Best Character Ever: Rocket
Best Character Ever is an irregular column that covers heroes, villains, and average joes that captured my imagination in one way or another over the years.
I've talked about influences and inspirations several times in my career. From novels to comics to movies, I find strange bits and pieces that I can see and go "that's cool." But perhaps one of the greatest influences on my career was the 90s-era imprint Milestone Comics.
This is far from my first conversation about it though. I talked about my love of Static before and covered the importance of Dwayne McDuffie to my entire writing career. But I wanted to talk about the character that is the most obvious influence on Backoff.
Art by M.D. Bright. Character owned by Milestone Media.
Raquel Ervin was a normal girl talked into a home invasion by a deadbeat boyfriend. The theft goes awry because the rich lawyer they came to rob turns out to be the super-powered Augustus Freeman. He stops them, but she can't get the idea of an African American man with powers out of her head. She insists he could do much for the community if he would become a superhero. He agrees, with her as his sidekick. With an inertial belt as the source of her powers, she becomes Rocket, partner of Icon.
The battle of politics between Icon and Rocket never overtakes the book, but it offers an interesting thought process on the nature of race relations in 1990s America. Icon succeeds so well because it subverts everything one might expect from the pair, right down to the true lead of the book. Even when she learns she's pregnant and temporarily out of costume for a huge part of the first year of the book, Raquel is never anything but a true lead in a world of sidekicks.
Meanwhile Icon's alien heritage comes equally into play, as we learn he's anything but a Superman clone. The book never stops pivoting in different directions as it goes along
The inertia belt and Backoff's powers certainly have some similarities, as do the women behind the mask. But I distinctly wanted to make Backoff her own character. Her own woman. Rocket is in her DNA, as is Static and so much of Milestone. But it's wound together with bits and pieces of other ideas and other thoughts into something uniquely her own.
Her death plays an important part in the history of a key player in the MHP Universe. But she's far more than just her death.
I wrote "Last Breath" (available now as part of Smoke and Ash) because Backoff started to show that. Jasmin is a human, a girl barely allowed to live her life, yet one with a life well lived. She inspired a broken man to become the hero Federation and eventually the world needed. It's a vital, important role and one that deserved more than a one-note death scene.
I went on to write “Heroes Don’t Retire” because I knew I couldn’t just set aside Backoff either. She felt like a character that needed a place in the universe, even if it comes at the loss of a decade of her life.
Similarly, Rocket has gone through a revival of her own. She barely appeared during a brief Milestone revival in Justice League of America by McDuffie, but otherwise, Rocket has been missing in action for two decades of comics. (A version of her has appeared on Young Justice, but she's a far different character there.) That changed last year, when the new generation of Milestone Media debuted Icon & Rocket Season One.
The new series serves as the launching pad for an entire Milestone reboot. While some of the changes sit with me better than others, I’m happy to see the return of such a pivotal and important character in my comic reading history. Raquel deserves to be loved by a new generation of readers too.
As for Backoff… I’m far from done with her either. But you will just have to wait and see where she will pop up next. In the meantime, if you haven’t read her first two appearances, be sure to seek out a copy of Smoke & Ash, now available pretty much wherever you can buy or order books.
