Guardians of the Galaxy #1 Review

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY #1
Written by Dan Abnett & Andy Lanning
Art by Paul Pelletier

Guardians of the Galaxy was a great first issue, but, much like The Order, decided to use the reality television style action scenes broken up by the random character in studio talking sections. Maybe it's just me, but I don't particularly care for this type of narrative, but, at the same time, it wasn't enough to stop me from enjoying this issue. I hope they don't choose to go with this style of narration for the entire series, though.

The events of this issue are relatively mundane and easy to describe. The GotG, who are nameless at this point, have discovered that space is broken, due to the Annihilation Wave's forced entry and destruction of the Kline, and Warlock wants to fix it. This leads to their first battle with, to my surprise and delight, the Church of Truth.

For those unawares, Adam Warlock has a lot of past with the Church of Truth and they touch on it briefly here, but, like me, choose not to go into it too much, as it deals with time travel, alternate realities and other complex stuff. Just know that they are a bunch of zealots that convert or destroy anyone that is not a part of the church and they once worshipped Warlock, or his evil counterpart, Magus. This opens up a lot of great story paths that could eventually lead to an appearance by Magus or Warlock returning to that persona on his own or what have you.

Back to the summary, the issue deals with the team kicking ass and taking names as they attempt to stop the ship from colliding with one of the fissures in space, which are the "broken" parts that Warlock mentioned. Intersperced, we get each members reality TV log of the mission and the reasons and recruitment scenes for each of them.

They aren't as bad as I make them out, and the Rocket Raccoon drinking binge with Starlord and Gamora's getting upset with Nova for calling her for a recruitment instead of a booty call followed by make up sex were some of the highlights of the issue, but I just didn't like how they broke up the action all the time. This is probably a personal preference, though, so some will like, others will have the same issues I do.

Another one of my favourite scenes was the return to Knowhere, the current base of operations for the team, where we get to see "Mister Cosmo", the talking Cosmonaut dog from recent Nova issues. He's still just as funny and it looks like he and "Comrade Raccoon" have some issues with each other that I can't wait to see explored.

We end with the reintroduction of Mantis, who's the team's shrink, for lack of a better term, and no longer a field operative, and Groot, who's still a twig, but growing nicely. Mantis didn't seem like the Mantis from Starlord or Conquest. She's still mysterious and has the odd speech patterns, but, and it's hard to explain, her actions and speech just seem off. She's far more of the Matrix-style Oracle now, giving random omens and what not.

She has her little reality TV moment where she reveals she knows the team will be named the Guardians of the Galaxy in 24 hours time and that in nine months, one of the team members will betray and kill them, but can't reveal it to anyone due to consequences of revealing the future and other mumbo jumbo. Again, it came off much less like the Mantis I enjoyed in previous appearances. Bug was no where to be seen, despite being at Mantis' bedside at the end of Conquest.

Everyone had their time to shine this issue and all had some memorable scenes. Raccoon and Cosmo had lots of fun coming up with random names for the team, Drax had a funny "should I stab it, would stabbing it help?" type of line, Gamora and Nova had their recruitment scene and so on. There was definitely something for everyone and I'm looking forward to more of the same next month.

Speaking of next month, the issue ended with a fissure in space and the team suiting up to go stop it. Coming from the rift this time was a frozen temple-like object and clearly seen in the ice is Captain America and his shield, frozen. They spoke of alternate dimensions outside of ours beyond these rifts, so it could be related to that, but it looked a lot like Thanos' temple from Infinity Gauntlet, but the ice made it too difficult to tell, so it could be anything at this point. I thought the Cap shield meant a trip to Earth, but looks like they're going in a different direction.

Oh, one last thing, it seems the Church of Faith has a woman in charge and is quite interested in who the mysterious invaders of their ship were and it looks like they will be the villains of the piece.

Verdict - Must Read. If you like Green Lantern / GLC, Nova, Annihilation or fun team books, this is a must purchase for you. I'd recommend everyone give the first issue a shot at the very least. Easy jump on point, lots of great characters and solid art make this a hard to pass up book for anyone.

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