In one of today’s features for our Guardians of the Galaxy Month here at Multiversity to benefit to Bill Mantlo (which you can read more about here and here), we continue our chats with various people behind the current iteration of “Guardians of the Galaxy.” And today, we talk with the writer and artist behind the almost impossibly great new series “Rocket Raccoon,” Skottie Young.
A Marvel veteran and the man behind Marvel’s popular Baby Variants, Young launched the new “Rocket Raccoon” series this month with colorist Jean-Francois Beaulieu to a massive sell-out and various critical acclaim.
Read on as we chat about the humor behind the series, playing in the Cosmic world after leaving Oz, and Will Tippin.
Kicking it right off, I think the best place to start is to get a bit of your history with Cosmic Marvel. Obviously, Cosmic Marvel has been around for years, starting off in the 60’s, picking up in the mid-70’s and certainly we’re very used to the 2008 Cosmic as the current standard. For you, what is your experience with Cosmic Marvel?
Skottie Young: I read through a good deal of the latest “Guardians of the Galaxy” that Brian Bendis launched with Steve McNiven and Sarah Pichelli and the other artists involved. I went back and I read the old “Rocket Raccoon” mini-series, but honestly, I don’t have a really good history. [Laughs] It’s probably disappointing for people to hear, but there is not a great, long history for me with the Cosmic stuff. I enjoy the visuals of it and I’ve always liked the ideas of the Cosmic, space-hopping books; I like anything that allows you to make things up completely, where you don’t have to be grounded in the real world. I think anyone who is familiar with my art style knows that I’m not someone who people would consider realistic. So, any kind of setting or world that allows me to make things up and have that be accepted is one that I really enjoy.
So, no, there wasn’t a really deep history for me with the Marvel Cosmic stuff.
You said you did go back a bit, so what did you find there? Did you read the original Rocket mini, ‘The Guardian of Keystone Quadrant,’ by Bill Mantlo and Mike Mignola?
Skottie Young: Yeah, I went back and read that. Obviously a character like Rocket appeals to me, you know? I love drawing animals, I like drawing animated looking characters, so there’s a lot of appeal there to me. I like characters with that kind of attitude. There is definitely an appeal there, which kind of led me to picking at characters for my next project. But, yeah, I went back and read the old Mantlo/Mignola series, which is pretty whacky, fun stuff. [Laughs]
Yeah, I like it because it’s so goofy, you know? He’s hanging out with the Loonies, his best friend is a Walrus not Wal Russ. But, Rocket has come a long way since then, obviously, so while still taking into consideration the original Mantlo/Mignola series and looking at where he went, how do you find the evolution of Rocket and how that influences where you want to take him?
Skottie Young: Again, I hope this doesn’t sound too disappointing to anybody, but I don’t really think about it. When I came on “Oz” and we lined that project up back in late 2008, I read through the first novel… but after that, I didn’t want to think about it. I didn’t go in and start watching all the movies and getting all the other adaptations. I really wanted to go the opposite direction and just cut myself off from all that, to just read the scripts that Eric Shanower was adapting and treat those like that was the original material. I wanted to see what I could come up with based on the scripts that I was being handed. In a lot of ways, I’d like to just pretend that the other stuff doesn’t exist a little bit; it’s not because I think I’ll do a better job, but mostly because I don’t want to be overly influenced in a way where I’ll think, “Oh, gosh, that is so much better than anything I could’ve come up with, I’ll just do that.”
Continued belowSo for me, with this, I felt like from the stuff that I had read, the old Mantlo books and some of the things that Brian was doing with him with other artists in the new “Guardians of the Galaxy,” I felt like… I got the general idea of where the headspace was. From there I just wanted to see who I thought he was, you know? I think that’s kind of the beauty of comics. I like the idea that you can go and pick up the various books at Marvel, and Hickman’s Wolverine might be slightly different from Rick Remender’s Wolverine; everyone’s going to write a character a little bit different because everyone is a different kind of writer. That’s how I wanted to approach Rocket — I got the general tone of everything, and outside of that I didn’t necessarily want to be beholden to anybody else’s tone. I wanted to see what kind of tone I could come up with myself without doing a 180 or anything.
