Marvel gives Rocket Raccoon his own series from Skottie Young in July

The breakout star of the recent Guardians of the Galaxy trailer was undoubtedly Rocket Raccoon, the pint-sized alien with a penchant for infeasibly large weaponry.  Unsurprisingly, Marvel will give the extraterrestrial procyonid his own series in July. Even more exciting is the news that Skottie Young, known for The Wonderful Wizard of Oz series and virtually every Marvel variant of the last few years, will make this his first ongoing series as writer and artist.

According to MTV, who exclusively broke the news and provided the pictures below, Young is incredibly excited about the project and inspired by sources outside the funny books. “I think it’s going to have a connection to that nostalgic feeling for ‘Looney Tunes,’ that old animated flavor where everything wasn’t squeaky clean, you know? Daffy Duck would get his bill blasted off with double barrel shotguns… That’s what I grew up watching, and being able to play around with that in this hyper-superhero intergalactic universe will be a lot of fun.”

Rocket can currently be seen in the pages of Brian Michael Bendis’s Guardians of the Galaxy, but he was last seen in his own series of team-up adventures (with Groot, of course) as a secondary story in Annihilators, for which Skottie Young did several variant covers. Created by writer Bill Mantlo and artist Keith Giffen in 1976 in the pages of Marvel Preview #7, the Beatles-inspired joke character with rocket skates, the character took on a life of his own in Annihilation: Conquest, where a proto version of the Guardians of the Galaxy formed in the Annihilation: Conquest – Star-Lord mini-series. This will mark the first time the character has been given an ongoing series.

Living in an age where Rocket Raccoon is a featured hero is a special treat indeed, with plush toys, LEGO and action figures of the character all due out in time for the film this year. It’s truly the Year of the Raccoon.