Dave Stevens will be best remembered for his wonderful Rocketeer stories, which first appeared in the pages of various Pacific Comics, and will remain one of the greatest comics artists ever to grace a page with his art, despite an extremely limited output. Stevens’ emergence came as part of the first shoots of the new Independent comics movement started by Pacific and Eclipse and he had an immediate impact with comics fans the world over. Here was someone dedicated to the craft of telling comics stories with beautiful art.
(Comico’s gloriously 30s Rocketeer Adventure Magazine #1, art by Dave Stevens)
The Rocketeer was published fitfully and slowly before being collected as one of the best selling ‘Graphic Novels’ of the early days of comics retailing (in fact one of the very few published). The comic looked back nostalgically to the 1930s and the adventure of aviation – and in many ways Stevens’ art looked back through a lineage including Mac Raboy and Frank Frazetta; his own influence can be seen today in artists such as Frank Cho and Kevin Nowlan. The art has a fluid line and a sense of depth, brought out by Stevens’ meticulous inking, that always made it leap from the comics racks and he was heavily employed as a cover artist most notably perhaps on early Pacific titles such as Alien Worlds.
(cover to Vanguard Illustrated #2, art by Dave Stevens)
Disney picked up on the Rocketeer and turned it into a pretty faithful and charming film in 1991 making Stevens probably the first of the modern comics pro’s, who owned their rights, to follow a route much travelled since by the likes of Mike Mignola, Mike Richardson, Dan Clowes and others. The movie is well remembered now, but was not an outstanding success at time of release and by all accounts did not make Stevens rich. After that his comics work became almost non-existent as he busied himself with private commissions and the odd cover here and there. We could all have wished for more Dave Stevens but we will have to content ourselves with a glittering career which was always about quality, not quantity. Dave passed away far too young at the age of 52 on the 10th of March after a long fight against leukemia.
March 12th, 2008 at 11:50 am
What a shame. Dave Stevens was a fantastic talent. I thought his art evoked a wonderful sense of nostalgia, nicely augmented by the sophistication of modern techniques. There’s a really nice foreword by (from memory) Harlan Ellison, that shines a light on his influences in the ROCKETEER graphic novel. Sad news, indeed.