JaMiE BaKeR: fallout

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.

Here is an excerpt from a recent review of Rocket Rabbit #1, written by Steve Saville of Silver Bullet comics:

James Baker [comic creator guy] has very kindly included the following comment with the edition of Rocket Rabbit he submitted for review:

“it’s not deep, it’s firmly in silly territory.”

If there is anything “silly” about Rocket Rabbit it is the somewhat unimaginative title, I mean it is hardly inspirational. Bit of a shame really because the contents are delightful. Thirty- nine very busy pages of delighfulness to be precise. Baker has created a very active and fast paced comic, full of movement. There is no wasted space here, each and every frame is a well constructed entity on its own and, at the same time, well integrated with those that surround it. What we have is two stand alone stories of a rabbit robot with twin outboard nukes for propulsion [in other words he uses rocket powered ears to fly] and his beautiful human ‘partner,’ the Professor doing battle with the villains laying siege to San Fiasco [yes the pun is in heavy use here].

The artistic style is reminiscent of the better animation that features in the Saturday morning cartoon slots on television with Baker showing a genuine ability in drawing the female form [the professor is really quite hot and as for newsreader Epiffany Binge…] Another strong artistic feature is Baker’s effective use of tone. As a result every page looks damn good and draws the reader in. This is a very accessible comic with very tight art.

If this comic looks good then it is matched by the large doses of witty dialogue and genuine humour present. Most of this is directed at the American fan culture. In the fair city of San Fiasco Rocket Rabbit is a big hero yet many of his fans would rather play video games featuring their hero than drag themselves over to the window to see him in real life, and when they do venture out their obsessive devotion borders on the disturbed. Unfortunately it is not too far from reality. Other aspects of American society are given a gentle working over as well. The mayor is a glove puppet, the grinning anchor man is the appropriately named Flip Remarque. The gender tension between the Professor and Rocket Rabbit is a wonderful sub plot. Never more so than when the Professor’s fascination with remodelling Rabbit comes out into the open. Rocket Rabbit feels used despite the Professor’s promise not to “touch his mind.” These witty conversations are a feature of this comic.

The other high point is the villains [and so often this proves to be the case]. A schizophrenic donkey features in the first tale and a bunch of geographically challenged apes maraud through the second tale, titled ‘Apes of Wrath’ [I warned you about the puns].

This is a nice package, funny yes, entertaining yes, well produced yes, silly no.
In a Word: Tight

Here is an excerpt from a new review of ROCKET RABBIT #1, from Comic Book Network (Issue #540 - 9/09/2005);

My View by David LeBlanc

ROCKET RABBIT #1
40 pages, black & white, Color Covers, 6.5″ X 8.5″, $6.00

created by James Baker

As a follow up to NERVE BOMB #0, this title takes up the continuing adventures of Rocket and the Professor. Rocket Rabbit is a robot with rabbit-like ears that are actually nuclear powered rocket thrusters enabling him to fly. He is the creation of the Professor, a rather sexy female agent of “The Company”. The book is a spoof of super hero and spy genres. Their leader is a a guy who rides around in a giant robot that looks like a man’s suit. Picture a walking suit thirty feet high with a normal size guy in the collar of the shirt. He goes by the name of Big Suit or B.S. for short. He hands out the assignments and the Professor plans the action with her partner Rocket, using a variety of gadgets and vehicles. (shades of Get Smart!)

Like its predecessor comic, ROCKET RABBIT is plain fun. The art is the cartoonish style of the gag magazines like MAD and CRACKED. The dialogue is smooth and the variety of characters would make you think that only a few are the focus. Not so. The two newscasters are given lots of panels to develop and have their share of gags. Likewise the villains are given some depth along the way. The relationship between Rocket and The Professor is clearly more like friends as Rocket acts like a person, to the point of annoying The Professor at times. By the end we know the players well and wonder where the story will go next. It is a fun comic and packed with laughs for 40 pages. There is not much like it on the market but there should be.

Michael May, a kindly reviewer from Comic World News had this to say about the latest Rocket Rabbit comic:

Rocket Rabbit #1
Written and Illustrated by James Baker
I’ve been waiting for more Rocket Rabbit since I reviewed Nerve Bomb Comix #0. It was such a fun, fresh take on superheroes. Baker has finally continued what he started and has lost none of what made Nerve Bomb such a joy to read. The banter between Rocket Rabbit and his hot creator The Professor is still playful and Baker still has a knack for creating genuinely funny super-heroes and villains. Even the one-panel throwaway characters are clever and silly; whether because of their names (Escape Goat) or their costumes (Hog Wild has a hog-head shaped mask with eyeholes in the pig’s nostrils). And the great thing is that this issue’s throwaways may be next issue’s focus. A small character in Nerve Bomb called Jack Ass (a donkey who switches personalities whenever anyone invokes one of his other names – Smart Ass, Dumb Ass, Lame Ass, etc.) coordinates all the evil-doing in this issue. Super-hero parody is always a tricky business, but Rocket Rabbit isn’t so much parody as just really enjoyable, really funny, light-hearted, sci-fi super-heroics.

