Time travelling heroes are quite common across comics, TV and film. DC had Rip Hunter and the BBC has arguably the most famous of them all, Doctor Who but when Warren published The Rook in the pages of anthology magazine Eerie they had a hit on their hands.
His origin and first appearance is revealed in this issue in a story called The Man that Time Forgot. Born Restin Dane he preferred the handle The Rook and used a number of scientists to help create his masterpiece, a time machine in the form of a rook from Chess.
A Castle that could travel through time. And that's exactly what happens when he returns to the Alamo to save a life. The life of a man who turns out to be his great-great-grandfather.
Then things get a wee bit complicated when he returns with great granddaddy for the second time to be looked after by his trusty robots. Every scientist should have a robot butler.
The Rook ran in Eerie in issues 82-85, 87-96 and 98-105 before getting his own magazine which ran for 14 issues. His last appearances under the Warren label were in Eerie 132, 134 & 136.
The characters popularity was such that when The Rook transferred to his own comic magazine sales of Eerie actually went down by a whopping 17%.
Howard, Thank you for covering this time traveling gun-slinging monster fighter. Steven Grant and Paul Gulacy have returned Restin Dane to comics and a new graphic novel series titled, you guessed it, The Rook. The Rook was distributed by the millions throughout the world from 1976 to 1994 when Harris did the battle suit thing of the 90s. The Rook archives are due out 40 years to the day of Eerie 82, 2/19/2017. Happiest of Futures!
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