The Voyage of Rocketo: Two-Fisted Explorer
by Chris Arrant, PW Comics Week -- Publishers Weekly, 4/18/2006
In today's world it seems as though the era of exploration has come to an end. But if we were to look 2,000 years into the future, we would likely see a world reshaped, unknown and perhaps uncharted. In Rocketo Vol. 1: The Journey to the Hidden Sea, a 256-page graphic novel recently released by Image Comics, a new kind of explorer goes out to investigate this uncharted world, perhaps to find treasure, and gets his hands dirty in the process.
Created by animation veteran Frank Espinosa, this science fiction series chronicles the life and adventures of explorer Rocketo Garrison in this brave new future. Nominated recently for three Eisner awards, critical acclaim for the series has been at a fever pitch since its introduction at last year's San Diego Comic-con. Collecting the first six issues of the series, the first volume of Rocketo recounts the origin of the state of Earth in Rocketo's time, detailing frequent wars and the rise of genetic mutations that have given the humans known as Mappers the ability to navigate this strange new world. Returning home from the wars, Rocketo is drawn to search for a fabled treasure in the dangerous and watery expanse of Earth known as the Hidden Sea.
"Rocketo has an amazing sense of curiosity," Espinosa explains. "He needs to know what is beyond that far valley, over that mountain range, under the sea." A Mapper himself, Rocketo is also described as an "immgrant" by Espinosa. "Wherever he goes, basically he is the stranger; he must learn a new language, eat new food. Explorers have to have a very open mind," says Espinosa.
The world Rocketo explores is Earth, but one far different from our own. Two thousand years in the future, the continents of our time have been shattered into individual islands, leaving no recognizable land masses. What was once our moon now orbits Earth as debris in a ring similar to Saturn's. Not only has the terrain changed, but also the people. "The great disaster that caused all this almost wiped out mankind," Espinosa says. "In order to repopulate this new world, mankind has taken some very interesting shapes. Birdmen fly over what was once a South African landscape raiding ships, and tigermen roam the new deserts."
Rocketo has been in the works for a long time. First glimpsed by the public in 1990 in the small press release Rescue Comics under the moniker Major Rocket, it wasn't until 2005 that Rocketo was featured in stories chronicling his own adventures. During this time, Espinosa's animation career flourished, as he worked with Warner Brothers to design the baby Looney Tunes characters in 1992 and illustrated the popular Looney Tunes U.S. postal stamps.
But the lure of comics tugged at Espinosa until he finally relented. "Comics were always my first love," he says. "I think as a young man it is more natural to draw comics than to start making animated cartoons. So I fell in love with the form of telling a story in pictures and communicating ideas and themes on the comic page."
"Later, when I was in the animation field, it was the understanding of comics, pacing and storytelling that help me understand the storyboard, which is one of the backbones of animation," Espinosa explained. "I love animation, and seeing something move is always a big thrill for me, but after a while I wanted to do something a bit more personal—to tell a story that happens as much in the [reader's] head as it does in mine. Comics have a wonderful way of getting inside you."