Lets look back a bit. How did you initially come about working on this project, taking over a Rocket Raccoon solo? It’s a pretty big deal, as the character hasn’t had as high of a profile to justify a big solo ongoing before.
SY: It was about a year and a half ago now. This is definitely a little bit pre-buzz of the movie; there still wasn’t really any imagery from the movie out in the world. Everyone knew that a movie was happening but it wasn’t really being talked about much at the time. I feel like Brian and Steve were just launching the “Guardians of the Galaxy” book, and CB Cebulski and I went off to speak at a college for a weekend, talk to some students, and as we were flying back we had a couple hours at the airport together. We set up in the Delta lounge and were chatting about “Oz,” and we kind of decided that after the sixth volume that I wanted to take a bit of a break. I’d been working on that for about six years and I wanted to try another project.
I kept saying that I want to try something else but didn’t necessarily see myself fitting into regular Marvel, since it was tossed out about maybe doing a run on “Guardians of the Galaxy” or a run on this or a run on that. They were all great books that I loved, but after drawing “Oz” for so long, I didn’t really see myself feeling comfortable drawing your typical, muscle-y superhero faire, you know? Not that I didn’t like it, I just truly felt like I couldn’t draw that anymore! [Laughs] I’d spent six years drawing scarecrows and people made of metal, these big plushy lions in made-up worlds; my muscles for drawing muscles had slightly atrophied!
So, well, I knew that I wanted to write. I had been writing for other artists for a little while and I knew that I wanted to write my own projects. I knew I wanted to do something with a bit more of a humorous slant, so it had to be a character that I could get away with being me in — so, somebody like Deadpool or, well, Rocket Raccoon. And we thought, oh, that would be cool. That was really the initial conversation, and we took that and gave it over to Marvel and somewhere over the course of the next few months, Steve Wacker (who, at the time, was still the editor of the “Guardian” book before he went out to the West Coast and abandoned us), he brought me in and said, “Want to do this Rocket Raccoon book?” And we lined it up, I put together my idea and pitch, and it was just a super natural process. I felt like I fit the book, that it made sense, and everyone else thought it was a good fit for me; there wasn’t a lot of hustle and bustle around it. It really just was a simple of thing that I thought I’d fit, they thought I’d fit, and there wasn’t too much hype behind it after that. We just started a project like we always start a project.
Continued belowIt wasn’t until much later when I started to feel like it was a bigger deal. [Laughs]
I’m not sure who fully keeps track of record makers or anything, but the book selling 300,000 copies of the first issue is pretty darn big of a deal there.
SY: Sure. We had a little over 300,000 copies sold, and we just found out that we will be doing a second printing on the first issue already. I did not expect that many sales on the first issue, and I definitely did not expect for us to have to go into a second printing, so it’s crazy unexpected.
And it’s interesting too, because Marvel made that deal with Loot Crate, where at least a hundred thousand copies were given to Loot Crate subscribers, and this is the first time they’ve ever done anything like this — and it’s on your book. I think that’s a pretty good show of confidence.
SY: Yeah, I mean, I think it’s great. I love the idea of that; the buzz around the industry is always, “How do we get comics into new people’s hands?” I think a system like Loot Crate is a fantastic method of doing just that. Putting a comic into people’s hands who probably would like something like this is a really cool thing. And it’s very flattering for it to happening with a book that not only am I drawing but it’s also my first time out doing an ongoing series that I’m writing and drawing. It’s pretty cool.
That’s actually an excellent segue because, considering the hype of the character and the book, what are some of the challenges you’ve set coming into the book? Or some of the goals and tasks that you want to make sure you do while writing and illustrating “Rocket”?
SY: Really the challenge was just more in my head, getting over the idea as to whether people would like it or not. I’ve been drawing comics for so long that I’m very used to the process, what happens: I get a script, I draw the script, I put it out into the world. I’ve gotten pretty used to not paying attention to reviews or getting sucked into comment threads; I draw stuff that makes me happy and if it makes me happy then I’ll assume it’ll make another few people happy, and then I move on to another issue.
