Rocket Raccoon, v. 2: Storytailer

Collects: Rocket Raccoon #7-11 (2015)

Released: March 2016 (Marvel)

Format: 136 pages / color / $17.99 / ISBN: 9780785191674

What is this?: Rocket and Groot survive a frozen planet with poison wolves, then get a glimpse of the future; Rocket searches for the Halfworld Bible.

The culprits: Writer Skottie Young and artists Jake Parker and Filipe Andrade

You can expect a drop-off in quality when a popular artist stops drawing a title. It’s probably worse when that artist remains as writer.

Such is the case with Rocket Raccoon, v. 2: Storytailer. I have no idea how long Skottie Young planned to remain as writer / artist for the title — and I’m too lazy / disinterested to look it up — but after Rocket Raccoon #4, he gave up the artist part of his job to Jake Parker and Filipe Andrade.

The result is a book that is significantly less interesting than what readers expected when they read Young’s Rocket Raccoon #1. The book is competently written — everything makes sense — but the story lacks the extra oomph that Young’s art supplies. The star is not playing to his strengths.

Young is not a polished writer. His plots are serviceable but unremarkable. The dialogue is not crisp or memorable, and I think we can all agree Rocket should never say “stupid fresh,” even if that expression is better than the “murdered you” he was using for a catchphrase. His Rocket makes a lot of references to Earth TV (including the season 6 finale of Buffy the Vampire Slayer) and movies for a space raccoon.

Young has three stories in the five issues of Storytailer: Rocket and Groot surviving on an ice planet for two issues, a glimpse of a possible future where Groot goes crazy, and a two-parter where Rocket finally gets to the bottom of his origins. The future story is pointless, and even Rocket remarks on the clichéd ending. The ice planet story is fine but very forgettable; introducing poisonous dire wolves as a threat to Groot’s survival is a nice complication, but Young is the one who decided Groot would be so hard to kill in the first place, so he doesn’t get any points from me on that score.

Storytailer’s ending is problematic, though. In the final two issues, Rocket gets a lead on the Halfworld Bible (called “Gideon’s Bible” in the original Rocket Raccoon limited series). He finds the bible, and with the help of another uplifted raccoon from Halfworld, he deciphers and reads his own backstory. (Again: why has he forgotten it? A footnote would be nice — I’m looking at you, assistant editors Charles Beacham and Devin Lewis.) Rocket then walks away from all of it — the explanation of his history, Halfworld, his fellow raccoon — because he feels it’s stupid. Which it is, but since I’ve read that story, I know it’s stupid in a daffily charming way. Denigrating the original Rocket Raccoon LS is needlessly insulting; that story, written by Bill Mantlo and drawn by Mike Mignola, hangs together as a memorable four-issue story, which is more than I can say for Young’s run. And if Young was going to make a callback to the original limited series, why didn’t he use a character from that story to help Rocket find the Halfworld Bible? Why invent a new character for Rocket to reject?

As I said in my review of A Chasing Tale, Young’s art is a secondary draw for me, but I felt its absence in Storytailer. Part of the problem with Young’s writing is that he’s writing for artists who aren’t named Skottie Young. Andrade is not up for drawing scenes with all the white figures and backgrounds in #7 and 8, which is a problem since those two issues take place on an ice planet. Andrade’s storytelling gets muddled at times, and it is especially difficult to distinguish what’s going on with all that white. (Maybe colorist Jean-Francois Beaulieu is at fault, although Beaulieu did a fine job in the other issues.) Sometimes Young’s dialogue has to help Andrade out — like when Andrade is supposed to show eggs as big as Volkswagens, but nothing in the art hints at the eggs’ size.

