes with a bizarre mix of creator/creation and boyfriend/girlfriend tension, but they are essentially just engines of destruction and comedy. Whether or not they win is immaterial, and Rocket Rabbit is not a book to look for if you’re seeking answers to the questions of right and wrong or a story that poses any questions deeper than “Wouldn’t it be funny if…?” However, for those who enjoyed the manic humor of Sky Ape or Scurvy Dogs, or the goofy parody of The Tick, Rocket Rabbit might be worth a look.

Where Baker really excels is in his artwork and design sense. I saw the Rocket Rabbit booth at San Diego, and it caught my eye everytime I went by, since it’s such a striking visual, and the pure mayhem of the super brawl at Pow Palace is a visual delight as well. I also really got a kick out of Baker’s amusing villain “The Ass” whose powers and personality change depending on what type of ass he is (smart, dumb, lame, jack, etc.) as well as the Apes of Wrath and the notion of a superhero president who seems to have more than a little in common with flamboyant professional wrestlers. If cheesy puns and mayhem are your kind of humor, Rocket Rabbit is your kind of book.

This review is on the positive side of ambivalent (“GOOD”, with a few caveats) so I give it about a 7 out of 10 on my patented Ego Stroke Meter. This is certainly a marked improvement over the first review they gave me a few years ago, which was on the negative side of ambivalent (“BAD” with a few caveats). I’m sorry guys, but I could only give THAT review a measly 2 out of 10 on the E.S.M.

3 thoughts on “Allout Media Assault”

  1. Thanks for your feedback, guys. Yeah, the “reviews of reviews” is a feature I may expand on…

    So far I’ve only been posting the positive reviews but there have been some nasty ones. It might be fun to share those if I can annotate them a little…

    Reply

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