4 out of 5

Collects the 1985 Rocket Raccoon #1-4 mini under a ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ subtitle

And sometimes you pay 8 bucks for 4 full issues plus backmatter w/ professional printing quality and you gotta’ start wondering why comics are 2.99 each with a boop load of ads…?

So I had one issue of this when I was a kid and even then I remember feeling like there was something different about it – a major publisher putting out a book with the main characters being talking animals and humans playing, actually, a very small role in events.  You could brush it off as part of the funny animal boom post Turtles, but I really don’t feel like that gave DC and Marvel too much extra content… though, of course, I could be wrong.  I also know I didn’t fall in love with Rocket when I was a kid because the writing style wasn’t directly humorous or ‘cute’.  Now I look at the art and marvel (womp) at how well Mignola has always handled framing and movement and emotions, all without busying up the panels.  The temptation with something like Rocket would be to over-stuff the images with ‘futuristic’ or steam-punky claptrap, but we really get the feel of the half-verdant, half-bare nature of Halfworld as ruled over by a mixture of insane human (‘loonies’), robots, and talking animals.

Did any of those plot details make you do a ‘huh?’  Yeah.  In fact, one of the extras packed into this collection – something from the Marvel Universe History files – is a few pages of super cramped text covering the history of Rocket Raccoon and, separately, the history of his home, Halfworld – and it actually may harm the reading to try and absorb too many of those details.  I’m a vegetables-first kinda’ guy, so I read all of this stuff before starting the book.  I don’t want to criticize giving me extras, but I’m noting that including the two individual and yet linked history entries definitely causes some confusion, as it covers the same events twice from slightly different writing perspectives.  Not a Rashomon differing perspectives – just the same history two times with different words.  A surprising amount of shit has gone down in RR’s lifetime, especially for, essentially, a cult character, and because it’s half-comical / half-weird, it’s hard to tell how much of what’s included here to take seriously and how much – as discovered when reading the actual comics – were just clever story notes that someone later sorta retconned into something a bit fancier.

But, what’s fun is how you can head into ‘Tales From Half-World’ with your head spun by all of this lore, and then just get wrapped up in the goofy tale told by Mantlo.  There were a couple of setup issues for Rocket (a Marvel Preview and a Hulk issue, I believe), so I’m not sure how much of the background shows up there, but no matter – the point gets across that Half-World was a deposit for ‘incurable’ psychiatric cases by a now-worshipped and long gone race of doctors, who also left behind a seemingly indecipherable book that explains how to go about curing this madness.  How it gets across is a pretty magical and deft sleight-of-hand worked into the main plotline of warring animal toy manufacturers, where tidbits of the background are dropped to explain the Why of the war, and further revelations come from the quest to resolve matters by decoding the great book (which, womp, looks to us readers like simple English) and learning its secrets.

Here’s my summary of the history for YOUR benefit, my loves:

To placate their patients, the doctors left behind a race of smart robots to care for them and a whole bunch of cute animals to entertain.  When the robots got bored with the task, they did some smart robot tinkering and ‘upgraded’ the animals with mechanical enhancements.  Now the robots have retreated to their ‘half’ of the world to work the toy production lines (now the main source of entertainment for the human class – those mentioned ‘loonies’) and also construct a ship to break through the ‘galacial wall’ that was put in place around the planet to protect the innocents (or prevent them from leaving and spreading the madness).  Meanwhile, the animals have taken on the responsibility of protecting the humans, and two leaders of industry have emerged – a mole and a lizard – as major toy designers.

We pick up the story when both designers realize that the key to supremacy is in the capture of Rocket’s girlfriend, Lyla, since she holds the inheritance keys to usurping the whole toy shebang… or something.  The point is: she’s kidnapped, and Rocket finds himself fighting against both Toy Kings armies (robotic clowns, toy tanks), as well as a bunny assassin.  And of course it’s funny – RR’s pal Wal Rus and his blaster tusks being a nifty highlight – but it succeeds more because it maintains a level of legitimacy the whole while.  This is the kind of loose-limbed creativity that we accepted in the 80s and 90s, but nowadays would come with way too much self-awareness and thus have to be pushed to different wink-wink extremes.  (Though I say this w/o having read the current Guardians stuff, which is now of interest.)

I can’t speak to how much this reproduction upgraded or distilled the art, but the coloring was probably retouched, though it fully maintains the brighter and not-computer-graded palette of the 80s, which looks fantastic on the glossy pages.  But Mignola’s dynamic and readable figures definitely add to that.  The binding is regular comic stapled binding, but given some thicker covers to hold things together.  I’d say this is the absolute limit for that format – any extra pages and the staples just couldn’t hold it together.  But it was pretty perfect for this collection.

Yes, you’ve got to be down with some fantasy elements and talking animals to get into this book, but the original Rocket mini was / is a surprisingly solid and fun read, balancing action and yuks with a grand sense of earnestness that’s rare for major publishers.  The price is absolutely right, and though the extras sort of only serve to make the story seem more convoluted than it is, its pretty awesome sweet that Marvel tossed that stuff in there (along with some cover pinups).  Rocket, along with Crazy and some of the other 70s / 80s Marvel oddities, adds to my opinion of the publisher being a bit more experimental with their works than DC (barring all the arguments about how both pubs step on creator’s rights and just want money and blah blah… but let’s live in a bubble for a little longer, eh?).  Until I unearth the 80s DC mini-series ‘Missile Marsupial’ or something like that, anyhow.

(This review contained many parenthetical interruptions.)  (And stating it after the fact doesn’t change that.)  (Cry.)