I haven’t posted many Rocket Racer Thoughts in 2024, but that’s not because I haven’t been thinking them, I’ve just had other things I had to do (including doing some minor Rocket Racer work elsewhere on the Internet that will be discussed next year). But I want to get at least one official Bob Farrell post on the site in 2025, so here I go:

A Rocket Racer Video Game Would Be Cool

You start with an open world New York, like in those Spider-Man games that are so popular. It’d be very possible to create a more mission-based setup with each being a well-crafted location for skateboarding, but in this hypothetical I want an open world game. And the thing about those games, I assume, is that it is fun to swing around like Spider-Man. Having to get around in an open world game is tedious if you don’t have a fun way to travel. Well, you know what has been a fun way to get around in a bunch of video games over the years? Skateboarding! And you know who can not just skateboard like normal, but he has a rocket-powered skateboard that lets him go straight up buildings and even fly. That’s fun.

So we have an Open World NYC that you traverse on your rocketboard. It already seems like fun to me (admittedly a man who doesn’t play games like this). But what next? Well, I figure there’s two kinds of currencies in the game: Money and Respect. Money you get by doing missions. There ought to be a wealth of side-quests where you can rob banks or catch bounties or any of the things that Bob usually does when he needs money. Apart from taking care of your family (which would need to at least be mentioned) money could probably be used to finance upgrades to your equipment and get new powers and stuff.

Respect would be about how the public sees you. The more you are respected, the better missions you can be hired for. A bank robbery you can probably do on your own, with no respect, but if you want to get hired for a cool casino heist that pays millions? For that you need to be impressive to potential hirers. And, for the record, I’d make a cheap way to earn respect to be performing stunt moves on your board in view of onlookers. You’re skating down the road and you do a cool flip, someone is gonna be impressed.

Story? I dunno, typical Rocket Racer stuff. There are probably factions (the mob, SHIELD or whatever, stuff like that) and you’re trying to make money by working for them. The more they respect you, the better the jobs they give out. Eventually you have to pick a side and probably betray the mob to work with SHIELD or vice versa. There’s gonna have to be personal stuff involving friends and family. Speed Demon could be a recurring foe. You want more detail than that, hire me? I’ll try to do a flip if that helps.

I should follow up on the previous Rocket Racer update. The Jackpot/Black Cat miniseries ended, so I read it and found out what the deal was.

There was a criminal mastermind (who, obviously, has ties to the protagonists, because they always do) who was manifesting as an app that would threaten people into doing their bidding. Basically, it’d be some innocent person sitting there and they’d get a text on this app that would say like “Attack this person for me or I’ll kill your family” and so the innocent people would have to do it. That meant that MJ and Felicia had to try to fight a bunch of innocent people without hurting them. To escalate the story, though, eventually the evil mastermind had to send supervillains against the heroes, and that’s where Bob came in.

So what does it tell us about Bob’s current status quo? Well, not much. We’re never told that Bob (or fellow criminals Squid or Tracer) are being threatened into what they’re doing, but they also don’t say anything about them getting paid for it. Certainly Bob has a family large enough that it’d be easy to threaten one of them and make the Racer do your bidding, but Bob is in good spirits during this whole encounter (something he that is not always true about him). Based on the rest of the story, I’d expect the villain to be blackmailing the criminals rather than paying them, but maybe it isn’t Bob’s family being put in peril. Maybe the criminal is threatening to steal funds from their secret supervillain bank accounts or something.

We’re simply not given the context in the story, where the criminal are just punch-takers meant to stand between the protagonists and the ultimate villain, but given Bob’s flippancy, I’m going to say nobody he cares about was in danger and he was just happy for an excuse to do super-fights. Enjoy it while you can, Bob! It is only a matter of time before everything goes poorly for you again.

Rocket Racer has made another appearance! It’s even more than a single panel! In issue three of a currently-running miniseries of Jackpot and Black Cat, Bob gets into a fight with not one but two ex-girlfriends of his former friend Spider-Man.

I had not been reading this book until Bob’s appearance was brought to my attention, so I don’t have all the information needed. I’m going to have to wait until the story ends and then read the whole thing, so I will likely be back with a further update, but here’s what can I glean without knowledge of the overall story?

