Rocket Raccoon Getting Ongoing Solo Series From Skottie Young

If there was any doubt about which character Marvel thinks will be the breakout star in this summer’s Guardians of the Galaxy movie, they were just put to rest with a revelation made earlier today: Rocket Raccoon is getting his own ongoing solo book this July.

The new series will be written and drawn by Skottie Young, whose uniquely stylized art should be a perfect fit for the surly, well-armed  anthropomorphic animal. The creator told MTV he is going to give Rocket an edge without going over the line into vulgarity, a characterization that jibes with how he’s been portrayed in comics to date. Comic Book Resources also has an early look at some of Young’s intitial pages.

This won’t be the first time that Rocket Raccoon has been the star of his own book, as he had his own four-issue limited series by Bill Mantlo and Hellboy creator Mike Mignola back in the mid-80s. There’s also much less pressure on any character to carry a solo title these days since “ongoing” can still easily mean the series wraps up in 20 issues or less.

Still, it’s a big bet on the popularity of a walking, talking raccoon, one that wouldn’t have been made a few years ago before the Marvel Cinematic Universe began kicking all kinds of box office butt. Will people migrate from seeing the Bradley Cooper-voiced Rocket to wanting to read about him each month? We’ll find out in just a few months.

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