Posted in: Comics, Marvel Comics | Tagged: gotg, guardians of the galaxy, halfworld, marvel, rocket raccoon

Marvel Rewrites Rocket Raccoon's Origin Again, In Time For The Movie

Earlier this week, Bleeding Cool reported on the release of a digital Marvel Unlimited exclusive return of Al Ewing to Rocket Raccoon for today, Strange Tales: Toy Boxes drawn by Ramon Bachs, coloured by Javier Tartaglia, lettered by Joe Sabino and edited by Mark Basso. And noted that it was revisiting and rewriting Rocket Raccoon's weirdest of origin stories again, on the planet of Halfworld.

Then the trailer for Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol 3 dropped – featuring the Guardians Of The Galaxy revisiting Rocket Raccoon's origins on Halfworld. So how is the new comic book going?

With Rocket Raccoon now re-described as a to be a therapy animal for the patients of Halfworld, it's time to revisit thr various origins of Rocket Raccoon. Rocket Raccoon first appeared in Incredible Hulk #271 written by Bill Mantlo and drawn by Sal Buscema, it was an insane world without much logic to it. That was kind of the point.

Halfworld was a work split in two, with anthropomorphic animals in one half, robots in another, making a giant humanoid space ship – as well as toys for the animals.

Though there were no humans.

The reasons for all of this were unknown, though s the world got more corrupt, it looked to its own origins for some kind of a) explanation or b) profit.

All in one issue. Bill Mantlo would then write the 1985 Rocket Raccoon mini-series drawn by Hellboy creator Mike Mignola, which would actually lay some kind of logic on the above structure, which did indeed have humans just known as "loonies", descendants of an insane asylum established on the planet. As the secrets of the Gideon Bible were revealed.

The human got bored and left the robots to do their work for them. The robots got bored and engineered the animals to do the work for them.

Oh, and we also got to meet Rocket Raccoon's wife, Lylla.

Who we also saw in the Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol 3 trailer.

It all ended up happily for robots, animals, loonies and all.

And it is these sequences of events that Al Ewing revisits this week. But there are problems with Rocket Raccoon's memories.

Because in the Anhilliators series by Dan Abnett, Andy Lanning and Timothy Green II, which helped set up the Guardians of The Galaxy reality reflected by the movies. In which Rocket Raccoon returned to Halfworld and found what he thought was just an illusion. And a new reality explained by his former wife. Lylla and now married Blackjack.

With Halfworld revealed to be nothing more than a a major asylum space station/planet.

With Rocket Raccoon and the other animals designed to calm patients from the get go.

No original shrinks, no psychiatrists, no robot overlords…

And it was only an assault by a psychic patient that saw Rocket Raccoon wipe out his own memories and leave, in order to keep his wife and everyone else safe from psychic attack.

Something Al Ewing himself revisited when writing the Rocket! series drawn by Adam Gorham.

But even then, suggesting that these might all be unreliable memories.

And now Rocket Raccoon revisiting his own past and attempts to retcon it as a grim and grittier version. And not knowing which way is up. And maybe… retconning the retcon?

And that's where we are now. Rocket Raccoon has been the subject of three major retcons now. Will this one set the status of how Halfworld will be seen in Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol 3?

Looks like, at some point in the very near future, Marvel Comics will be asking all these questions and maybe answering a few. But for now, Halfworld is back to having been a real thing… to some degree at least. The comics will try and match what the movies have…

While in the movie, everyone gets in their Annhiliation costumes from the comics.

Eternally yours, with love…

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