One of the great delights of Rocko’s Modern Life, one of the great cartoons of Nickolodeon’s ’90s line-up which is finding new life in comics and on the screen again, has always been its devotion to anarchic silliness.
Taking a leaf out of the manic hilarity of Looney Tunes and turning the existential goofiness up to a billion, everyone’s favourite life-challenged wallaby has always walked on the chaotic wild side of life.
Not by choice mainly; life has simply refused to play by Rocko’s rules, besetting with him with well-meaning but unhelpful friends, a near-constant exposure to Murphy’s Law, and an elusive sense of zen and calm content.
Not so good for Rocko but a boon for those of us who love his over-the-top crazy adventures that far from being brainless and silly, come with a great deal of insight and cleverness, commenting with gleeful colourfulness on the human condition (or let’s be fair, the wallaby condition.)
What makes BOOM! Studios and Nickolodeon’s new Rocko comic book series – he was the previous recipient of a 1994 series – such an eye-catching bundle of fun is that the writer and artist, Ryan Ferrier (Regular Show, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers) and artist Ian McGinty (Adventure Time, Bravest Warriors) respectively, so perfectly capture what we love about dear, sweet, up-to-his-neck-in-it-once-again Rocko.
Everyone from dear blighted O-Town is back including, naturally enough, Rocko, Spunky, Heffer, Filburt and the Bigheads and they’re pretty much up to their old tricks, albeit in a much more modern setting where employment is precarious, homelessness is a real issue, and visits to the dentist and O-Town’s own comic-con come laden with kinds of portentous comic possibilities.
Declaring in the back of issue #1 that “we have some absolutely wild things planned for everyone, and nothing is off the table!”, Ferrier is clearly right on board with Rock’s eternal struggle to cope with life that keeps throwing an endless series of benighted curve balls at him.
Facing the real possibility of homelessness after he is fired from his job at one of those godawful factory-like call centres, Rocko has to make a series of stinging compromises to get by and make sure that Spunky has food in his bowl, all without the substantial support of his friends Heffer and Filbert who mean well but just … don’t … get … it.
All of which means Rocko, for better or worse is all on his own.
Uh-oh; not because Rocko isn’t capable but well life doesn’t just seem a fan of him and no matter what he does to rectify the situation, everything keeps ending up way less than optimal.
How less than optimal you cry? (Seriously do it – no one’s going to notice; OK they totally will but hey, it’s very Rocko thing to do.)
Why he ends up with the housemate from hell who seems to have more a few boundary issues – endless amounts in fact; trust me, he makes the residents of Jersey Shore look sagely mature – ends up being employed by Peaches, the “top dog” of Heck who has a few hygiene issues with his stinky rumpus room.
While Rocko’s tries to put a positive spin on his dire predicament – he commutes to Heck each day via a fiery porthole, rationilising to himself that it’s “better than the bus, I suppose” – which is very much a Rocko thing to do but the truth is life is besting him and you wonder if he’s going to come out the side okay.
What? Of course he is and it’s way he does, as he always does that is so amusing, so insightful and so crazily heartwarming with Ferrier nailing both Rocko’s haplessness and near-unstoppable optimism perfectly (and his devotion to Spunky) and McGinty capturing the colourful chaos of Rock’s world, and the one beneath it, in ways that make you feel like you’ve plunged into the show’s manically-colourful, psychedelically-fun fair visuals.
The new comic book series is the pitch-perfect marriage of nostalgia and the here-and-now, deftly melding everything we love about Rocko and his modern world, now with added mobile phone, tech-based jobs and 3D printer modernity, and handing us further adventures in the endearingly strange, dream-like surrounds of O-Town.
In fact, so well do Ferrier and McGinty capture the look, feel and intelligent narrative of Rock’s Modern World, that it’s hard not to hold them as an exemplar of how you can bring an old show back, give the old fans everything they loved about it while allowing new fans the chance to fall in love with Rocko and the gang like we did all those years ago.
