Guardians of the Galaxy #9

Overall- How to begin, how to begin... I guess I'll start by stating the obvious. This is by far one of the best comic books Marvel is putting on the market right now. Seriously! Trust me, I wouldn't lie about this. Anyway, I'm going to give a basic review of this comic book, before I write anything else.

We begin in the Negative Zone, where the forces of Blastaar, the self-proclaimed king of the Negative Zone, has waged an attack on the superhuman penitentiary, simply named 42, that was set up in the Negative Zone to house offenders of the Super-Human Registration Act. Blastaar figures that if the SHRA violators are being sent to the Negative Zone from Earth, he should be able to stage a massive assault on the Earth from 42. In theory this is a sound strategy, and if he was successful, Blastaar would have his massive army stage a sneak attack on the unsuspecting Earth.

The prison guards in control of 42, abandoned their posts at the onset of Blastaar's invasion and headed back to the Earth, sealing the portals they escaped through as they left. Before leaving though, the guards did let the prisoners out of their cells, but left them stranded and surrounded by angry aliens in an alternate dimension. The now former prisoners, not knowing what the hell was going on or what Blastaar's forces wanted, began to defend 42 at all costs, holding the alien invaders off for several days.

Blastaar soon realizes that a frontal assault on the prison isn't the way to go, and sends Star-Lord(who is totally naked by the way)to negotiate a surrender with the prisoners, reasoning that the prisoners would be willing to listen to a fellow human as opposed to Blastaar or one of his alien allies. The prisoners, who are being led by Jack Flag(!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!), decide to let Star-Lord inside in order to see why Blastaar and his forces are attacking. The "leaders" of the prisoners include Jack Flag(!!!!!!!!!!!!!), Condor, Gorilla Man, Bison and Skeleton Ki. Star-Lord tells the prisoners that Blastaar wants them to surrender, and that if they do, Blastaar will wind up using the inter-dimensional gateway located in 42 to attack the Earth.

Star-Lord then tells them NOT to allow Blastaar into the prison, since that would be catastrophic for the Earth. Condor, Gorilla Man and Bison decide that if Blastaar guarantees that he wouldn't kill them, they would let him into the prison, their reasoning being that the Earth deserves whatever horrible fate Blastaar has in mind, since they were imprisoned and sent to a prison not even located on Earth. Realizing that the three criminals were about to sell Earth out to Blastaar and his forces, Star-Lord, though outnumbered and outgunned, attacks the three villains.

Before Star-Lord can be defeated by the three bad guys, Jack Flag(!!!!!!!!!!!!OK, I'll stop that now)blasts the three criminals with a ray gun he snatched from one of Blastaar's goons during one of their raids on the prison. Jack warns Skeleton Ki not to do anything dumb, or he'll get blasted as well, and the cowardly Ki, agrees and doesn't move a muscle. Star-Lord and Jack then decide to try to find a telepath in the prison, in the hope that Star-Lord can send a telepathic S.O.S. out to his teammate Mantis and the rest of the Guardians of the Galaxy.

Once Star-Lord and Jack are out of sight though, Skeleton Ki runs to the front gate of the prison, and opens it, screaming to Blastaar's forces that he surrenders. Damn cowardly villains! As Blastaar's forces begin to storm the prison, Mantis receives Star-Lord's telepathic message, and the Guardians teleport to the prison, not knowing what to expect, but definitely not expecting to materialize in the middle of a group of aliens attacking a prison!

Besides the main storyline, Quasar(Phyla-Vell) and Drax visit Mentor, the leader of the Eternals, living on the moon Titan. Drax and Phyla tell Mentor that they believe that Moondragon, Drax's biological daughter, and Mentor's "adopted" daughter, was still alive. Mentor explains that Moondragon at the time of her "death" was possessed by a powerful demonic entity, and when asked by Drax if there was any way to rescue Moondragon's soul, Mentor apologizes before striking the two of them with what seemed to be a fatal telepathic blast! Wow, where did THAT come from!

I LOVE this comic book. All I can do is implore anybody who reads this post to go out and buy issues of this series. By far, this is one of the superior titles Marvel is publishing monthly. PLEASE, yes I'm willing to beg, PLEASE buy this comic book. With my pathetic shilling out of the way, I'll give this comic book a score of 9 1/2 out of 10. If you want to read more about why I loved this comic as much as I did, then click here. Hey, if you went to the trouble of reading this post, don't you think you owe it to yourself to also read that other post as well? ;-)