Guardians of the Galaxy #0.1
Summary: We kick things off 30 years ago with a spaceship crash landing in Meredith Quill's front yard. (Superman?!) Meredith goes over to investigate and finds a handsome alien crawling out of the wreckage. (Yep, it's Superman.) Since she didn't want the feds tearing up her front lawn, Meredith takes the alien, Prince J'Son (Or Jason...for those that aren't trying to be fancy.) of Spartax, inside and nurses him to health. J'Son heals up and fixes his spacecraft, and also ends up falling for Meredith. Unfortunately for Meredith, J'Son has to head back to his homeworld to help his people against the Badoon. J'Son leaves two things behind though... His one of a kind space gun, and some seed... Yep. The seed ends up growing into Peter Quill. (Look at him, tall as Mt. Fuji!) Fast forward ten years and we find young Peter doing kid stuff like fighting with his mother and beating up bullies. (He learned his moves at the local YMCA...Women's self defense class.) One day two Badoon warriors come to Meredith and Peter's home and kill Meredith, before chasing after Peter. (Well that escalated quickly...) It turns out the Badoon had somehow found out about Peter's existence and wanted to wipe out the Spartax royal family line. Peter manages to blast the aliens with a shotgun, killing them, before grabbing his father's fancy space gun and running out of the house, right before a Badoon ship blows it up. (Wait...Earth guns trump space guns?!) Peter is sent flying from the blast and is knocked out. He ends up waking up in a hospital and is given his space gun, the nurse figures it was a toy, since it was what was found near him. (Sorry kid, your mom's dead but here's your toy gun...) From there we fast forward to the present and learn that a grown up Peter(now going by Star Lord) had been telling that story to Iron Man, the newest member of the Guardians. (Star Lord is a pretty bad ass name, by the way.)
Thoughts: Wow, this new Bendis? I love him!! I really can't find much to fault about this comic... It flowed beautifully, we met Peter's folks, got a taste of what kind of a kid he was, and learned why he hated the Badoon, all while setting up this series. I mean yeah, this was nearly perfect! If I was to nitpick, I'd complain about how wordy Meredith was with J'Son, but that's Bendis's style of writing, and to be honest, he wasn't nearly as wordy as he usually is. Yeah, good story, dialogue, set-up, art, I have nothing bad to say here!
Score: 9 1/2 out of 10 (Couldn't agree more with this score, this was a pleasant surprise.)
Take that you damned murdering aliens! (I STILL don't see how Earth gun trumps space guns and armor...)
Wow, all the Marvel Cosmic books seem to be getting a lot of love. I had hoped to stay away from them, but if they are all of such high quality I'll have to dive in. It doesn't hurt that Gillen's Iron Man is going to be tying in either. Still, I'm very skeptical books by Bendis and Jeph Loeb will be maintaining my interest for long
ReplyDeleteI was pleasantly surprised (and not just by how good-looking everyone got all of a sudden). I think I liked "Nova" a little better, since I feel like Bendis had some trouble conveying emotion here. Peter just seems pretty stiff-upper lip when describing his fairly traumatic childhood to Tony. But, given how I normally feel about Bendis outside "All-New X-Men," I really can't complain. Honestly, given that Peter and Thanos survived the Cancerverse, I'm really just waiting for Rich to return.
ReplyDeleteI don't know, I was okay with the emotion(or lack thereof) from Peter here, JW. If I remember the story right, Peter's mom's death happened like 20 years ago, and with him leading the Guardians, I think he kind of had to look uber-macho. On a team with Drax and Gamora, I can't imagine he'd break down when telling Tony about his mom's death.
ReplyDeleteIf anything, I was more surprised that he basically told Tony his life story. The two have met what, maybe twice? It was all just a bit tmi for me, but hey, maybe Star Lord is way more open with every aspect of his life than I am!
Huh. Maybe that's actually it, X. It wasn't that he wasn't emotional about it; it was just super weird that he was telling Iron Man about it at all! Excellent point.
ReplyDeleteNo word yet about Rich, right? I'm getting worried because, although I loved this issue and "Nova" #1, it's feeling a little reboot-y, particularly "Nova," which seemed to change the fact that Rich was the first Earth Nova. It just seems weird that they're not addressing what happened.
That was the exact word for it, JW! Weird! Who would tell a perspective teammate, "Well, my father was an alien prince... My mom and I lived on a farm... I hated bullies... Etc..." I enjoyed Peter's origin, but yeah, very weird way to show it to us.
ReplyDeleteNothing I've heard... And that does worry me... I like the new Nova kid and all, but I am kind of invested in Rich... I have the whole New Warriors run(first and second series) and at least FOUR Nova series. I like Rich. A LOT! It DOES feel rather reboot-y, but this isn't DC! I mean Marvel won't just tear up their history and pretend it never happened... I hope!!
This comic was just terrific. This is going to be what I hand people when they ask why I read comics. I've been telling friends to pick this up even if they don't ever plan on reading another Guardians of the Galaxy comic. Thanks for your review.
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