Over the years I’ve started writing a little bit more. I wrote a “Magneto” mini-series and I wrote a “Punisher” one-shot, some “Deadpool” stuff. I’ve written a lot of other things that other artists have drawn, but I think the one thing that I didn’t want to do, while I was confident in my writing, I was fearful that I may have come up against that wall of, “Oh, he’s an artist, he’s just an artist.” [Laughs] “Who knows what his writing will be like?” That was a challenge just trying to get over that in my own head, and just not thinking about that, not worrying about that. Sometimes I think there might’ve been that desire for me to overdo it, “If they think I’m going to be this, then I’ve got to prove to them that I’m that.”
So that was the challenge at first when I got started. But once I got rolling, it kind of pushed all that aside. There was a lot less challenges than when I didn’t write for myself, because I wrote what I wanted to draw. [Laughs] If I didn’t want to draw it, I wasn’t going to write it, you know? I think it made for less challenges, so it made for a more harmonious project.
And obviously, I think the freedom of doing a book sci-fi, doing a book out in space is essentially a limitless opportunity to take a character as humorous as a talking space raccoon is and then just running wild with it.
SY: Oh, yeah. On the visuals, on the backgrounds, the environments, the characters — it really is a free for all. Anything that I need or want to appear can and it would make sense. If I need Groot fighting a big, goopy tentacle monster in a wrestling match, that is not weird or out of place. That’s normal. It’s nice to be able to play with things like that and get away with it, as opposed to if I was writing and drawing a Punisher book, that would be a lot more difficult for me to pull off, some of the things that I would do. A crab-looking character pulling out big guns, stuff like that. [Laughs] The space setting is one of my favorite things about the project.
Continued belowOne of the things that I really like about your work is that it’s not just humorous writing or everything relying on an upbeat, fast-paced read, but the humor of it really translates really well into the visuals. If we’re looking at the first issue, that very first gag with Rocket inside of a bigger space suit, once he unzips it it’s pretty hilarious. So the question that I have is, since comedy is such a visual thing anyway and it’s very easy for people to deliver comedy with actions — waving hands about, facial inflections, things of that nature — how do you find the challenge in translating that aspect into the static panels of this medium?
SY: I feel like, again, because I’m writing and drawing it myself, the hurdle that used to be there might not be all the way gone but is definitely much lower than it used to be. When I go through, I write myself a full script; I do want to think out any of the jokes or humor. I don’t really consider them jokes as I’m not thinking about gags and punchlines, but I’m actually writing it much more from a place of “This is how this character reacts and says stuff.” There’s not going to be a rim-shot at the end of his sentence, you know?
So, I go through, I write the full script, and then when I draw it I take the exact dialogue or the essence of the idea I was trying to get across, and I do visually what you’re talking about. When I talk in real life I’m a pretty animated person, so my arms are flailing about, and I’m 6’4″ so my giant arms are flailing about and everything seems very exaggerated and over the top. I kind of keep that in mind when I’m drawing, and I try to push those key moments to the extreme. Some people call it cartoony, but whatever it is, I really think about the acting and then try and overact it all a bit because there is no motion. My style is kind of loose with the brush, and I think those lines kind of give the insinuation of movement.
Once I get that in, then I can go back and see if the joke still works, does the line still work and is it funny? Or is there a funnier one to be had? For example, I forget which page it is, but in the first issue there’s the scene where Rocket is on the phone with Star-Lord, and he’s shoving a cop’s head in the water. When I wrote that scene, I wrote that panel one was Rocket on the phone with Star-Lord, he’s fighting a cop, and he says this, and panel two was “Similar panel, still fighting cop.” So I didn’t have the physical actions worked out because I thought, well, I’ll draw it better than I’ll write. When I started drawing it, I drew the first panel where he’s fish-hooking the cop and he’s on his back and he’s got his phone in the other hand, and then I cut to a few seconds later and thought, “Oh, what do I want him to do? I’ll have him holding this guy’s head under the water.”
Because I drew it, the original dialogue changed; it was originally something like, “Hey, you’re framed for murder!” “What? That’s crazy! I didn’t do that!” and then just going to panel three. Because I happened to draw him with this guy’s head under water while talking, it gave the idea, “What? I’m framed for murder?” and Star-Lord says, “…Are you murdering someone right now?” [Laughs] “Maybe, but that’s not the point!” That reaction wasn’t a joke that was thought about before as, here’s my gag, here’s my set-up, here’s my punch-line. It was much more organic, as artsy as that sounds, but it was about having my own conversation with the art — I drew it, it made me think of something and, similar to how I would have a conversation with you, if you say something I’ll have a natural reaction. That’s how I looked at it.
