Editorial: Flarkin' Awesome! with Leo Wyld 001

Cosmic greetings, one and all. This is your Raccoonatic Commander, Leo Wyld, presenting his first postcard from the Raccooniverse, in this, the first (and hopefully not last) installment of Flarkin' Awesome!

 Issue #001 - A Talkin' Raccoon?!

Comic books are a visual medium, yet we are presented with story primarily in the form of dialogue.  Naturally, we translate this dialogue mentally, in reading it, into speech.  Sometimes obvious intentional misspellings (or descriptive text) give us an idea on what a voice would likely sound like.  Sometimes, we are fortunate to first hear the voice in other media such as TV, movies, or games and, thus, have something solid to associate with what we read (we all know what Wolverine or Spider-man sound like, even if different actors put a slightly different tone on that).  Such was not the case for many people with Rocket Raccoon. More after the jump!

He existed as a comic book hero for well over thirty years before he was voice acted in another medium.  With the one exception of his 1976 debut (in which his personality was a bit different and he used *obvious* British-isms), he did not really use slang that would indicate an accent. (With one possible exception, his use of the British "crazy as a bag of spanners", in ref to Maximus, in Guardians v2 Issue 17, before the release of UMvC3 or MH)

It was not until Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 that Rocket was given a voice.  And that voice was a somewhat cartoony Cockney accent, provided by Greg Ellis.  Mr. Ellis returned that role for the animated series Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, in an episode called "Michael Korvac", in which the Guardians of the Galaxy appeared.  Likewise, a similarly voice was for a humorous Marvel-WTF'esque ad for the launch of Guardians of the Galaxy v3.

For the online game Marvel Heroes, Steve Blum, who also voices Wolverine in d'ast near everything, was chosen to voice Rocket Raccoon.  Again, Rocket had his Cockney accent, but there was more range to his tone and perhaps it was a bit more subtle.

More recently, on the Ultimate Spider-Man episode featuring the Guardians of the Galaxy, voiced by Billy West.  This version of Rocket does *not* have any sort of British accent.  It should be noted, however, that the cartoon seems to be set in a slightly different universe than the mainstream.  So, it hard to know whether this change is meant to reflect a change for the character in the mainstream Marvel universe.

That leaves us with the future Guardians of the Galaxy movie.  As likely everyone knows by now, Bradley Cooper is likely to land the role voicing our favorite pistol-packin' procyonid protagonist.  We simply do not know how Mr. Cooper will or would make Rocket sound.  It is quite possible that Cooper could do an accent (Steve Blum is not British, either), or could he be directed to make Rocket sound more like his USM appearance.  We really do not know and I do not believe Marvel or Mr. Gunn has made a comment in that regard.  It is not common, though, for a hero's voice to completely change. Steve Blum's current Wolverine, for instance, is not that different from other takes on the hero.

What does the Raccoonatic Commander think?  Well, when I first started reading Rocket, UMvC3 had already been released but I had not yet played it, so I did not really read the little guy with an accent (I've lived in Indiana practically all my life, an American voice is the default read for most characters for me, unless I know otherwise).  After I'd played him in Marvel Heroes for a while and was won over by Blum's performance, the accent really started to click for me and, now, that is Rocket's voice to me.  So, in my opinion, I want the accent to be there, even if subtle.  It would help create cohesion between the movie and Marvel Heroes for me (especially if they have a movie costume for Rocket on MH). 

It is a subject that has arisen in comments a number of times before, but feel free to say what you think, when you hear a certain talkin' raccoon, what does he sound like?