“Rocko’s Modern Life” returned to television last month via Netflix, bringing back the animated series’ blend of immature humor and biting satire after being off the air for 20 years. The new 45-minute comeback special, “Static Cling,” is getting some love from fans and critics, and not just for its masterful absurdity. Rather, they’re reacting to its bold story line about change, which includes a character who transitioned from a man to a woman.

Politically progressive story lines involving the titular anthropomorphic wallaby are nothing new to “Rocko’s Modern Life.” The show managed to sneak in several episodes full of leftist commentary throughout its four-season run in the ’90s.

Take, for example, “Ed Good, Rocko Bad,” where Rocko runs for town dog catcher against his neighbor Ed Bighead. Bighead, a toad who’s running because he’s afraid Rocko will let all the dogs loose, hires two consultants to help with his campaign. They give him a new pair of shoulders and push him to relentlessly attack Rocko. Bighead won the election.

“It was a reference to (Ronald) Reagan,” said Joe Murray, creator of “Rocko’s Modern Life,” speaking last week from his home in Belgium. “Reagan had the big shoulders and he was a big cowboy kind of persona. That fit the bill.”

Murray’s political views were displayed early during his time growing up in the Bay Area. Born and raised in San Jose, Murray grew up wanting to be a comic strip artist. He says he drew all the time as a child and his talents earned him a scholarship to the Academy of Art when he was 14 years old. By the time he was 16, Murray worked for a design studio and a few local newspapers. He’d later start his own studio, Joe Murray Studios, whose earliest customers included companies like Apple and The San Francisco Chronicle.

Murray says he developed his satirical bite while working as a political cartoonist for the San Jose Sun. He was 17, but his age didn’t stop him from going after a “group of council people” who, he says, were “really corrupt.”

“They were kind of on the take from land developers and it got kind of out of hand,” said Murray. “I started zeroing in on them and they were really pissed at me. The newspaper told me to hold back a bit.”

The work, though, introduced him to interesting peers.

“I used to belong to a group of cartoonists that had Charles Schulz and Mort Drucker (from Mad Magazine) and all these amazing cartoonists that would meet every three months in San Francisco,” said Murray. “They would all get drunk but I was too young to drink, so I would just hang out with them.”

Murray crafted his first animated shorts while taking an animation class at De Anza College in Cupertino. He produced his first short in color, “My Dog Zero,” at his studio in Saratoga, and that’s what landed him a meeting with Nickelodeon. Even the character Rocko was inspired by a stoic wallaby Murray saw at the San Francisco Zoo.

Another Bay Area connection for “Rocko’s Modern Life” was Carlos Alazraqui, who gave voice to the character. The San Francisco International Comedy Competition-winning stand-up comedian, originally from Concord, never did cartoon voice work before auditioning for Rocko.

“Next thing I know I’m making the pilot at Poolside studios on Lombard and Steiner, behind a Mel’s Diner,” Alazraqui said.

“Rocko” would be the springboard for Alarzaqui’s career in voice work, which includes characters like Spyro the Dragon and the Taco Bell Chihuahua. Alarzaqui also recruited comedian Tom Kenny — another voice-work rookie — to do the voice of Heffer Wolfe, who is, oddly, a steer. Kenny later became the voice of “SpongeBob SquarePants,” which was created by “Rocko” producer Stephen Hillenberg.

“Joe was the lighthouse who brought all these super creative people to one project,” Alazraqui said.

The crew had fun making the show, but two months before the first season of “Rocko” went into production, Murray’s wife, Diane, committed suicide. Murray says now that her death was the reason he stopped making the show in 1996, as he didn’t grieve during its four-season run. But Murray adds that Nickelodeon was fine with it ending as “Rocko” didn’t track well with the 6-to-11-year-old demographic.

Which is why when Nickelodeon reached out to Murray 20 years later, he was shocked.

“The first thing I said was, ‘Does anybody else know at Nickelodeon that you’re calling me?’ ” Murray said.

Murray says he turned down the offer at first, until he came up with the meta idea to have Rocko work to bring his favorite television show back 20 years after it went off the air. But he also wanted the revived “Rocko” show to be about change, and the idea to have the old character Ralph, the son of Rocko’s toad neighbors, become Rachel just made sense.

“There was some reluctance at first, so they went to the president of Nickelodeon to ask her whether she was on board with it,” Murray said. “She thought it was a great idea as long as we brought in GLAAD to work through it with us to make sure it was done right, which I was totally behind.”

Murray has said that he doesn’t expect to make more episodes of “Rocko’s Modern Life.” But Alazraqui hopes more shows will follow “Static Cling’s” example and incorporate big issues like gender identity organically into their shows. For one thing, Alazraqui has learned over the 20 years he’s been in cartoons that shows like “Rocko’s Modern Life” are more important than people give them credit for.

“When I talk to fans of Rocko, they literally tell me, ‘You were my childhood.’ ”

“Rocko’s Modern Life: Static Cling” is streaming on Netflix.