Continued belowI think pulling off the humor is a lot easier now that I’m doing it all myself. I can have that conversation with myself between the writing and the art, and that’s the thing that helps me get over what you were saying. I don’t have the benefit of someone audibly saying something or that aspect of physical movement, but I think I can make up for that with the writing and the art being super blended together and coming from the same source.
It’s interesting that you bring that up. I bought the digital special edition of “Rocket,” which comes with a ton of extras and exclusives, including from pencils to inks to colors. Looking through it, I can see that quite a few things have changed, including the ending which is now a bit different. The pencils included in here have a different spaceship, the framing is different, the final page is different. Coming back, when you do your pencils and then look at it from that conversational perspective, how are you deciding on what stays, what goes, what design is lost, that sort of stuff?
SY: Everything usually stays. That being a first issue, I got to the end and after I had penciled it, maybe even inked it, I got to the final page and there was something about the last two pages that just did not hit the feeling that I had. It wasn’t working. It was a weekend, so I called up Sana Amanat, my editor, and said, “I’m going to re-do the last two pages.” I don’t ever do this; I’m the king of telling people not to re-do pages and just move on, but it wasn’t about re-doing them because they don’t look good. I feel like I didn’t hit the story note that I wanted to hit, the attitude and the extreme nature of the ending of the story. It was just as simple as me thinking, you know what? I’m going to change this up. And instead of writing it, I had an idea in my head, thumbnailed it out, inked it up and wrote dialogue to it. It worked out a lot better, I thought.
The spaceship stuff is interesting because, as I’m drawing it, I’m just making up these spaceships on the spot and I don’t know if I’ll ever use this thing again. The first spaceship I had, it was cool but it was just kinda this generic thing. I thought when I re-did it, wait a minute, come on lets make this spaceship fun. She’s the evil villain now, so lets get straight cheesy and make her ship look like a skull! [Laughs]
It’s little things like that. It hasn’t happened again since in the issues that I’ve finished, but that was just a case of me feeling like I hadn’t hit the feeling I wanted to. I’m not going to be letting any writers down since I’m the writer, so if I want to change and I have time I’ll jump in and do it.
One of my other favorite parts about the visuals in this issue were the little jokes, the easter eggs and sound effect nods. There’s the Beastie Boys sound effect in the latter half of the issue, and when he walks into the arena and sees the opening fight, there’s certainly little jokes all over that — including the Jasons’ book over at Image. In doing stuff like that and getting in little jokey easter eggs, what is the process of deciding where to put that kind of visual humor where a reader may not actively look at them?
SY: [Laughs] Again, this is not a sexy answer, but there is no thought to it. A lot of times you’ll notice in the special edition of the book that comes with the pencil and inks, there’s a good deal of sound effects that aren’t even in the pencils. When I went to ink the pages, I added the sound effect at that stage. A lot of times, especially in that splash page you’re talking about with the wrestling match, I’m drawing a lot of backs and you’ve got to put something on there. Well, they’re at a wrestling match, so I had a real purpose of making this not look like every sci-fi thing where everyone is in super blues and greys; I thought it’d be cool to have biker-looking people here in a wrestling match in space. So, hey, I’m really good friends with Jason Latour and Jason Aaron, and at the time that I drew it their book wasn’t even out yet. I don’t even know if it was at a place where it could be read yet! But because they’re buddies and I knew it was coming out, why not, right?
Continued below
A lot of times, it’s just about filling space. I need to put something on the back of this guy’s jacket, and my buddies have a new comic coming out called “Southern Bastards” so I’ll put that there. This guy here, he has long hair and he kinda looks like a biker, I’ll make him the Southern Bastard. [Laughs] One of my best friends in the business and someone who has been my good friend for years and years is CB Cebulski, and I call him “Ceebs” a lot, so you’ll see there’s a guy with a jacket where his bike group says “Ceebs” on the back. So I just need to fill some space and I’ll give a nod to one of my buddies, or … I like Dr. Seuss so there’s a sign in there about Dr. Seuss somewhere.