It’s gratifying when at least the first review is a postive one, because it makes it easier to take the ensuing bad ones. After all, goofball silliness isn’t everybody’s cup of tea.

Luckily for me Michael May has a sense of humour every bit as silly as my own. He also gave me a thumbs up for my first comic which made my day at the time.

Here at Nerve Bomb comics we have only one guiding philosphy, one MANIFESTO from which all springs forth and, such as it is, it is this:

“Sometimes the silly thing is the right thing to do.”

Benton Jew just turned me onto the fact that on Dave Johnson’s NEWS page there is a nice review of Babes in Space:

Sunday, November 21, 2004
You must buy this!!!

This is one of those books that really blew me away. It’s a collection of Space Girl stories by the likes of: Benton Jew, Anson Jew, Les Toil, Ed Reynolds, Bosco Ng, Brian O’Connell and James Baker. What was that? Never heard of them? Well, put down your Jim Lee comic and try something else. These guy’s rocked my socks with their talent. So give them so of the moola you were going to spend on that Wizard retrospective on foil stamp covers from the late 90’s. For more info go to: www.babesinspace.com

If, as a result of that fine endorsement by one of the best in the biz, you now feel inspired to purchase BABES IN SPACE, then visit my ONLINE STORE, or BUD PLANT where arrangements can be made for a copy to find it’s way into your grubby little hands.


Click on the image for a preview of the SEPHILINA story.

Posted: Tuesday, January 13
By: Darren Schroeder
Print This Item

Creator: James S. Baker
Publisher: (Self Published)
Price: $3.50(US)

Our two heroes Rocket Rabbit and the Professor are a formidable crime fighting team, so the evil villains in the collective of Insanity are planning a few schemes to away with them.

Every page of this book is jammed packed with superhero silliness, from hilariously named villains and heroes to a gigantic robot granny decimating San Francisco. James has let his imagination go into hyper drive or drunk to much cough syrup, and even the most humourless reader is going to laugh while reading this book.

Plot wise things are fairly simple: villains talk, heroes see their boss and get assigned to fight the baddies. The action is meticulous and destructive but don’t worry, no blood is spilt. James illustrates it in a style that reminds me of early Mad magazine.

For anarchic wise cracking action heroes this is just what the world needs, and it’s pretty to boot.

In a Word: Tinkle!

Interview BY JENNIFER M. CONTINO

The Avengers, they ain’t! But Rocket Rabbit and the Professor are just as cool as Emma Peel and John Steed! The cartoony dynamic duo go on secret missions in James S. Baker’s eclectic new comic series, Nerve Bomb.

THE PULSE: The first thing I notice about your work is the eclectic mix of art styles throughout the issue - from Mad Magazine to Mike Mignola to, perhaps, a little Masamune Shirow - why did you want to have a mix of art styles instead of just drawing in one way throughout the book? What does the variety offer you as creator that the “same” wouldn’t have?

JAMES BAKER: Well, the variety of styles from story to story is just because I have
a bunch of different things I want to try out. Within each story I try to keep the art consistent but sometimes I don’t pull that off… especially if the pages were done over a long period of time. On the other hand I’ve always been impressed with the fact that in comics a character can be drawn
differently and still be accepted as the same character, which allows the drawing style itself to shift to accent action or emotion. I think that is fantastic. So I don’t want to give that up entirely. I have a background in animation where drawing the character the same day in day out is a given.

THE PULSE: Who were some of your creative influences on this comic?

I have a big list on the last page of folks who have inspired me, the list includes DENIS BODART, HARVEY KURTZMAN, MIKE MIGNOLA, OSAMU TEZUKA and a whole bunch of others. I wasn’t consciously aping any of them but they are bound to have influenced me anyhow.

THE PULSE: Why call the work Nerve Bomb? What inspired the name?

Yes it is a pretty stupid name isn’t it? I get quite a few people asking me what it is supposed to mean… The original point was that it wasn’t supposed to mean anything at all. I don’t remember where I got it from. The other possible title was “Gourmet Gruel” but I used that someplace else.

THE PULSE: How does the name of the comic reflect your goals for the series?

Most people suggested that I call it “Rocket Rabbit comics” but I wanted to be free to do other things down the line so I wanted a non-specific non-sequitur name. That will hopefully leave me free to try different stuff…

THE PULSE: What inspired the creation of Rocket Rabbit?

