BACKSTORY: I recently had the privilege of reading US publisher Dark Horse's ~250pp collected translation of the 'Rocco' adventures. Previously, I'd only seen some of Torres' art panels, which I shared here about a year+ ago. Naturally, Imgur bumbled them all away, so don't bother searching. :-/
Right, then-- the first thing that hit my eyes about this series was the delicious, traditional LC art, fairly similar to Henk Kuijpers tremendously clean, detailed work on the wonderful Franka series. But in this case, when it came to the individual figures and faces, they could almost be described as circus-like, or even zoo-like, perhaps a bit of a mashup betwixt Otto Soglow's The Little King and a soupçon ("soups on, boys!") of Serge Clerc's interesting line-work, grotesquely-amusing as it could sometimes be.
Now, Daniel Torres evidently created these stories mainly during the 80's, I think? In this series, he seems to be imagining a parallel reality in which many of the planets and moons of our Solar system have long-been settled by that time, and by that point, they're perfectly abundant with their own politics, tensions, intrigue, and infighting. Yeap, same as it ever were.
More specifically though, we follow the title character, who at this point is utterly burned out from his earlier 'fast-lane life,' and really just wants to settle down and run his pleasant country club, of sorts. Naturally, a parade of both total strangers and people from his past keep intruding on his retirement-life, forcing him to get involved again and again, a traditionally fruitful premise IMO.
FINAL THOUGHTS?
I can easily recommend this one from a style-perspective alone. Frequently, it's simply fascinating to look at, no matter how the story is going. That said, there's a certain busyness and chaos to the stories that I feel like Yves Chaland's artistry captures better, via his Freddy Lombard stories. Then again, the Rocco stories have a totally 'pulpy-noir' feel, if you can overcome the 'noir' aspect being oversaturated by certain googie/jet-set/retro-futuristic stylings.
Looks great but feels the plot or story is probably to wild to be enjoyable.