In Review: The Rocketeer: In the Den of Thieves #2

Synopsis: In issue 2 of Den of Thieves, Cliff is frantic when he discovers that his mentor and close friend, Peevy, has been snatched by Nazis. The goose-steppers are hell-bent on creating an army of Rocketeers! But with his jet pack out of commission, there is no hope for him to rescue his friend…until the mysterious inventor of the pack steps in to help!

The Story

Picking up from the last issue. Cliff’s best mate Peevy has been nabbed by the Nazis who want him to work on their rocket packs at a secret location in Berlin. Meanwhile, Cliff heads to the hangar where his plane is kept, and when he finds that Peevy is not there. He begins to frantically search for his friend because he is due to fly in the next air show. When he recognizes that Peevy has been taken by the Nazis. Cliff makes a few calls and gets stonewalled by the US Government contact that he made during the events of The Great Race. That is until the mysterious inventor of Cliffs rocket pack shows up and lends a hand.

Artwork

As said in my review of the last issue. David Messina has done a fabulous job of capturing the visual style of the original Rocketeer comic books from the late Dave Stevens and nothing has changed here. I loved seeing Cliff get gradually more and more rough-looking as he searched for his friend. I also loved the sequence of panels where we see Cliff just able to avoid crashing his plane during an air show.

Overall

Den of Thieves continues from where it left off picks up the story and runs with it. Seeing Cliff frantically search for his friend added a certain amount of vulnerability to the character that we hadn’t seen that much of before. This is great character development as well as a really good way to allow for a somewhat deeper exploration of Cliff Seacord’s friendship with Peevy.

The final couple of pages picks back up with Peevy as we see him put to work by the Nazis. I really look forward to seeing where this plot thread goes in the next few issues because we all know how clever and out-of-the-box Peevy can be.