Rocket (comics)

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Publisher	Milestone Comics
First appearance	Icon #1 (1993)
Created by	Dwayne McDuffie

<tr style="vertical-align: top;"><td>Alter ego</td><td>Raquel Ervin</td></tr><tr style="vertical-align: top;"><td>Affiliations</td><td>Icon, Static, Darnice</td></tr><tr style="vertical-align: top;"><td>Abilities</td><td>None. Her harness allows her to manipulate kinetic energy.</td></tr>

Characteristics

Rocket is a Milestone Comics superhero. Created by Dwayne McDuffie, she first appeared in Icon #1 (1993). Although she is only the sidekick of the title character, she is the actual protagonist of the series.

[edit] Character history

Raquel Ervin was born in Paris Island, the poorest, most crime-ridden neighborhood in Dakota. She yearned to become a writer ("just like Toni Morrison"), but lacked the motivation. That is until she met Augustus Freeman IV, a stranded alien with superhuman powers. She convinced him to become the superhero Icon, and to take her on as his sidekick. While in costume, she wore a harness Icon fashioned out of his escape pod's safety mechanism, which allowed her to manipulate kinetic energy.

Shortly after she began adventuring with Icon, she discovered that she was pregnant by her ex-boyfriend. She decided to keep the baby, becoming the first single teenage mother in comics. While her pregnancy caused her to give up adventuring for a time, she eventually became a superhero again.

Rocket was more liberal than Icon, which caused them to clash on a number of occasions. She befriended Static, another Dakota teenage superhero. While it has been hinted that someday they might become more than friends, their relationship remained platonic throughout the run of their respective titles.