I had a job once where I had to design a bunch of cartoony robots and one of the designs that didn’t get submitted appealed to me so I kept it and later refined it until he became the current design. Then I started to wonder who he was, and what other characters he might work with and so on. So Rocket just grew over time. In hindsight looking at Rocket Rabbit and the Professor,
it looks like some combination of Emma Peel and Astroboy was cooking away in my brain at some point.

THE PULSE: What made you want to lead off the series with his adventures?

I have a backlog of stories and I am putting them out in the order of oldest first. Plus I wanted to start with something light and goofy as I felt those kind of stories would be more forgiving as I grope my way around the comics medium. Later on I want to try more sophisticated stuff, but I gotta get my story telling chops up first.

THE PULSE: Who is The Professor? How did she come to work with Rocket Rabbit?

The Professor is Rocket Rabbit’s inventor and she teams up with him on his missions as he isn’t bright enough to run a mission by himself. Apart from that she is a mysterious figure, but it is rumored that she was raised by circus bears.

THE PULSE: If you had to compare issue zero with some instantly recognizable TV or cartoons, what would you compare the story to?

Those kind of comparisons are difficult for me to make, but others have mentioned Powerpuff Girls and stuff like that, you know; cartoon-action or cartoon sci-fi stuff. There’s probably elements of the Get Smart, Austin Powers and any other goofy hero stuff that you’ve ever seen. The back-up story is totally different though… that’s more like…. “Arzarch” for kids.

THE PULSE: How long did it take you to create the first issue?

I did everything myself, and consequentially it took a while… maybe 10 to 12 weeks stretched out over a period of a year or two. At first I wasn’t thinking of making a book, I was just playing around, and ended up with about 4-6 pages of action. Once I decided to follow through and actually print a book it was about two months.

THE PULSE: What were some of the biggest challenges to working on this?

Just staying focused, not getting distracted. The toughest thing so far has just been maintaining momentum. I had only paced myself to get the stuff printed first. So then that felt great, but there was a big let down when the stuff doesn’t IMMEDIATELY go anyplace.

THE PULSE: How tough was this business wise to get off the ground? What are some of the perils of self publishing?

BAKER: The big obvious peril is hosing money away while you are paying to print the stuff, paying for ads etc, and yet nobody is interested in the thing yet, and there is no way of covering costs. So managing the time and money it takes to produce this stuff consistently while working other jobs that pay the rent is the difficult thing.

THE PULSE: Who helped you learn some of the ins and outs of the business to get things going?

Well without a doubt Rhode Montijo (Pablo’s Inferno) was the guy who pointed me in the right direction. He was the ONLY guy I had ever met who had actually published a comic, and he had been through all of it. So he pointed me showed me how to prep a book and hooked me up with the printers that he used. Once the book was in print and I sold some at cons I started getting feedback from other artists and self-publishers who had picked it up such as John Heebink and E.T. Bryan. They gave me more advice. Lately I have been getting advice on how to market the book from James Sime at the Isotope in San Francisco.

THE PULSE: After having an issue in print, what have you learned now that will help you with all your future projects?

BAKER: I will spend a bit more time thumb nailing an issue at a smaller size from now on. Logistically I am going to try to wait for orders before I go to print and I am going to spend more time promoting the title with retailers.

THE PULSE: What are future issues going to focus on?

I want to put out enough Rocket Rabbit stories to collect into a paperback. There is a multi-issue “story-arc” figured out. Nothing profound, just goofball stuff. Then I have a big sci-fi epic I want to tackle, but I will start off with some short stories set in that world. There is also another goofy story about a battle-hardened warrior dog from outer space that crashes and gets stranded on earth where he suffers the daily indignities of a house-pet dog’s life. There is also a series of stories about an obnoxious little character called HellKat who is actually a cat from Hell that comes to earth via a cat-flap in the gates of Hades.

THE PULSE: What other projects are you working on?

BAKER: Well the comic is the main thing apart from the work I do to make a living which is in animation mostly.

You can read reviews of Nerve Bomb comics here.

Nerve Bomb Comix #0
Review by Michael May

Written and drawn by James Baker

Nerve Bomb Comics

Comics can do and be a lot of things. One of the wonderful things about the medium is its diversity and its ability to tell stories in unique ways. Comics is an art form and deserve to be treated and studied as such. But sometimes comics are just meant to be fun. James Baker realizes this and has created appropriately. His comic is called Nerve Bomb Comix, but that doesn’t tell you anything about the contents. It’s not so much a spoof of superhero comics as a simple, light-hearted approach to the genre.

Rocket Rabbit is the star of the show. He’s a little robot shaped sorta like a rabbit, but with rocket thrusters for ears. He’s not too bright. His partner is the much smarter and much prettier Professor. I could go into detail about who these two are and what they do and what they fight, but that would be missing the point of this little comic. The point is to have fun reading it.