I enjoyed Parker’s Rocket in issues #9-11, and his future Rocket in #9 is nice (although the scar over the eye and small bits missing from the ears is not the most original way to show “grizzled warrior”). But other elements of his art are lacking. A couple of times he’s supposed to depict amazing transforming machines, and the results are underwhelming. Perhaps I’m setting the bar too high, but I think this could be traced back to Young — Young the Writer probably thought those transforming scenes would allow Parker to cut loose and draw something astounding, maybe even Kirby-esque. But Parker is a more intimate artist who excels at characters and expressions, and while his machinery is fine, that’s all it is: fine. The same goes for the scene in which Rocket is fighting his way to a teleporter in #10; this is supposed to be a big set piece, Rocket battling through all the obstacles in his way so he can get to the truth of his existence, but it boils down to a few scattered bodies as the actual moments of violence mostly happen off-page.

Storytailer is worse than A Chasing Tale, although not by much. (Your mileage will vary if Young’s artwork is a major draw for you.) Young trades Tale’s dismissal of women for a dismissal of Rocket’s origins; the former is more troubling in a societal sense, but since Young is working in a larger framework of the Marvel Universe, the latter bothers me more. Take that as you will; I suppose I’m inured to casual sexism in comics. The entire series is disappointing and slightly overblown, and I’m kinda glad Secret Wars ended it.

Rating: (1.5 of 5)

Rocket Raccoon, v. 1: A Chasing Tale

Collects: Rocket Raccoon #1-6 (2014-5)

Released: October 2015 (Marvel)

Format: 136 pages / color / $19.99 / ISBN: 9780785190455

What is this?: Rocket Raccoon of the Guardians of the Galaxy endures space jail and an army of ex-girlfriends while trying to discover what happened to “his people.”

The culprits: Skottie Young, with artist Jake Parker (#5-6)

Since Rocket Raccoon, v. 2: Storytailer will be released next week, I thought I’d look back at Rocket Raccoon, v. 1: A Chasing Tale. Relevance!

For most readers, the book’s appeal lies in Skottie Young’s artwork. Young, who drew #1-4 and wrote the entire book, certainly gives readers hyper-cartoony action and violence, the kind of stuff that wouldn’t be out of place in an old Bugs Bunny cartoon. Not that Young’s style looks anything like old Warner Brothers animation, but it does have the expressiveness, flexibility, and humor of those cartoons.

Young’s art often lives up to its reputation for imaginativeness. The prison escape montage is excellent. The sea-creature visuals surrounding Rocket’s accomplice Macho are creative and cohesive; I especially like the fish-like creature who swallows Macho’s ship, then spits it out at the other end of a hyperspace warp. Young sneaks in a few funny Easter eggs as well, like a box marked “John Woo props” in the middle of a gunfight.

Sometimes the art fails to live up to that standard, though. The aliens all look like humanoids, blobs, or animals; I’m not sure what else they can look like (clouds? Mechanical items?), but I feel confident Young could come up with something more unusual if he tried. (The strangest alien in Chasing Tale is Xemnu the Titan, a long-time Hulk villain Young uses in #2.) The ship designs are a bit boring as well. The sound effects Young adds are not as funny as the ones in Hercules — or as funny as Young thinks.

But I am not interested in Rocket Raccoon because of Young’s art. It’s nice to look at, but I’m a fan of the character Rocket — both Bill Mantlo’s original creation, with his anthropomorphic animal friends and stupid Beatles puns, and Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning’s sardonic, violent space warrior. The latter is in Chasing Tale, but the more I learn about him, the less I like him.

Young’s Rocket has a habit of swindling and leaving women he has bedded. He uses the idiotic catchphrase “Murdered you” that Bendis came up with in the new Guardians of the Galaxy series. (It’s possible Young might be using the phrase ironically; that doesn’t make it better.) Rocket learns no lessons from his bad behavior. What’s worse, he spends time angsting about his origins …