I grew up reading MAD Magazine. That’s what I really read before I read comic books. Sergio Aragones always filled pages, these MAD double-page spread of people at an airport or convention or something, and it was always fun just to look around there and see the signs and little jokes and in-jokes. For me, well, I drew this big thing and I have the main part with characters wrestling, but something has to fill the rest of the space. At the beginning where he’s clicking a detonator and instead of *click* I happened to have drawn the character clicking the detonator with his pinky out so I thought it would be more funny if the sound effect was *pinky-out click* to make sure that you knew he had his pinky out. I didn’t come up with that until I was inking it. I definitely know the Beastie Boys *mmmmm drop*, I did not come up with that until I was inking it. You probably would not put a sound effect on that panel because nothing is happening — guns are falling in mid-air. But I couldn’t help it; when I drew it it just popped into my head, and I’m a big hip-hop fan.
You’ll find just as many *blams* in my book as well. *Bang,* *Clang*, *Whoosh*. It’s really just in the moment or on the day, whether or not I listened to a song that inspired me that day. Whatever hits me at that moment. If something occurs to me, I’ll throw it in. There’s really no rhyme or reason. I wish there was a sexier reason to it, but it’s all pretty random.
Looking towards the story of the book, the unexpected aspect of the book is that you’re actually picking up a thread that was introduced in a free digital comic written by Brian Bendis, illustrated by Ming Doyle. What kind of working relationship or collaboration with Brian to pick up the thread of that story? Because, I’ll be honest, I’d pretty much forgotten about it until the end of this issue.
SY: There really was none. [Laughs] Another completely unsexy answer. When I first got the gig, I got on the phone with Brian and we were feeling where I was going and making sure what he had going on, where things were heading, anything like that — I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t going to step on any toes or mess anything up. Just to know if I needed to put orange traffic cones down anywhere around my ideas, things to avoid. I asked him about that digital comic and asked if there was something he had plans for, and he basically just said, “Hey, go have fun.” Brian’s great like that. Brian is super “we’re all in this together, go make some stuff up.” If you’ve ever drawn a script for him, his script always start off saying, “Hey, this is an outline, so if while you’re drawing this you want to change things, go ahead and I’ll figure it out later.” He’s a very collaborative person, and he couldn’t have been more generous with a character he’d been writing for a while. He said “that was just a little tale that I made; what happens afterwards is up to you if you want to use it.”
Continued belowI just used that little tale as a jumping off point because I thought it was a nice set-up. It dropped a few hints or asked a few questions that may or may not need to be answered. It was a nice thing for us to use as a kick-off to a little fun romp, I thought.
In looking at the story that you’d like to tell with Rocket, this issue is nice because it is relatively self-contained but shoots off in two directions at the end. Do you want to keep multiple threads going in the book, or were you hoping to do things more self-contained? Now that you have complete control over this book, what is the style that you’d like to use when approaching Rocket’s story?
SY: The story that I’m starting right now is going to be a four-issue story. This little arc that I have going on will be about four issue. There’ll be threads after that that will still spider out through the book over the course of its run, but after the first arc I definitely have plans to do a little bit more one and dones. There will still be threads that run through them, but each issue you pick up will have its own theme and feel a little bit more like the days of comics where you could pick up a comic and read that issue and have a blast of it. When you get to the last page you just feel, yeah, that was awesome. And you could still pick up threads from that issue four issues later, you never feel like you didn’t get what you wanted out of it, you know?
I’m planning to wrap this story arc up in about four issues or so. Then we’ll do some more one-offs, fun little romps here and there.
One of the things you constantly hear about Marvel these days is this idea of indie-ization, you know? Opening the books up to more freedom for writers, different directions in art that aren’t part of a “house style” or anything. With “Rocket,” are you experiencing that kind of indie-ization freedom where you can take the book in whatever direction you want? Obviously Rocket has such a big profile now, and movies sometimes change things a bit.
SY: I have not had one person say anything to me about anything, outside of “Would this story point work better?” Me and Sana and Devin Lewis, my editor team on the book, we’re a collaborative team. They’re not there to tell me what I can and can’t do. They’ve been there to just tell me, “Hey, I read this, do you think this might read better if we did this?” It’s all about making the story read better, and for me that’s fantastic. As far any of sort of creative handcuffs, I have not experienced any. I’ve had no idea that I put on the table shot down or told I can’t go there. I’m bringing in a pretty whacky character in the second issue that definitely someone you’re not going to see in the movie or anything like that.