And it is fun. After turning down assignments to battle such oddball villains as Thundernerd and The Bludgeonator, Rocket Rabbit and the Professor decide to save the city of San Fiasco from aliens who are using a giant robot in the shape of an old granny to terrorize the citizenry. Along the way, we’re introduced to a plethora of humorous good guys and bad guys with names like Beef Jerky (a former pro wrestler), Dick Pump (this isn’t exactly an all-ages title, by the way), Smart Ass (a donkey who shares a body with his other personalities Wise Ass, Dumb Ass, Bad Ass and Kick Ass) and Omar Sheriff (a gun-slinging Arab).

Baker has a lot of imagination and a wonderful, cartoony art style that emphasizes the frantic fun of the script. The comic’s only flaw is that most of the hilarious characters it introduces are simply throwaway gags that are introduced in one panel and not seen again. It’s worth keeping in mind however that this is a zero-issue - an introduction. Hopefully some of these characters will reappear in future issues. And this issue is certainly funny enough to warrant buying future issues. It’s not knee-slapping, roll-around-on-the-floor funny, but it’s got a great sense of humor and is a refreshing alternative to the “please-take-us-seriously” comics that are out there.

There’s an odd back-up feature called “Los Troppo Drongos” about a midget who rides around on a dog and the cat that lives in the midget’s hat. It’s as weird as it sounds, but it’s not just weird for the sake of being weird. It’s weird for the sake of making you smile or laugh. And that makes it a perfect fit with the rest of Nerve Bomb Comix.

32 pages, standard size, professional. The streets of San Fiasco are being ravaged by a colossal robotic granny! Who can stop the geriatric giant? Enter San Fiasco’s own Professor and Rocket Rabbit! The Professor, a young woman of extreme intelligence and beauty. Rocket Rabbit, umm…a robotic rabbit with big rocket bunny ears. This unlikely duo take their directions from the “Big Suit.” No, really it’s a big suit. A really, really big suit with a little fat guy sitting at the controls inside the collar. Can our heroes save San Fiasco? And what of the evil Dick Pump and his girl Silicon Valerie? Or the schizophrenic Smart Ass (also answering to Wise Ass, Dumb Ass, Bad Ass, and Kick Ass)? And just who or what are the Deeks? And, what should we make of The Apes of Wrath?! You can find the answers to these questions and get a glimpse at the bizarre Los Troppo Drongos in the magnificently drawn pages of Nerve Bomb Comix!

THE COMIC BOOK NETWORK ELECTRONIC MAGAZINE #424 - 06/13/2003

“My View” by David LeBlanc
Looking for another “funny book” that isn’t the same old stuff. This one should give you some chuckles. These are the adventures of Rocket Rabbit, a small robot with rocket thrusters out the top of his head that look like a bunny’s ears, hence the name. His inventor and sexy side kick, the Professor, has to watch over him/it closely because although he is fully armed for crime fighting he is not a rocket scientist by any means when it comes to intelligence. They are often called to handle major problems in the city of San Fiasco by Big Suit, a man in a very large robot shell – like you would see The Brain use in Pinky and the Brain. He heads up The Company and they are agents among such comrades as Seamus Opossum, Cliff Hanger, and Squid Girl.

A lot of the humor in this book has to do with the plethora of characters and their strange appearance and/or abilities. The bad guys in “The Collective”, formerly Doom.com and The Co-Op of Evil have their share. Some are not even people like the mesmerist Doctopus and the schizophrenic super genius Smart Ass and his villainous personalities Wise Ass, Dumb Ass and Kick Ass. My favorite is the mistakenly augmented with silicon instead of silicone porn stars Dick Pump and Silicon Valerie who can communicate directly with machines. Their plot is to wipe out Rocket Rabbit and the Professor with the devious Pasta Antipasta Bomb.

This is a rollicking spoof of super hero comics complete with mad villains, doomsday giant robots, witty heroic banter and surprise alien invaders. They even promise talking apes next time, always a fan favorite. The humor is light and clever. The art is accomplished and detailed. On a quarterly schedule it should maintain the quality evident in the first issue. But there is more! There is a six-page back up feature called LOS TROPPO DRONGOS. This is a surrealistic adventure of a midget, a cat and a dog. It is hard to explain there is no dialogue. The ever-shifting terrain and shapes they encounter remind me of the sixties underground comix either drawn by or meant for people on LSD or other mind altering substances. This is not a bad thing as it causes you to scan every inch to catch every detail and try to figure out just what the heck is going on. An interesting style you don’t see that often. The book as a whole is very entertaining. I think it is worth looking at to see if it appeals to your tastes.