Once upon a time, Rocket’s origins were simple. He was an uplifted raccoon, meant to amuse the inmates on Halfworld, a mental asylum planet. When the psychiatric professionals left, Rocket and his animal pals were elevated to caretakers of the Loonies. Halfworld had a lot of uplifted animals, but none of them seemed to be of the same species; given that Rocket (then known as “Rocky”) was in charge of Halfworld, he would have known whether any other raccoons existed. But in Chasing Tale, he’s looking for others like himself (one of whom seems to exist) and Gideon’s Bible, the legendary artifact of Halfworld. What happened to Rocket’s memories of Halfworld? Why doesn’t Rocket know where any his old friends or the Loonies are? Why doesn’t Rocket know why Blackjack O’Hare hates him? (And why does Blackjack say it was over an employment dispute, since the two frequently fought on Halfworld?) Would it have killed editor Sana Amanat — or assistant editor Devin Lewis, who signed the lone footnote in the book — to give us a damn footnote explaining some of this?

The villains in Chasing Tale are all weak or problematic. The women Rocket wronged are both. They are all portrayed as unhinged, as jokes. Their leader tells Rocket that women’s pain isn’t treated as seriously as men’s; she’s right, but saying that doesn’t mitigate Young making light of their pain in Chasing Tale. (I mean, look at that pun in the title!) Rocket ruined their lives, and his only punishment is a few punches that he takes without complaint (and community service). That’s not enough; Rocket not only seduced and left the women, but he took their money, which caused them to lose their social status. Rocket manages to pummel an army of exes, despite their armaments and large ships, and still have something left over for Blackjack.

Every other villain is merely a speedbump for Rocket on the way to the end of the story. Without a clear view of continuity, Blackjack is only an opportunity for Young to draw a murderous bunny, not an opportunity to explore an existing relationship. The rest of Rocket’s antagonists are done away quickly and as a joke — huge person (with or without a gun) threatens Rocket, Rocket thrashes huge person. Ha! Ha?

Groot’s haphazard evolution as a character continues here, with the Guardians of the Galaxy movie providing the impetus for his new directions. In Chasing Tale, Groot can regrow from a splinter. Repeatedly. In a few hours. This ability reduces the stakes to nothing when Groot is in danger. And since when can Rocket (and the other Guardians) understand Groot? I think it’s a poor choice; Rocket’s responses to “I am Groot” aren’t funny enough to justify the change. Groot’s impenetrability was an aspect of his character I appreciated. Issue #5, in which Groot tells a bunch of kids a story, illustrates the superior comedic potential of not being able to understand Groot. The kids’ mystification is great, and the story’s entire dialogue consisting of repeated “I am Groot” communicates that confusion to the reader while the art tells the story.

Young is trying for a lighthearted tone in Chasing Tale, and despite the missteps I mentioned above, often he succeeds. Rocket quoting Earth movies to the space police during an interrogation at the beginning of #2 is amusing, although Young undercuts the joke by explaining it on the next page. The entirety of #5 is hilarious, and I especially enjoyed the Deadpool cameo. The payoff in #6 is a nice touch as well. But sometimes the violence and humor sit uneasily next to each other, especially when Young doesn’t quite nail the joke.

Jake Parker drew #5 and 6, and I prefer his work to Young’s, actually. His work on Groot’s tale in #5 does a better job telling the story than all but a few of the wordless ‘Nuff Said issues Marvel did in 2002. Parker’s art seems more in line with the funny animal aesthetic that covers Rocket’s backstory and the ideas Young’s story undercuts. Parker’s work isn’t as dynamic as Young’s, and it’s not as exaggerated; in fact, Parker looks like he’s strongly influenced by Bill Watterston, who wrote and drew Calvin and Hobbes. This gives Parker’s issues a touch of innocence that works well with Groot’s story in #5 and with Cosmo’s scenes in #6.

Chasing Tale has a lot of energy and a decent amount of humor going for it; if it was a story about a new character, I’d probably enjoy it more. Readers familiar with Rocket from the last few years or only the movie might love it, although that won’t get them past how Young treats Rocket’s exes. Storytailer might make this book better in retrospect by explaining Rocket’s history, but no matter what happens, I can be sure of this: I don’t care if Rocket is the last of his kind.

