This is a small, unofficial site devoted to greatest cartoon strip of all time, Steven Appleby's ROCKETS... passing overhead which appeared in the NME and then Section 5 of The Observer in the 1980s. It featured a rather hapless hero called Captain Jim Star and the other inmates of his space ship, the Boiling Hell. They drift through space, endlessly awaiting orders from Mission Control that never come. A nice recurring theme was the way that Star's vanity was reflected in all the 'Jim Star' Products that appeared in the cartoon, featuring the image of the Captain, of course. Steven Appleby did a nice line in real mail-order goods, including a mobile and a tea towel. The strip reached its zenith with a sequence of cartoons about fun-fur; the line 'the fun-fur has developed rudimentary intelligence' coupled with pictures of blobs of fur saying 'what's for dinner?' and 'what's on TV?' was the sublimest moment in cartoon history. Captain Jim Star also appeared in TV adverts for the Goldstar electronics group. Shockwave NEWS! Amazing news - the Bloomsbury web site (follow the link below) has amazingly good Shockwave Captain Star animations... Steven is asking for people to vote for the topic of his next book... VOTE for Captain Star NOW! You know it makes sense... Captain Star TV series August 1998: there is a new series of Captain Star running on Thursday afternoons on Children's ITV. I missed the first two episodes... which is a pity as Steven says there are some corkers in this series. Rather surprisingly, perhaps, ROCKETS... passing overhead was made into a children's cartoon series by Harvest/HTV. The first episode took off in Britain on ITV on Tuesday 8th July 1997 at 4.20pm. It was certainly much less bleak than the printed cartoon strip, but generally captured the flavour of it all very well. Read my episode guide to get a taste. Steven Appleby: the man Steven Appleby has seen this site, and seems to like it! He was recently featured in a colour supplement, a feature called something like 'Me and My Garden Shed' - and all I can say is... I wish someone would build meeee a shed like that... Steven Appleby was born in Northumberland (North East England) in 1956 and studied graphic design and illustration in Manchester, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and at the Royal College of Art in London. He has work regularly published in the Weekend Guardian, and a weekly strip 'Small Birds Singing' appeared in The Times on Saturdays. He has drawn and written numerous books, the latest of which is Antmen Carry Away My Thoughts as Soon as I Think Them, published by Bloomsbury in the UK. The illustrations on this site are from Rockets... a way of Life published by Assorted Images in 1988 and long-since out of print. (Thank you to Jon Ward for such a waykewl engagement present.) Steven also drew the cool Eiffel Tower rockets on the artwork for the Pixies' last album Trompe le Monde. Some off-site links: A photo and brief biography A German firm that represents illustrators Steven's review of something called 'Full Meat Carpet' by The Vacuum Cleaners. I think they're a Finnish band, and he seems to have done artwork for them. all images © Steven Appleby index of rockets.demon.co.uk text © 1997 Giles Booth rocketsdigitalproduct