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.

It’s perfectly in keeping with Rocket Racer’s luck that his supervillain arch-nemesis is a character who has appeared about three times as often as Bob has. And who also first appeared almost a decade before Bob. And who really only tangled with Bob twice. Okay, really, it’s a bit of a stretch to say Speed Demon is really Bob’s arch-nemesis, but the two times they encountered each other they really did get under each other’s skin.

It makes sense too. Rocket Racer and Speed Demon are both guys who go fast and they’re both the types who enjoy it and love showboating and stuff. They’re kinda similar, really. The difference is that Bob built all his tech himself and Speed Demon was just some chemist who was seemingly chosen at random by a cosmic entity to receive the ability to move at superhuman speeds. It feels right that Bob’s rival would be a capable but a little dumb guy who got his powers by chance and decided to be a dick with them.

Bob and Speed Demon clashed in the era when Bob was trying to be a hero as a job. That all fell through, so Bob is now often back on the wrong side of the law again. And, outside of the fictional universe, each character is the type who I can imagine on a list of criminals that some Spider-Man writer would choose from to assemble a crowd scene. I could easily see Rocket Racer and Speed Demon being on the same random gathering of criminals robbing a bank or something, like stickers being placed in an activity book. If it happens, I can only hope Speed Demon continues to annoy Rocket Racer. It’s fun.

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.)