Rating: (2 of 5)

Guardians of the Galaxy, v. 1: Cosmic Avengers

Collects: Guardians of the Galaxy #0.1 and 1-3 and Guardians of the Galaxy: Tomorrow’s Avengers #1 (2013)

Released: April 2014 (Marvel)

Format: 144 pages / color / $19.99 / ISBN: 9780785166078

What is this?: The opening arc of Bendis’s run on Guardians of the Galaxy, in which the Guardians have to deal with aliens wanting to interfere with Earth.

The culprits: Writer Brian Michael Bendis and pencilers Steve McNiven and Sara Pichelli

I enjoyed the second volume of the Guardians of the Galaxy series, written by Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning, so I was worried when I heard Brian Michael Bendis was going to write the third volume.

Bendis’s style is vastly different from Abnett and Lanning’s. Abnett and Lanning rely on humor and action-filled plots, while Bendis is known for using naturalistic dialogue to fill his more leisurely paced stories. Unfortunately, Bendis’s dialogue causes many of his characters to sound alike, regardless of how they sounded before he started writing them. When Bendis writes solo titles, the singular Bendis voice is not a big problem, but it’s one of many concerns readers have raised on Bendis’s team books.

For some reason, despite no one particularly caring for Bendis’s work on team books, those books are still immensely popular. There’s a lesson in there somewhere, if anyone has the patience to unravel it.

But I kept an open mind when I read Guardians of the Galaxy, v 1: Cosmic Avengers. In Cosmic Avengers, Bendis has chosen to make the central conflict between J’Son (occasionally spelled J-Son), the ruler of the alien Spartax, and his son, Peter Quill, who leads the Guardians under the name Star-Lord. J’Son wants Quill to quit adventuring with his scruffy friends and take his place as crown prince; Quill wants J’Son to butt the hell out of his life. J’Son also maneuvers members of the Galactic Council into putting Earth into quarantine, meaning J’Son is forbidding his son to go back to his home planet. Presumably, this is meant to pressure Quill to take J’Son’s offer.

The Badoon immediately take the quarantine of Earth as an invitation to invade the planet, hoping to conquer it before the other races can react and then presenting the conquest to the others as a fait accompli. (I think; it’s never spelled out why this new galactic policy on Earth makes the planet more vulnerable. The story does not say the Galactic Council has withdrawn longstanding protection of Earth or anything similar.) The Guardians — whose lineup mirrors that of the Guardians of the Galaxy movie: Quill, Gamora, Rocket Raccoon, Groot, and Drax the Destroyer — and Iron Man react, and when the battle is over, the Guardians are the ones who are in trouble.

So Cosmic Avengers has a great deal of action, but it does not have much plot. Each of the three issues from Guardians of the Galaxy collected in the book has two threads: J’Son lecturing someone (Quill or the Galactic Council) and the Guardians fighting someone. In life as well as comics, lectures are generally boring, and Bendis’s trademark dialogue doesn’t help; the action sequences look pretty, but they are uncomplicated: the Guardians see evil, attack evil, quickly win.

Well, the art is pretty, but it’s sometimes confusing. I’m not sure Steve McNiven and Bendis were on the same wavelength at times. Iron Man is introduced in #1 floating in space, in front of a planet that looks like Mars while musing that it’s good that he decided to “go out into the universe.” Mars isn’t far out into the universe, but that’s where Iron Man must be, since he sees the Badoon show up to attack Earth. Mars isn’t always that close to Earth — 140 million miles, on average, 34 million at their closest approach, and 250 million miles away on their farthest — but perhaps it is much closer in the Marvel Universe.

