Mini Marvels was a line of comedic, family-friendly comics retelling Marvel stories in a parodic manner. At some point these stories were declared to take place on Earth-99062. Naturally, that version of Marvel Earth has a Rocket Racer and naturally he is practically a nonentity.

This Rocket Racer only gets one appearance, but he’s in more than one panel. He’s got lines and everything. That’s more than Rocket Ratser got! Hell, that’s more than regular Rocket Racer gets most years…

But anyway, his deal: In this story, a bunch of super-characters are paperboys for the Daily Bugle, and Rocket Racer is among them. When Spider-Man and Venom have some sort of obstacle course contest to prove who is the better paperboy, Bob is the one who provides the exposition to the others about why Spider-Man and Venom are enemies. And, well, that’s it. Look, I said he had multiple panels and lines, I never set he got to be important to the story.

I do think it’s neat that Bob is very excited to see Spider-Man and Venom run the obstacle course. He just likes races, everybody! In every universe.

(When I went back to look at Rocket Ratser, I realized one time I used the phrase Into The Rocketverse to talk about looking at alternate universe Rocket Racers and I definitely like it and will be going back to add it as a tag to the times I’ve done that.)

Of all the Rocket Racers in the Marvel Multiverse, this is one:

This is all that we get of this guy. In this story the main Marvel Universe Deadpool is speaking about what he might be like in other alternate timelines where he made different life choices. In this case he wonders what would have happened if he was not driven by money, but was instead a superhero idol. While to regular Deadpool this is a hypothetical, he doesn’t mention any of the details we’re seeing (Black Cat, the symbiote, Bob himself), so one has to assume this is a glimpse into a distant corner of the Multiverse we’re seeing because it matches Deadpool’s wonderings.

So we have a single-page glimpse of that universe and in that single page glimpse, Rocket Racer is hanging out in the background. It ain’t much to go on, is it? Well, allow me to go on about it a lot.

First of all, what is Bob doing here? The main action is Deadpool and Black Cat fighting Modok and his AIM henchmen while Spider-Man follows like a fanboy of Deadpool. Fair enough. But then there’s three people who are loser criminals in the Marvel Universe, Rocket Racer, the Big Wheel (mostly covered by word balloons), and the Clown. The Clown is visibly fighting AIM, so he’s on Deadpool’s side. The Big Wheel seems to be opposing AIM as well, in a way that could appear unintentional but I am taking as a sign that he is also alongside Deadpool. Bob is kind of just watching, but his angle suggests he is storming the AIM goons alongside the Big Wheel. Pretty clearly, Deadpool has led these guys to this fight. In this universe he is a hero and this is his team. These guys are crimefighters here.

It’s notable that Bob here seems to just be hanging from the wall like a weirdo, his feet on a strange piece of some-thing-or-other that happens to be affixed there. But that is obviously supposed to be some kind of rocket skateboard that has been miscoloured and now blends into the wall.

Our regular Bob in the Marvel Universe has a history with the Big Wheel, who only came into being because of Bob. I have apparently not done a post about him yet, but I will. Bob has also had minimal revealed connections with Deadpool, and even the one we do know of is of dubious canonicity. It’s kind of a surprise to me that Bob’s not known to have crossed paths with Deadpool. He’s the exact kind of character a Deadpool writer would misuse to take cheap shots at, and Deadpool had a team called the Mercs For Money on which Bob would have definitely fit in.

In fact, I’ll say right now: if Marvel wants a new Mercs For Money book, let me at it! It’s a more likely place for Rocket Racer to find an audience than most of my other ideas.

There’s not a whole lot to report about this particular alternate universe version of Bob. He gets maybe ten panels in an issue of Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane, but hey, that’s more than the main version of Bob gets in some years. I can work with it.

He’s got the basic outfit and board that makes a Rocket Racer (though it is noteworthy that it is a wheel-less model of the board) and uses it to rob folks until Spider-Man stops him. Not much else to say about the events we witness.

I’ll note this: He’s not picking out the rich or the corporate as targets in particular, he’s just robbing people on the street who happen to have a purse or something else that he can easily grab. He also isn’t seen shooting mini-rockets and he definitely doesn’t have the magnetic clams that connect his feet to his board, because Spider-Man defeats him just by pulling him off the board with a web. I have to assume, then, that this is very early in this Bob’s career and he’s just getting started. If anything differentiates this Rocket Racer from others we’ve seen, it’s that’s he’s lower stakes. Smaller scale weaponry and pettier crimes.

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.

You know Spider-Ham, right? Somehow we’ve become a world where I can reasonably expect that casual audiences might know Spider-Ham and that is not weird. Anyway, you know how Spider-Ham is from an alternate universe of cartoon animal people? Well, they’ve got a Rocket Racer equivalent over there don’t ya know? Let’s take another look Into The Rocketverse and see what he’s all about.

So we know this much: he’s a rat. That is all. And this is literally all we get to see of the guy. in this story Spider-Ham is all powered up and goes on a rampage of beating up his foes and the Rocket Ratser is one of them. We have to assume that, by the naming conventions of that universe, his real name is like Robert Furrell or something. And if the Ratser is still considered a “supervillain” at this point, we have to assume that either he hasn’t the nuances of his human alternate, or Spider-Ham in this story is just being pretty indiscriminate about whom he beats up. Honestly, either is likely.

For the record some of Bob’s known affiliations are also glimpsed. The Tinkerer equivalent is the Stinkerer, a skunk. Sandman is Sandham, presumably a pig. The Prowler is the Prowler, an owl. And the Will-o’-the-Wisp is still called that and is just seemingly vapour. Easy enough.

Anyway, let’s stick him in a movie and call it a day.