Yee-ha! For the inner fan boy and fan girl.... The ARTIST'S Edition of Dave Stevens' ROCKETEER, from IDW Publishing, is now available for order. You can pick it up in person at the San Diego con (starting July 21st), or have it shipped to you. Its description proclaims:

> Nearly every page in The Rocketeer has been scanned in color from Stevens'
> original art to ensure the best possible reproduction and highest degree of
> accuracy. Printed on uncoated stock and at the same size as the original art,
> Dave Stevens’ The Rocketeer: Artist’s Edition will be the next best thing to
> holding the actual art by Dave Stevens.

Never cracked open a previous ROCKETEER edition? Attached are some samples of the line art to tantalize you.

The full color version can be yours for $100.

Go here to read more about it or place an order:

https://shop.idwpublishing.com/dave-stevens-the-rocketeer-artist-s-edition-comic-con-pick-up.html

And... drum roll.... one more page: this one showing how Dave Stevens drew the heroine, Betty.

Why should anyone give a fig about THE ROCKETEER? It was a seminal title in lighting a fire under the Bettie Page revival movement.

During Herb's Chicago Comic-Con interviews, you've heard artists and fans alike mention this graphic novel as the reason they became aware of Bettie Page.

Notice the fifth panel and the resemblance to the image used above for Bettie's documentary's header.

This book is stirring the excitement pot for die hard Dave Stevens fans.

There's an expanding thread in pinup model's Khwan's art appreciation Yahoo Group, Pinup Heaven. Here, for example, was the post from Atlanta attorney Benno Rothschild:

> I put in an order as soon as I saw the post from [another group member]. I have
> the deluxe Rocketeer and that is nice, but for an original art collector, this is the
> book we have been looking for. I wish that some of the other artists I love had
> books like this. I can't imagine how cool it would be to see things in this format
> like the entire Shadow by Mike Kaluta or the Swamp Thing by Berni Wrightson or
> Thunda by Frank Frazetta or the Galactus Trilogy by Kirby or Green Lantern/Green
> Arrow by Adams or .... Well, I could go on and on and on, but I am sure you get
> the picture!! Of course Dave Stevens kept all but a very few pages of the Rocketeer
> material in his own hands so it was possible to do something like this, but most
> comic art is scattered to the winds. Even with Wrightson's masterpiece Frankenstein,
> they were unable after pretty diligent searching to find all of the original plates to do
> a deluxe edition; almost all were sold and who knows where some of them are now.
> Benno

As the San Diego Comic-Con International rolls ever closer, excitement is building for this latest print version of Stevens' 1982 ROCKETEER renderings.

Another sample scan of the interior has been revealed: Chapter 2 and its following page.

Two key reminders about this book:

* THE ROCKETEER was largely responsible for Bettie Page's unprecedented, UN-orchestrated, rise from 1950s obscurity to pop culture icon.

* The pages in this $100 book are in their "pre-colored" phase, filled with smudges, blue pencil marks and photostats.