Well, Bob is back to just doing villain-for-hire gigs. That’s certainly in keeping with his abysmal downfall since his days with Silver Sable International. He’s always just trying to scrape by, and he’s proven his willingness to do crime more than once. His hair is not up to his usual finely-kept standards, another potential sign of money troubles. He’s currently using a wheel-less board (or, hopefully, one with retractable wheels). He gets his ass kicked pretty easily. Overall, it’s pretty in keeping with Bob’s character, so I can have no real complaints. I rate this a worthy Rocket Racer appearance so far.

Still, I can’t deny that this is a clear example of what I call “stickerbooking” a character. In superhero comics, where there are simply too many heroes and villains for any given creator to care about in detail, they get reduced to names, costumes, and sets of powers.Creators want to use some villains for a fight scene so they look at those names, costumes, and powers, and just like picking which sticker they want to put on their page, they pick one and stick it in their story. Their histories and personalities are unimportant. Even some of my favourite writers are guilty of it, and the only people who actually care are the obsessed fans. There is no denying I am Rocket Racer’s biggest obsessed fan. But here’s the thing: stickerbooking has happened to much bigger characters! I’ve seen it done to MODOK, to Taskmaster, and to Doctor Octopus just to name a few. So, sure, I’d love it if we got stories that actually treated Bob as a person, if some creators just like to use him as a colourful sticker now and then, I’ll have to be happy with that.

Just so long as none of them mess it up too much.

(Not Rocket Racer-related Thought: I had very little interest in MJ’s career as a superhero because I do think it says something how the genre holds “normal” people in contempt when any long-time supporting cast member becomes a hero or villain as if it makes them matter more now. But even aside from that I’m bothered by the identity being called Jackpot. I’m sure there’s some dumb in-story reason, but it seems so dumb to me that MJ based her superhero identity on that thing she said to her ex in her first appearance. She’s like “That was a good line, I should call myself that and fight crime or whatever.” It’s the sort of callback reference that takes the verisimilitude of the story down a peg for me. But whatever, it’s probably better than the Spider-Man games that basically just turned MJ into Lois Lane for some reason.)

I just did a profile for the Marvel Appendix on the character Will O’ The Wisp. This is a character even more obscure than the Rocket Racer, but also who is minor part of Rocket Racer’s life. Bob and the Wisp met via their mutual “friend” Spider-Man, then became coworkers during Bob’s time with Silver Sable’s mercenary unit the Outlaws.

Wisp’s deal is that he was a scientist named Jackson Arvad who, because of corporate greed and corruption, got into an accident that gave him super powers, but also made him lose touch with his humanity a bit. He’s kind of Dr. Manhattan Lite (though he predates that guy). He can be a bit spooky, which is definitely what Bob and the others thought of him, but Wisp is in general a good person. Heck, when he met up with Bob and the others years later, he even asked how Bob’s mother was doing. Wisp cares is his thing.

Wisp’s life has sucked for sure. He’s often been blackmailed into doing crimes, but when that isn’t the case he had a tendency to wage war against evil corporations (for his own sake and that of others) which was technically a criminal act, but the stories always supported him. He was a noble figure who teamed up with Spider-Man several times. Which is what makes it sad that, as I point out in my Appendix profile, one day Peter Parker decided to do a bit where he pretended not to recognize Wisp. This was when Wisp was on a supervillain team, sure, but I feel it’s safe to assume he wasn’t there willingly given what has come before. Wisp was visibly upset about it and since that time he’s been seen hanging out with those we’d call “villains” a lot more often.

And then, after decades of attacking evil corporations in Spidey’s books and being seen as a good guy, he does it once in an Iron Man book and he winds up in Marvel’s ripoff of Arkham Asylum. I can’t help but wonder of Mr. Tony Stark didn’t arrange that to take a potentially powerful anti-capitalist hero off the board.

Anyway, regarding the title I’ve chosen here, is Wisp really the best coworker that Bob has had? No, that’s probably the Prowler, given that they were actually friends. But Wisp’s whole deal fits with where I’d want the Rocket Racer character to go. Bob SHOULD be a big anti-corporate figure, but actually he’s kind of a sellout and gives into The Man far more often than he should. Bob wants to be accepted by The Man and can’t ever seem to work out that that’s why his life keeps sucking. If Wisp could really get his message through to Bob, they’d both be better off.

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.