The Secret Guardians! Ugh, That's A Terrible Name

Wednesday I was talking about where the Guardians of the Galaxy who survived the latest cosmic brouhaha might have gone. There's no reason they had to disband, though. The team held together after they thought half of them had been killed by Adam Magus (not to mention Star-Lord thinking he'd killed Adam Warlock/Magus).

Granted, Star-Lord was the one who brought them together, and he did survive the confrontation with the Magus. He's unavailable, so what would hold the team together? Well, Rocket Raccoon, naturally. The Magus fight wasn't the first big hit the roster took. The book's obligatory Secret Invasion tie-in revealed that Star-Lord had Mantis telepathically nudge some of the team members into joining (it didn't say which ones precisely). Adam Warlock stormed off in a huff, and Gamora went with him. Drax and Phyla left too. Then Star-Lord went into Kree territory on his own, got trounced by Ronan the Accuser, and thrown in the Negative Zone. The rest of the group soldiered on without him. They even put Mantis back in the field, which suggests the ones who remained didn't have trust issues with her*.

Everyone from that grouping (Rocket, Major Victory, Mantis, Groot, and Bug**) is still standing, plus Jack, Gamora, Moondragon. There's the makings of a useful team there.

I get the general point that Star-Lord and Cosmo have been making: There are enough staggering threats that things will go smoother with a team of powerhouses. Hence, the Annihilators. But there's no sense of camaraderie or teamwork with these guys, not yet, anyway. They're the Defenders as they originally appeared: Incredibly powerful, but no real interest in working together unless they absolutely have to. Which is fine, at times. The Big Problem rears its head, they form Annihilatitron and smash it into easily disposable parts. There are times brute force isn't the best response, when cunning, stealth, or simply the willingness to commit full-time can be the difference. There are going to be situations these five don't think merit there attention, that still need dealing with, so another group could come in handy.

Cosmo doesn't have to be involved (and given the strained relationship he and the raccoon have, I wouldn't be surprised if Rocky opted to keep him in the dark), but having access to Knowhere's teleportational facilities would be helpful. With the folks they have available, they could do assassinations, espionage, infiltration, defend a specific planet from some dangerous incursion. The sort of things that may not halt universe-threatening problems, but can prevent threats from reaching that scale. It's not really proactive, because the threats are still already happening, it's more catching those threats in their infancy (when they could still make a lot of people's lives miserable).

I can't think of a good name for them though. Secret Guardians is terrible, Covert Annihilators feels contradictory (and terrible). In GrimJack, the group John Gaunt worked for after leaving the Transdimensional Police was called Cadre, a group of agents dedicated to quietly trying to keep things running smoothly. 'Course, the guy running Cadre was a power-hungry sort, a more competent and less needlessly hateful Henry Gyrich. I guess they could always fall back on one of Rocket's suggestions: "Asskickers of the Fantastic."

* Whether that's because they're confident they weren't the ones she messed with, or they understood why she and Star-Lord thought it necessary, not clear.

** I just realized Bug slipped my mind as a survivor. I thought I read about him getting sucked into this Hiro-Kala, Son of Hulk stuff, a Micronauts reunion, but I could be wrong.