THE ROCKETEER: CARGO OF DOOM by Samnee & Waid

THE ROCKETEER: CARGO OF DOOM collects a recent mini-series of the continuing adventures of the Dave Stevens creation. Yeah, I know I said "I'm not the market for non-Stevens Rocketeer stories", but I kind of liked the look of Chris Samnee's artwork, and have occasionally liked Mark Waid's writing in the past, so I figured I'd give it a look.

Samnee is much more to my liking for this material than the artist of the previous book I read. He doesn't try at all to draw like Stevens, but he's close enough on the spectrum that the characters and setting look recognizable. His style is closer to the old adventure strip artists like Frank Robbins and Noel Sickles, which nicely suits the subject matter. Unfortunately, I didn't like the writing as much. It did the required bits of business to get Samnee some neat stuff to draw (airplanes and dinosaurs), and the required bits of thinly disguised period pop-culture homages that characterize the series (a Doc Savage villain and the dinosaurs coming from the Skull Island of KING KONG fame, and I assume the distant villain Trask set up for a sequel is also some pop culture reference I don't recognize), but other than that it didn't really feel like the series Stevens set up.

So I guess what I want is to combine Roger Langridge's writing in the HOLLYWOOD HORROR series with Samnee's art in this one.