Graphic Novel Review: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 1: Cosmic Avengers by Brian Michael Bendis

Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 1: Cosmic Avengers by Brian Michael Bendis

Series: Collects Guardians of the Galaxy #1-3 and #0.1 and Infinite #1

Publisher: Marvel (August 2013)

Author Info: www.jinxworld.com

Wendy’s Rating: 2 of 5 stars

Prior to the announcement of the movie, I did not even know the Guardians of the Galaxy existed, but the previews have been amusing enough to pique my interest. Too bad the source material isn’t nearly as impressive.

Volume one serves as an introduction to Marvel’s “cosmic Avengers,” opening with the crash landing of an alien vessel in the backyard of a lovely young lady, who nurses the occupant back to health. They fall in love and make Peter Quill, but before he’s actually born, daddy heads back to space and goes on to become the King of Spartax, making Peter the Star-Lord.

This ought to be an interesting plot twist, save for the fact that the King turns out to be a pretty shady character–which in itself is fine, but we don’t get to find out how or why that is. We just have to accept that, after completely different aliens show up to kill Peter and his mom while he’s still a boy, presumably because they know of his Spartax blood, that this leads Peter to find his way into space, perhaps looking for his dad? But I guess when Peter finds his dad stuff happens and Peter gets mad and runs off to form his own team of avengers to keep earth safe from um… his dad and anyone his dad hangs out with?

Forgive the vagueness and confusion, but that’s more or less how I felt when we skipped from happy couple to “My dad’s an evil dictator.” There’s a big section where dad gathers the various alien leaders, such as the Brood Queen and informs them that Earth shouldn’t be attacked, but apparently, that is all just a ruse and what he’s actually doing is manipulating them into doing what he says they shouldn’t. But then while that meeting is going on, bad guys are already attacking earth. But the Guardians, along with a really dull Iron Man, are able to fight them off, only to be captured by the Spartax army to be punished for defending the planet dad said no one should attack.

Anyway. At least the main story art was kind of cool, if somewhat Jim Lee clone-ish.

The rest of the book is comprised of character stories introducing the other Guardians. The format for each is pretty standard: character does something unique to their character, battles their way through respective bad guys to show us what kind of person and fighter they are, wins battle, Star-Lord shows up to ask them to help him defend earth. There is little learned about the characters through this process, and there’s an even bigger gap in understanding why they are willing to fight alongside Quill to defend a planet that is not their own.

Here the art changed for each character, with the Gamora story being my favourite. Michael del Mundo captures the aloof and deadly nature of Thanos’ daughter perfectly.

So as far as introductions and origins go, this one is very disappointing, which can often be the case with origin stories. I’d much rather see the movie in hopes of finding a plot and character reasoning that actually makes sense. That’s not to say I’ll never read another Guardians of the Galaxy comic, though. I’d like to think that, with these pesky origin stories out of the way, the actual comic will get going in volume 2.