Spiderman vs the Rocket Racer

It’s 1978 and the Rocket Racer is back in Volume 1 #182 of The Amazing Spiderman. I haven’t seen the first appearance of the Rocket Racer, but the storyline mimics the ’90s animated Spiderman series, except the Rocket Racer in the cartoon is a teenager, while the original Rocket Racer is drawn more like a full grown man. The Rocket Racer has a skateboard that allows him to defy gravity. Not only does it stick to walls, but it magically adheres the riders feet to the board while riding vertical surfaces. Rocket uses his skateboard to perpetrate crimes to pay his mother’s or gandmother’s medical bills. It’s the age old story of a good hearted person forced into a life of crime. The pages with skateboarding in them are available after the jump, as well as the entire episode from the 1994 animated series.

One such heroic deed includes the time he helped Spider-Man take down a neo-Nazi fascist called Skinhead

According tot the Marvel Universe, the Rocket Racer eventually ends up as good guy.

What decade is this? Let’s see, black characters calling someone a turkey… it must be the 70’s.

The male cop has a regular uniform, but the female cop looks like she stepped out of an episode of the Avengers.

Get ready for a spectacular sequential of an ollie over a police car.

I think Spidey has a little man-crush on the Rocket Racer.

“Hold it there, handsome.”

OK, I can suspend my disbelief enough to accept Spiderman’s ability to shoot webs with the aid of technology, but I don’t like it when Spidey shoots his webs into functional objects like sleds and shields, even if he’s using the to waterski behind a skateboarder. It just seems like lazy writing to me.

And just like that, the Rocket Racer escapes into the inside of a smokestack that looks like a cooling tower from a nuclear power plant. Spidey doesn’t seem that concerned about it, and that’s Rocket’s last appearance in the issue. The rest is about Peter Parker getting ready to ask Mary Jane to marry him.

Spider-Man animated series 1994, Episode 32

I may have got the storyline wrong here. To be honest. I didn’t re-watch this episode. The Rocket Racer starts off as a vigilante, but at some point I think he has to turn to crime to help a family member.

A group of thieves called the Rocket Raiders are perpetrating robberies across Manhattan. Meanwhile, one of Peter’s students, Robert, gets in trouble with the law when some thugs ransack his mother’s store. Fed up with the lack of safety, Robert becomes a vigilante known as the Rocket Racer and sets off to take on the Rocket Raiders.