It took 13 years between the end of the first run of Guardians of the Galaxy before the team name got a second chance. This volume wasn't set in the future, though, but in the present, spinning out of Annihilation: Conquest, or more accurately, the Star-Lord mini-series that preceded it (see Sunday Splash Page #35).
After the mess of first Annihilus and then then Phalanx, Star-Lord wanted to put together a team to try and not only address that, but stop problems before they became problems. That worked about as well as being proactive usually does in superhero comics. At least in this case, Abnett and Lanning play into it, as the team falls apart after some unpleasant revelations come out in the obligatory 3-issue Secret Invasion tie-in issues. While they use this as a way to split into more manageable groups what will eventually become a roster of over a dozen characters, and as a way to introduce multiple other plot threads at once, it also discombobulates the team so much they're kind of playing catch-up from then on.
Or maybe a universe is simply too large to guard proactively. Minus an Infinity Gauntlet, you can't be everywhere to catch every problem before it begins.
Secret Invasion isn't the only event the book got involved in, but at least the others were things Abnett and Lanning were also controlling, like War of Kings. That made it easier to use the events to still push forward their larger plot threads. Pity some of them still didn't come to fruition. We never really saw a payoff of a big battle to keep the Magus from overtaking every reality, nor did Jack Flag ever have his big moment saving all of reality. Blastaar never got to take his shot at revenge on Star-Lord.
Paul Pelletier drew the first 7 issues, then stepped over to draw the main War of Kings mini-series. With his departure, the title alternated between Brad Walker and Wesley Craig. Walker drew the most issues, 10 in all, plus half of another, while Craig drew 7. Which is why I went with one of Walker's splash pages. Their styles are not at all similar, with Craig favoring more of a sharply defined, squared off look. Walker feels like he's in more of a Neal Adams mode. Craig seemed to have more of a knack for the big images, or maybe that's just my impression because he had a lot more splash pages in his issues than Walker.
The book worked with this, though, by assigning each artist to different plot threads, and then focusing individual issues on one thread or the other. During War of Kings, part of the team (Mantis, Star-Lord, Cosmo, Jack Flag and Bug), get pulled into a possible future by a Starhawk. Wesley Craig draws the issues focused on them, while Walker handles the issues focused on the remainder of the team trying to stop either Vulcan or Black Bolt from tearing the fabric of the universe asunder. It helps with the tonal whiplash.
Some characters get more development than others. Drax seems to actively try to connect with his daughter Moondragon, and before that, her girlfriend, Phyla. Jack Flag is the newb, out of his depth with all this cosmic stuff. Some of it's cool, some of it's horrible and he can't decide which way he feels one minute to the next. Phyla-Vell is the one doomed to never quite measure up. Always trying, but always getting the short end of the stick. All her decisions seem to go wrong.
On the other hand, Bug never seems like more than comic relief, the butt of a lot of jokes. Gamora doesn't seem to get much development, either, unless you count her falling back in step with Adam Warlock as some comment on her character. The idea Mantis telepathically nudged people to work with Star-Lord kind of gets dropped. Definitely not much time spent on what she felt about doing that. Adam Warlock. . . what am I, Jim Starlin? I don't give a fuck about Adam Warlock.
The book ended at 25 issues in early 2010, leading into Thanos Imperative, which was the last hurrah of the Abnett/Lanning run. In 2013, they handed Guardians of the Galaxy to Bendis, of all people. I wasn't sticking around for that mess.
2 comments:
I remember enjoying Annihilation -- I must re-read it -- but I didn't carry on reading after the event, despite liking the DNA writing partnership, and Rocket being one of my favourite characters. I'm not sure why. Every now and then I think about having a look, but it's all crossover madness and that puts me off.
The constant stream of events was frustrating. Even though DNA were writing a lot of them (Annihilation: Conquest, War of Kings, Thanos Imperative), there was never enough time in between to do anything with the status quo each set up. Especially when they had, at best, two ongoing series (this and Nova) to explore with.
I feel like after every event I would do a post about all the things I thought they could do, and they'd never do any of it because it was on to the next Big Thing. Sigh.
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