The Guardians arrive soon after. How do the Guardians decide to launch a boarding raid on the Badoon ship? By floating through the vacuum. That suggests neither ship is going very fast, and it gives McNiven a chance to show off their stupid spacesuits, which consists of helmets for Quill and Gamora in addition to normal costumes. During the battle, Rocket laughs at something Groot does … but what is it? McNiven shows Groot tearing through Badoon, but that’s not remarkable. After the Badoon activiate the self-destruct button, Drax rushes back into the ship to rescue Gamora, but the next panel with the two of them show them aboard the Guardians’ ship, without even a suggestion that either was in danger. The disintegrating Badoon ship is then shown almost at Earth — which, again, isn’t that close to Mars.

(As an aside: More worrying is a scene in the next collection, Guardians of the Galaxy, v. 2: Angela. Quill refers to a distressing event that happened while the Guardians were “chasing Badoon,” a lightning-like flash that momentarily disoriented Drax but messed with Quill’s thinking. But Quill experiences nothing like that in any Guardians issue; however, Drax does seem off his game for a moment in #2 after an explosion that seems to be caused by a laser. Was this the incident Quill refers to? Quill doesn’t seem to notice the flash of light then. Or did it come in a crossover appearance?)

Bendis’s dialogue is also problematic. Iron Man, who joins up with the Guardians after the Badoon attack, sounds like a typical Bendis character, and Quill also speaks in that style. Quill is, on the face of it, someone who shouldn’t speak in a naturalistic style; as a charismatic leader of a bunch of ragtag rebels, he should be smooth and quick witted — more Indiana Jones than Woody Allen. Rocket doesn’t sound like a Bendis character, but he does try to make a truly awful catchphrase — “Blam! Murdered you!” — work, and it takes a while before his teammates object to its psychopathic tone.

Sometimes people say something completely out of character. Iron Man has no call to slag on Captain Britain, but when the Badoon attack London, Iron Man says he’s “not really” any good. If anyone should be suspicious of humanity’s potential to screw up the universe, it would be the Supreme Intelligence of the Kree, who awakened the supremely powerful “Destiny force” from Rick Jones, Captain America’s sidekick, during the Kree-Skrull War and Avengers Forever. However, the Supreme Intelligence says J’Son is “overstating [humanity’s] abilities and importance.” Another member of the Galactic Council would be a better choice to say this, unless the Supreme Intelligence is dissembling. Which he might be, although I don’t have enough faith in Bendis to believe that.

(As a second aside: The Galactic Council includes J’Son, the Supreme Intelligence, Emperor Gladiator of the Shi’ar, a Badoon, Freyja the All-Mother of Asgard, Annihilus … and the Brood. The Brood? As a galactic power? I know this lineup was set by Jonathan Hickman in Avengers, but the Marvel Universe must hold a more important race than the Brood. The remnants of the Skrulls? The Galadorians? And Rocket describes the Badoon as a “minor race” in Guardians v. 2 #7. What’s changed since then?)

However, I will say Bendis writes Groot’s dialogue properly. He and Black Bolt might be the only two characters Bendis can’t make sound like the rest of his characters. Bendis does give Groot the ridiculous regeneration ability, as he grows from a sprout to his normal, giant self over just a few pages in #3. I don’t know that it should be remarkable that Groot should return from almost complete dissolution so quickly, but it rankled.

The price of this book is outrageous. Cosmic Avengers is not worth $20. Three issues of the regular series is barely a taste of what’s to come, and the rest of the book is filler. Although it’s possible Bendis might follow up on some of the threads in the four short tales from Guardians of the Galaxy: Tomorrow’s Avengers — he did write them — I wouldn’t bet on it. Star-Lord’s origin in #0.1 is a revamped version of Marvel Preview #4 from 1976, but Bendis’s story covers far less of Quill’s life, smoothing out the improbable elements of his birth while glossing over everything between his mother’s murder and the present in a couple of speech bubbles. The new version does have coherence on its side, but other than a brief scene showing Quill defending a bullied girl, the story could have been summed up by Quill in a few lines: “A space prince knocked up my mom, then Badoon killed her ten years after I was born.”