So when you say things like “Rocket has a big profile,” I’m not going to say I don’t see that but I do not feel that way on the creative side of things simply because of how much freedom they’ve allowed me to have. That being said, I’ve been drawing monthly comic books for Marvel since 2001, so I’m a vet up there. I know where I’m going, how to do things, what I should do or shouldn’t do and where things are heading. But, no, nobody has put up any roadblocks or been too hands on with that kind of stuff outside of trying to make the story better.
So I guess, what was going to be my follow-up is sort of answered. The movie and Rocket’s role in the film, probably none of that stuff makes you nervous how readers might approach the book or the character?
SY: Naw. Listen, man: it’s comics. For me, every month I’ll make a 20 page comic and hopefully you’ll get in and have fun with it. It’s not all that important as that, you know? If I started thinking about that level of stuff then I’ll just go off the rails. [Laughs] It’s too much, it’s too big! It’s trying to predict things that I have no control over, trying to predict people’s reaction to things I have no control over. I just think about coming into the studio and hitting the keyboard a few times and then throwing some ink around the page, then starting up and doing it again the next month. Hopefully people have fun along the ride.
Continued belowFor me, I don’t think I’m very far off from the movie. I haven’t seen the movie, I haven’t read the script so I don’t know what they’re doing with the character in the movies. But, you know, I think we all know that we get the vibe of Rocket. I don’t think I’m going to be too far off from what people are expecting or want, and I think based on the last couple of reactions from the past few days of whats out there now, I think people are pretty happy with what has been going down in the book.
So, yeah, I’m not too worried. Or at least I try not to think about it so I don’t get worried.
Well, on that note, what would you say is your favorite Bradley Cooper movie then?
SY: [Laughs] My favorite Bradley Cooper movie, huh? Well, listen, I’m going to break the rules of your question and say that it’s not a movie, but I’m going to say I’m a Will Tippin fan from Alias. My wife and I, we are giant Alias fans, and this is back before Bradley Cooper was Bradley Cooper; he was just one of Sydney Bristow’s buddies on Alias, and my wife had such a crazy crush on him before he was the world famous movie star. We still to this day in my house don’t refer to him as Bradley Cooper, we refer to him as Will Tippin. [Laughs]
It sounds like you’ve got a pretty firm grasp of what you want to do with the book. We’ve got humor, we’ve got the limitless nature of space, and the affable lead character who has forces already weighing down on him. What would you say is the thing you are most excited about to get to do on the book, to show people what you can do on the book?
SY: Again, I feel like I’m saying really generic issues, but everything, man. [Laughs] I don’t have a big ultimate end goal. I’m trying my best to be pretty spontaneous and have fun right now while I’m doing it. The kind of writer and storyteller that I am, I’m very in the moment. One of my mottos is, if I come up with cool ideas — drawing, stories I create on my own, anything — if I have a cool idea then just do it right now, and come up with something else later. Sometimes I think our tendency is that we come up with a really cool idea and we want to save it, we want to put it way far in the end. We’ll do all these things on the way there, but my feeling is what if I don’t come up with cool enough things on my way to the cool idea I already had? [Laughs]
Right now, it’s been panel to panel for me. I’m just super, super thrilled to be writing and drawing a book with a character like this, having a lot of humor and having people accept that, being so welcoming to that. It’s always a nervous thing with humor in comics, you know? So for me, I’m just excited for people to come along and enjoy the whole ride. There’s not one thing I could name.
Well if ever in doubt with what you’re doing panel to panel, I would say a good rule of thumb is: always use Beastie Boys references.
SY: It doesn’t hurt! I did say before it came out I thought, I was talking to my buddy Jason Howard (“Trees,” “Super Dinosaur”), we chat every day and I was saying that I have no idea what people’s reactions will be to this book. But my hope is that if they do not like the writing, my sound effects will hopefully make them giggle enough to not realize they didn’t like the writing. That’s my motto: when in doubt, sound effect it out.
