Rocket Raccoon #7

Writer by: Skottie Young
Art by: Felipe Andrade and Jean-Francois Beaulieu

So far, Skottie Young has delivered a fun story with very cartoon-ish art, up until now.

The first few issues of "Rocket Raccoon" were dedicated to humor (both in script and visually) and adventure, with Young delivering on both the art end and in his writing. After Young finished the issues he was commited to drawning, another artist, Jake Parker, stepped in to take over the art duties for the book. Despite Young's art style being pretty distinctive, the trasisition was actually pretty smooth, with Beaulieu still on colors and a style that was as close to Young's as possible without it being a rip-off. But now we get a new artist by the name of Felipe Andrade for this new story arc about Rocket and Groot crash landing on a frozen planet. The results are a bit mixed.While trapped on the planet Fron, Rocket and Groot run into a lot of trouble involving snow ninjas and giant monsters whose bites are extremely poisonous. The situation quickly becomes a matter of life and death for the crew and a new supporting cast member by the name of Jink, a native to the planet. While I do like what I've seen of Jink so far, it wasn't enough, but hopefully the book will expand past the minimal cast. 

Once the book goes transitions into a more serious situation, Young's Rocket verges on the edge of annoying. His crass mouth and rudeness are key points to Rocket's characterization when it comes to his humor and surface appearance, but after seven issues, that lack of depth can become pretty annoying. We know that Rocket masks his emotions under his foul mouth, but Rocket seems to go through the same motions too often in this run. It's time we dug a little deeper into this character, past the appearance of whiney anthromorphic animal. But it isn't all bad, since the emotional moment in this issue was very touching and Rocket still has some solid jokes up his sleeve.

The tone of the story has taken a darker tone along with an artist whose style is neither cartoon-like nor realistic. The completely frozen planet Rocket and Groot are trapped on is as visually plain as you'd expect; a far cry from the fun backdrops and easter eggs the past few issues have constantly dropped. I wouldn't say the art was particularly terrible, but it just wasn't exciting, although it did its job at depicting dangerous action scenes They way Rocket was drawn at points made him seem a bit humanoid and which felt ratherstrange. The past six issues have established a high visual standard, past being plain ol' servicable, like this issues art was.

Although I clearly didn't enjoy this issue as much as I have the past issues, I'm still excited for the future of this series. Rocket is a great character, and the situation that Rocket is heading into next issue has me kind of excited. It appears that this was merely a set-up issue, but when you're paying $4 for something that can be read in less than 10 minutes, you expect to be satisified, even if it is just the beginnning.