We continue our tour through the alphabet, with a different cool comic book item each day, from A to Z!

Today we look at one of the best comic book characters based on a Beatles song!

Rocket Raccoon was a fairly throwaway character introduced by Bill Mantlo and Keith Giffen in an issue of Incredible Hulk.

The character, of course, is named after the song "Rocky Raccoon" by the Beatles. His first appearance was filled with little Beatles' in-jokes.

Rocket was considered off-beat and quirky enough that he was actually given his own mini-series, which was drawn by a young Mike Mignola, who really did a magnificent job on the artwork, making the mini-series well worth picking up.

Then Rocket, sadly, fell into disuse for decades (save for an appearance in the pages of no other than Quasar...

)

Recently, Rocket's co-creator, Keith Giffen, was doing an Annihilation Conquest mini-series starring Starlord. The gist of the series is that Starlord puts together a sort of motley crew of little-used alien characters, and Rocket is one of the characters used!

A triumphant return!

Rocket's return was so well received that when Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning began a new Guardians of the Galaxy title starring a team formed by Starlord, Rocket Raccoon was included!

In fact, after the group and Starlord had a bit of a parting of the ways a half dozen issues in, Rocket even became the temporary LEADER of a makeshift version of the team!

That's where you'll see Rocket monthly, wisecracking and kicking ass the only way an anthropomorphic raccoon knows how!