Out of Knowhere

 I must admit, I didn’t read the original Rocket Raccoon miniseries because I didn’t like Mike Mignola’s art back then. It took a while for me to appreciate his work. I think it was when he did a fill-in job on Byrne’s Superman reboot that made me realize how good his artwork was.

As for Rocket himself, I liked his storyarc the best among his fellow Guardians of the Galaxy in the movie trilogy.

The Lost Crusade

These guys were largely ignored in the 1980s Red Circle revival of Archie Comics’ superheroes, except for She-Fox who was introduced during that era. Three of them were in the second issue as villains, but those turned out to be artificial doubles and none were the real deal.

But in recent years Archie Comics has used them in short stories in their comics digests, usually interacting with Archie and the gang. So at least they’re not gone and forgotten.

Heads of State

 

This was a series that never seemed to end. I had some issues of this title that I bought as local Philippine reprints when I was a kid, and every issue I bought ended with a cliffhanger. So when the series was reprinted in the Essential line of B&W books some years back, I bought it to get the whole story. And yeah, every issue really did end with a cliffhanger that leads you to the next issue. I guess that’s why I gravitated towards DC more as a kid, because they did more done-in-ones while Marvel had a tendency to do multiple issue stories.

Cumulative Cumulus

 

Warp was my favorite First Comics title. I didn’t buy the series as it was coming out, but rather managed to buy scattered issues from various bargain book shops, bookstores, and back issue bins. I almost have the complete run, the only one missing is the final issue. Hoping that someday I’ll be able to find it somewhere out there.

Surfin’ the (Shock) Wave

 

Marvel started out the Transformers license by incorporating them into the Marvel Universe and having Spider-Man guest-star in the third issue. But they decided against it later on so that their Transformers stories existed in its own continuity. But what if they continued with their original route? We might have gotten something like this, where the Transformers might have had to worry about not just one but two planet devourers.