Webcomic Weekly: Dan Boultwood’s Rockets & Rayguns

Webcomic Weekly, a sometimes weekly look at all manner of great comics online for your delight and delectation… this week, Dan Boultwood’s Rockets & Rayguns:

This week, the wonderfully dapper Dan Boultwood, wearer of fine moustaches and drawer of fine comics, most recently Chu for Image Comics and Steel Commando for the new Monster Fun comic, brings us a grande slice of pulp sci-fi silliness… Rockets & Rayguns.

As Dan himself sells it to us:

Do you like pulp? Do you like sci-fi? Do you like pulp sci-fi? Then have a goosey at my creator-owned webcomic Rockets & Rayguns!

It’s only a few episodes in so it’s one of those perfect get in on the ground floor for some gloriously pulpy action things.

Drake Mustang, fearless and muscular space hero, lover of puns, finds himself at the mercy of the evil Morath… something about Enros 5 and the small matter of a lost arm. It’s time for revenge… well, that’s Morath’s plan at least…

Yes, just what is that damn noise….

Ooops.

Anyway, you can easily see from that little glimpse of what to expect from the first three episodes just how much fun and how beautifully drawn Rockets & Rayguns is.

In episodes to come, there’s more of Major Erin, Comet Corps and a rescue that’s anything but, there’s space pirates (isn’t that always the way), a hero’s decision, and much, much more.

Interestingly, it’s presented to you in a couple of formats. The art above is from Tapas, presented panel by panel, which does make that increasingly loud Phut, Phut, Phut, PHUT gag work quite wonderfully. But it’s also presented in a landscape form at Dan’s Rockets & Rayguns site, something he says ‘gives it the newspaper strip feel I was going for in the first place, oh how times have changed.’

Here’s the first three episodes in that format… personally, I like both as they’ve both got their merits.

You can find Rockets & Rayguns at Tapas, Instagram, and at Dan’s Rocket’s & Rayguns site.

As always, remember that these free online things we feature in Webcomics Weekly are made by real people, talented and incredible people for sure, but real people who still need to pay rent and buy food – so do us a favour and go support Boultwood at his Patreon or donate directly to him through PayPal.

After all, as Dan says on his Patreon:

The webcomics themselves are free but if you fancy knocking me a couple of quid to keep my Scrooge McDuck Money Bin full of biscuits and gin then my appreciation will be the stuff of legend.

One last thing to sell it to you… some of the funniest sound effects for ages…