Look, I get it. I like Spock. Spock is great and is, realistically, a big reason why Star Trek was ever a success to begin with. But Star Trek doesn’t have to revolve around Spock.

When Star Trek: The Next Generation happened, they made a wise choice. The sequel show was going to feature an all new cast unrelated to that of the first show. In spite of being called “the Next Generation” it isn’t about the original cast’s children even. It’s about the same universe, but different characters, later. It gave permission for us to think of Star Trek as not being about seven or so chumps, but to be a vast sci-fi universe bristling with interesting characters with lives to get invested in.

A couple shows later, Voyager brought in Tuvok, another Vulcan, and there were Spocklike elements, but he was a different character in a different role. It wasn’t too bad. Then came Enterprise, which sought more directly to parallel the original setup with its Vulcan, T’Pol, being in the second-in-command role, but she was again a bit different, so it wasn’t the same thing. But after that, Star Trek decided it just can’t not have Spock. The reboot movies took the exact setup from the original series and did that again, and even occasionally doubled-up on Spock thanks to time travel. Discovery allowed itself to get near Spock by giving him a sister and making her the main character, which allowed Spock to show up as a guest star and also allowed the Discovery spin-off Strange New Worlds to just put Spock back on the original Enterprise in almost the exact role he had in the beginning (and on a canonical track to become exactly what he was in that original role).

Here’s the thing about a sci-fi franchise set in a supposedly vast galaxy full of adventure: if one guy is always there, and all the important events revolve around him or his family, the galaxy feels a lot less vast.

And it isn’t just Spock. The franchise seemingly just won’t do a show ever again that did what TNG did and create a fresh new cast for us. That’s not what popular culture is anymore. We don’t let characters rest anymore. We apparently just want everything back forever and for things to never end. I don’t like it, but I’m not the one making money off these big successful franchises.

So I don’t know, as with everything I post on this site, I’m just rambling my opinion as if it is correct in a space where nobody cares about arguing with me. Personally, I’d be thrilled to see a new Star Trek featuring a cast utterly unrelated to those that came before and maybe, just maybe, we can see the old cast now and then just for fun. I’m just saying that the Star Trek universe is a fertile one with plenty of room for ideas to grow, and if we stagnate, that’s, I dunno, illogical I guess.

I don’t have a lot of information about this beyond than what I’ve gleaned through Google searches over the years, but I’m still gonna be able to wring a post from it. It seems that around 2005, writer Rick Remender and artist Tony Moore sold Marvel on a pitch for a Rocket Racer series. This is, as far as I am aware, the closest that Bob has ever come to having his own book. As someone who wants so badly to someday write a Rocket Racer book someday, I am required to learn more and to opine, even if that series never actually came to be.

The most informative things I’ve found so far are the image to the right (the original source of which can be reached by clicking it) and the following paragraph of Remender’s thoughts (which comes from this interview.

“Because for me, at the time when I was reading comics in the mid-80s, the only skateboarding character was Rocket Racer and he was still on a banana board and he was like a Fat Albert caricature with a big ol’ headset. I remember thinking that he was created by a bunch of old men that don’t understand anything. Rocket Racer should be cool and speak to the scene. In fact, Khary Randolph and Tony Moore and I, that was the first thing we tried to get through at Marvel in like 2005. To redo Rocket Racer and make him a legitimate skate punk.”

Clearly Remender saw Bob as a representative of “skate punk” culture and was sad that he was such a loser. He wanted Rocket Racer to be “cool”. I can understand wanting that (although realistically I see Bob as a representative of “losers” everywhere and value that), though I think it depends on what counts as “cool”. I’ve said before that I think Bob got into his Rocket Racer career as a form of lashing out against the rich, and I also think that the reason he’s had trouble staying on the so-called “hero” side of things is because he craves something more groundbreaking than the standard superhero protection of the status quo. Bob is, I agree with this pitch, quite punk. But you can be punk without being cool.

But then there’s the image, which shows the kind of “cool” they’re going for. Completely black and white? What is that? Is this like when video games have to be grey and brown because any colour is “childish” kids stuff? I’ve found that attitude to be most common in people who seem to me desperate to be seen as “grown ups” and I find that the most childish of attitudes. In some other interview I found, Remender likened his take on Bob to the lead singer of the Bad Brains and, I’ve gotta say, the Bad Brains album cover with which I was most familiar was their 1996 one shown on this page and that thing is exactly the kind of bright yellow and red I expect in a Rocket Racer design. I simply can not get behind the kind of thinking that says bright colours are bad. The helmet and protective gear looking more “realistic” or grounded I could probably accept, although personally I prefer my Rocket Racer to be nearing cyberpunk in his style. But a lack of colour is unacceptable. Also, the image suggests that Bob would be working with Tony Stark and that’s not punk. That guy is The Man and if anything Bob should be railing against him (though admittedly I’m not sure Bob realizes that yet).

So, what if this series had actually been made? Would I have read it? Hell yes. This would’ve been right after the Zeb Wells stories where Bob got out of jail and was flirting with villainy but still wanted to be good. T’was an ideal time for him to go fully punk. 2005 was also well before I realized that I think Bob should be Asexual, so even though the series probably wouldn’t have done that, I wouldn’t have cared yet. And maybe if it had happened we’d have a Rocket Racer who appeared more than one panel at a time these days. Or, equally possible, maybe we’d have had a Rocket Racer who got killed in Civil War instead of Bill Foster. We’ll never know.

It’s that rare time once again when I get to announce that Rocket Racer has appeared in a real Marvel Product again. This time it is even MORE minor than most of these appearances, if you can believe it. This time, Rocket Racer appeared in the video game Marvel’s Spider-Man 2:

Of course, that game isn’t set in the main Marvel Universe, so this would be more of an Alternate Universe Rocket Racer. And also, it isn’t even the Rocket Racer as a person, it is just an amusement park ride you can see at Coney Island that is named “Rocket Racer” as an allusion to the character. But hey, at least that’s more than nothing. That is technically more than nothing.

I suppose I actually do have other news: I’ve been writing for the Marvel Appendix again, with a specific focus on Rocket Racer-related characters. I had already done the actual profile on Bob for that site, which I recently brought up to date, but I’ve also started doing characters like the Questionable Canonicity Bunch of The Vile Tapeworm, The Pink Sphinx, and She-Man-Thing, and a robot that Bob fought one time called C.I.T.Y. Over the next year or so, I intend to just exhaustively cover all the characters that are in Bob’s sphere and prove,even though nobody has ever challenged me, that I think about Rocket Racer more than anybody else.