Released in 1985, Rocket Raccoon was a 4-issue mini-series set on Halfworld, a bizarre planetary asylum where the "Loonies" are looked after by talking animals, including their protector, the raccoon himself, Ranger Rocket.
It's a strange book. Halfworld is divided into two halves, one for organics and one for robots. The robots, while they do produce the toys the animals devise to keep the Loonies entertained, are mostly busy building an enormous Oscars trophy of a ship, for reasons unknown. After all, there's an energy barrier around the world that should prevent anyone entering or leaving (the Hulk having been a notable exception.)
Most of the series revolves around a war between the two chief toymakers, Lord Dyvyne and Judson Jakes, because Jakes wants to be the sole toymaker and charge exorbitant prices. Rocket is really more concerned with translating the "Halfworld Bible", left behind by those who founded Halfworld and originally tried to treat the "Loonies." Yet he's drawn in because his lady love Lylla will assume ownership of the toy company Jakes runs once she's old enough, and that's enough to make her, and Rocket, a target.
The overarching feeling I get of Halfworld is that it's a system that outlived its viable lifespan. The robots adapted and grew and decided caring for illogical humans was exhausting, so they modified the animals meant as companions for the patients, and left the job to them. But increasing the intelligence of the animals has given them their own desires and needs. "To serve," is no longer good enough. Jakes and Dyvyne each turn their toymakers towards weapons of war like cybernetic killer clowns that speak in rhyme as they blow you up, or clouds of living bad breath that erase anything they touch. There are mercenary groups, led by Blackjack O'Hare, who serve only the highest bidder, or their own desires. The patients are now just, in the way. Collateral damage in a war for control.
Even Rocket, who never hesitates to leap into the fray and protect the loonies, is weary of them. He's trying to translate the Halfworld Bible for answers, but mostly he wants out of the Keystone Quadrant. He wants to know if sanity exists, somewhere out there, because he doesn't see any around him.
This is early Mignola, so it's quite different from what'll be on Hellboy. Busier, more complicated, shadows not nearly as large a presence. Which is not to say he can't still draw some terrifying things. The panel of a patient tearing off his face to reveal a leering clown mug underneath has stuck with me ever since I bought this mini-series. There's a 3-panel sequence in issue 2 of a partygoer being erased by the "Red Breath" Dyvyne unleashed. The coloring sometimes muddies Mignola's lines, but he's also cramming a lot into some of these panels, so that may have been unavoidable.
(Rocket also smokes a pipe, which feels like it codes him as much older than Lylla, who apparently can't take control of her deceased parents' toy factory from Jakes until she's old enough. And while Rocket can be melodramatic, he's not making a lot of quips or banter. He's a straight-laced, if somewhat resigned, hero.)
Mantlo's script shifts from gags about the bizarre rituals the Loonies have concocted around the Halfworld Bible, or gags about "gorilla wars" and "Keystone Kops", to an extended "Masque of the Red Death" homage in issue 2, and a desperate fight in a Star Wars-style scummy cantina in issue 3. At times it feels like he's being satirical, at others, entirely serious. Which is maybe the point. Halfworld is a planetary insane asylum, and what goes on there may look crazy to us on the outside, but for those living there, it's life. Being the sole toymaker, and the power it would provide, is a big deal to Jakes. Enough to kill for.
5 comments:
I *adore* this comic (and so I'm quite grumpy about Marvel's attempt to retcon it as a false memory). I first encountered it reprinted in Marvel UK's Transformers, where it didn't fit in at all, so well done to whoever picked it.
Imagine being five or six and reading your favourite comic about robots-that-turn-into-cars and then you get this weird thing with talking animals and people tearing of their face to reveal killer robots (although that had precedent in Transformers UK) and clouds of red gas that melt people into nothingness.
Mignola's art is wonderful, even if it's nothing like how he draws today, and the story is insane and dark and interesting. It works for kids but I also appreciated it a lot more as I got older and started to understand concepts like horror and mental health.
It's a great comic. Love it.
Oh, and I'm pretty sure Blackjack O'Hare is appearing in Mortal Thor at the moment, which is bizarre.
Buh-wa?! Is Loki or Don Blake (every time I check in on Thor it seems like Blake's getting another raw deal) just fucking with Thor? "Here, fight an angry bunny. *snicker*"
I'm going by the cover; that certainly looks like Blackjack there. I think Ewing used him in his Guardians run too.
I didn't pick it up until at least the late-2000s, probably after your post on Comics Bulletin about Rocket Raccoon (where you posted that panel of the clown tearing his face off with a comment about Mantlo hating kids with the power of a thousand Christian Bales), but it is a wild book.
I feel like I need to think more about the part that, by the time the mini-series starts, the Loonies are actually descendants of the original patients. But they've grown up in these circumstances, so they've developed the same problems as their parents.
Are they back to Halfworld being made up? Best I've been able to track, DnA made it a much more mechanical place that Rocket left to protect. Skottie Young made it something Rocket knew nothing about and thought was a joke (see next week.) Al Ewing seemed to treat it as a real part of Rocket's past in his "Rocket" mini-series (which I'll get to at year's end), but I don't know what's been said since.
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