Guardians of the Galaxy #20 Review

Comic book event tie-ins can be fun.  I really liked the tie-ins with the Blackest Night event.  DC did a great job in incorporating the main theme of the event into the short mini-series, delving into death, a subject that is often over-dramatized in an issue or two and then seemingly wiped clean from the consciousness as the next crisis occurs.  I recall Donna Troy, Wondergirl, being revisited by her dead husband and baby and having once again to struggle with their loss as they are literally biting her. 

But crossover events are more often than fall short of the promises contained in their promotions.  Take, for example, Marvel’s Original Sin crossover event.  I am sure that the meeting at Marvel started with someone saying, “Wouldn’t it be cool if…” and ended up with Uatu the Watcher being murdered and several heroes learning secrets, that up to now had never been disclosed.  We found out that Thor has a sister, Angela, a character seemingly folded into the Marvel Universe, and, that, forsaking all other Hulk origin stories, the real culprit for Bruce Banner’s transformation was Tony Stark.  (Really, Marvel?) 

But what usually happens is that all the titles have to suffer through the too inclusive event.  This might be a boon for titles which lack fresh story lines and need a little boost of energy from an outside influence.  But for a book like the Guardians of the Galaxy which already has a rich cast of characters and a rich history, a crossover event can only hamper progression.  And this is what happens in Guardians of the Galaxy #18-20.

Marvel promoted this storyline as the revelation of how Peter Quill survived the Cancerverse.  It starts when Gamora demands from Peter to know what happened to Richard Rider, the then Nova from the Thanos Imperative storyline, who never came back from the Cancerverse, unlike Quill.  Issue #20 is the finale of the story-line, which, up to that moment has been mostly about Starlord, Drax, Nova, and Thanos fighting over a cosmic cube and Thanos’s own destruction.  Later, the Revengers, the Cancerverse’s perverse version of the Avengers, appears, and, what was once a two-sided fight becomes three-sided.

The story feels spread thin as if Marvel had told Brian Michael Bendis to take his time with the story, that they needed three books from him to run concurrent with the Original Sin event.  Nothing really shocking happens.  It is three pure issues of slugfest with out much substance.  I suppose that Bendis attempts to make the story a lot more dramatic, that we should feel the loss of Richard Rider, like Gamora feels his loss.  In Issue #20, Richard Rider reveals to Starlord his desire to have children, his desire to retire, and his love for Gamora.  However, the Thanos Imperative event is so remote that the only empathy that we might feel is through Gamora’s own sorrow which is only shown through the beginning and end panels of the book. 

Because the story line was a little flat, the artwork should have been more impressive.  However, it, too, failed to deliver.  There were two artists working on this issue, Ed McGuinness and Valerio Schiti which was noticeable right from the start.  On page 5, we see a Peter Quill, a soft face with elements of facial hair and yet another version of Peter Quill on page 6 who remarkably, seems much older than the one on page 5, even though the opposite ought to be true.  And it is a roughly done image, on page 6, which feels uneven and heavy, so much so that it distracts from the issue as a whole. 

But the issue does do some things well.  The overall use of the flashback is effectively used such that the reader is not hit over the head with it.  Also, Bendis still manages to inject some classic Guardians humor into the issue despite its serious tone, in the form of the interaction between Rocket and the others.  On page three, Rocket and Groot get into it regarding Rocket’s stuff, made all the more humorous by the fact that we are not really sure what Groot is saying.

But what standouts most in this issue is the way that the Bendis, McGuinness, and Schiti use the panels to convey the anger and sorrow of Gamora and the sense of helplessness felt by Starlord.   It is cleverly revealed in the manner in which, Gamora, and then Starlord, enter into the common room where Rocket, Groot, and Drax are sitting, the way that the only real change in the panels on page three are Gamora’s and Starlord’s entrance into the room. 

We can see it in the face of Peter Quill on the first panel of Page 5, and in the way that Gamora leans against the doorway in panel two of page 5.  Or how Gamora walks out of the room in the last few panels of page 20 and in the framing of the last page with Gamora arms crossed sheds a tear.  We understand the sense of loneliness and isolation of floating on a ship in the middle of space, the confinement and the suffocation of being among others when you would rather be alone. 

Overall, Issue 20 was an average book but disappointing because of the high standards which have already been set.  It is a prime example of why crossovers should not be overly ambitious, should rather focus on content and not so much on overly stretching influence on other titles.  After finishing Issue 20, I had a sense of relief that the title could go back to telling its own tales unimpeded.