Nobody call him a raccoon... The Guardians’ flying furball is back for more interstellar antics.

(Panini Books)

There shouldn’t be as much fun and entertainment in the adventures of a gun-toting alien raccoon and his best buddy, an anthropomorphic giant tree with a three-word vocabulary, but then this is comics, and who would have thought a teenager with arachnid traits would have been a best-seller for half a century?

In contrast to fellow Guardian Star-Lord’s solo book, Rocket’s title never tries too hard to be funny, but has a natural charm and ease of touch which permeates throughout, with the cantankerous critter’s personality much more rounded than Peter Quill’s sub-standard Han Solo rip-off.

Writer Scottie Young knows his protagonists like the back of his hand, and comfortably weaves them into a series of narratives which are not only engrossing in their own right, but also serve to further develop the characters of each.

The ongoing hunt for the secrets of Rocket’s origin is resolved here in a typically unconventional manner, but the highlight of this collection has to be the furry fugitive’s exploits on an ice planet in the company of a warrior princess, as they desperately search for a cure to a virus which may just kill his best pal Groot.

In fact, the friendship between the riotous rodent and his arboreal ally is at the heart of this series, which allows for a poignancy that breaks up the moments of mayhem and bloodshed found splattered throughout the rest of the book.

It’s a shame this particular series is going to become another victim of the Secret Wars clear-out, as Marvel cancels various titles in the run-up to this crossover epic, but one would hope that the success of this volume and its predecessor will mean we don’t have to wait too long for Rocket Raccoon to fly again.