While far too many really good comics drop out of print for good, with the growing trade paperback market, we're starting to see more and more projects that disappeared the first time out resurface as collected editions. Shockrockets: We Have Ignition is one of those projects, a really entertaining miniseries that never took off more due to business reasons than any failure creatively or even failure to connect with an audience. Busiek, Immonen and Von Grawbadger craft a tale of an Earth trying to recover from an alien war while dealing with an insurrectionist named General Korda, and of the elite fighter pilot squadron that is doing their best to keep Korda at bay. It's the kind of thing that would have made a really cool cartoon, reminiscent in ways of "cool gadget" shows like G.I. Joe, M.A.S.K. or Battle of the Planets, and it also makes a really cool comic book, one that I'm glad to see back in print.
The story of Shockrockets adheres very closely to the now familiar formula of an everyman hero finding his way into circumstances larger than himself. Alejandro Cruz lives with his poor working-class family, hoping to escape what looks like a destiny of working a factory job. You don't have to look real hard to see echoes of Luke Skywalker or other Power of Myth archetypes in Alejandro, but Busiek doesn't leave it at that. Like most good everyman heroes, Cruz does have something that makes him special, in this case a gift for kit-bashing technology and a perspective that is different than that of the other Shockrocket pilots, who have been trained from a young age to fly their machines and accept what they know about them.
While this is Cruz's story, however, it's not just Cruz's story. The structure follows Cruz in each issue to some extent, but Busiek skips point-of-view and even lead character positions in most of the issues, using Cruz's point-of-view as the bookends of the story. In this way, we get to see how the Shockrockets and their world are viewed from the point-of-view of the new pilot, the commander of the unit, their chief mechanic and a couple of experienced mechanics. And in the course of this tale, Busiek explores the black market technology and the military and financial infrastructure of the Shockrockets, as well as the inner thoughts and feelings of a few of the characters. The character arcs aren't as nuanced as the ones that Busiek does in his ongoing work, but they're solid and well-thought-out, even if they are a touch predictable at times.
Stuart Immonen recently blew me away with another collaboration with Busiek, Superman: Secret Identity, but their work together here was pretty strong as well. Immonen's work got the perfect soft-focus from Grawbadger when it came to the character stuff, but they also gave the technology the hard edge it needed. The Shockrocket ships themselves aren't as sleek as most fighters in fiction, instead looking more industrial and jammed together, which makes perfect sense given the way they were built and the world they were built in. In addition, Immonen's aerial dogfight sequences are plenty pretty, especially when he's matching the ships against foes like giant monsters or the sleek black ships of Korda's forces. The creators had to create a world in only six issues, and Immonen, Von Grawbadger and Cox did an excellent job.
However, it is clear in reading this graphic novel that it didn't begin life as a graphic novel. Oh, it's a satisfying enough read on its own, but as you read on, it becomes clear that this was originally intended as an ongoing series, and that Busiek tightened up the story to provide some closure in the face of changing business realities. There are a lot of really neat ideas introduced that we never really see explored, like the notion of mutated giant monsters, and there are several character arcs, such as the story of agent Sable, that either wrap up a little abruptly or seem like they could have used more development time to really have impact. Certainly the ending, a big cliffhanger, left room for future tales, although at this point its anything but certain that these busy creators will return to tell those stories. 8/10