Done. I’ll take the prorated price of the book from anyone who wants to give it to me.

Price aside, though, Cosmic Avengers is a book for die-hards — Bendis fans, or those who must know what is happening to their favorite Guardians. If you don’t fit into either category, skip this book … and the next one too, since the only important event in that book is the appearance of Angela, which is hardly a universe-shaking happening, no matter what the Watcher tries to tell us.

Rating: (1.5 of 5)

Guardians of the Galaxy, v. 1: Legacy

Collects: Guardians of the Galaxy v. 2 #1-6 (2008)

Released: March 2009 (Marvel)

Format: 152 pages / color / $16.99 / ISBN: 9780785133384

What is this?: In the wake of the Annihilation events, Star-Lord puts together a “proactive” team to fight cosmic menaces and repair damage.

The culprits: Writers Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning and penciler Paul Pelletier

I’ve always felt Marvel should do more with their cosmic characters. I wasn’t sure what, exactly, but there was a great big universe out there in which tell stories — any kind of story you wanted, really, with at least a dozen characters Marvel fans were familiar with. But for a decade after Jim Starlin’s Infinity series, there wasn’t much — no Silver Surfer, very little Thanos, few (if any) events.

Then Marvel released their Annihilation crossovers, and I was happy they seemed well received, both critically and commercially. I didn’t particularly want to read long, involved space crossovers, but if they renewed interest in Marvel’s deep space program, then more power to them.

But when Marvel released Guardians of the Galaxy, v. 1: Legacy, I was intrigued. Playing off those crossovers, with characters who had been among their protagonists, Guardians was telling a new story going forward — more manageable, it seemed, than a sprawling crossover. I decided to get on board, and I’m glad I did.

First of all, the characters as written by Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning are fantastic. Rocket Raccoon is the most fun — how can a talking raccoon who blows up stuff not be? I enjoyed the bluntness / simplicity of Drax, and the telepathic Russian space dog Cosmo is a hoot as well. The other characters are also distinct: Star-Lord is a leader who may be over his head and might like the action a little too much, Gamora is deadly and sensual, the new Quasar is a new hero trying to connect with the father of her former girlfriend. (OK, they are well-worn character tropes — except for Quasar. Still, the old tropes can still work in the right situation.) I’m not sure about Warlock and Mantis, who don’t remind me of what I’ve seen of them in the past, but I’ll chalk that up to the Annihilation crossovers I haven’t read.

The idea of the team is a logical one — a proactive team to fight threats like the Annihilation wave and the Phalanx before they can commit genocide and to repair the damage those attacks did. Still, proactive teams never work in comics — well, rarely work. The Guardians’ standard heroic missions and fights against the Universal Church of Truth are entertaining, and although Skrulls are overexposed, the Skrull / Secret Invasion storyline that makes up the second half of Legacy succeeds; I especially like Drax’s method of rooting out Skrulls.

On the other hand, I am less enthused about Major Victory and Starhawk / One Who Knows (from the original Guardians) and Mantis’s heavy foreshadowing (if you can call blatant prophecy “foreshadowing”). I don’t care for playing with timelines — go read Exiles, if that’s your thing — and prophecies rarely turn out well, either for characters or writers. I am extremely uninterested in Star-Lord’s method of recruiting and a potential breakup of the team; the sooner the next volume is past that, the better.

Paul Pelletier’s pencils are great. The character designs are excellent, and their similarities show the team’s connections rather than being confusing or boring. Pelletier’s storytelling is great, and his art is sharp and beautiful. His aliens are imaginative, vibrant; he even makes each tentacled space beasts distinct.

My misgivings about the long-term plot threatened to lower my enthusiasm about the initial concept, but Pelletier’s art saves Legacy, pushing it past good into very good territory. I’m looking forward to the next volume of Guardians when it comes out in paperback (presumably in the fall; the hardback is already out out this week).

Rating: (4 of 5)