Image: Bill Mantlo, Keith Giffen/Marvel Comics

And if the preceding sentence sounds like a late-hippie fever dream more than anything resembling the Guardians of the Galaxy, that’s to be expected. In that issue, Bill Mantlo and artist Keith Giffen used an installment of their spacefaring sword-and-sorcery series The Sword and the Star to introduce a talking raccoon with the Beatles-punning name of Rocky, who guides the heroic Prince Wayfinder through the forest planet of Witch-World. Rocket’s earliest origin story was presented in 1976’s Marvel Preview #7, part of the company’s short-lived line of offbeat black-and-white magazines. Just as Spider-Man was a leap forward in superhero storytelling from the cardboard dialogue of Silver Age Superman, Rocket is a troubled, complex departure from the Bugs Bunnys and Detective Chimps that preceded him.Īs Marvel Comics scribe Al Ewing told Polygon via email, “Rocket was cast out of his Eden by unforgiving gods and left to fend for himself - of course readers and audiences want to take him to their hearts.” Rocket Raccoon, in other words, is the saddest funny animal who ever lived. 3, we should reflect on whether the character’s cultural appeal isn’t mysterious at all.Īfter all, Rocket’s allure comes from the same set of contrasts that Stan Lee used to pioneer the new wave of troubled, humanized heroes from which the Marvel Universe was built. But as the character’s Bradley Cooper-voiced movie avatar prepares to make what might be his final appearance in the Marvel Cinematic Universe in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.

It would be hard to imagine a more unlikely ascent to stardom over the past decade than that of Rocket Raccoon, the short-tempered, bipedal forest-dweller who has become a staple of Marvel Studios’ Guardians of the Galaxy franchise.

Gerald Ford was in the White House, Wings and Elton John were topping the charts, and in the ramshackle halls of Marvel Comics, a talking raccoon was born.

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