Review: Guardians of the Galaxy #24 (Bendys)

Yeah, I know this is a crossover book in an event – but to me it’s just more of Bendis focusing on the characters he really wants to write, Avengers and X-Men, and continuing to write the Guardians as guest-stars in their own book.

Poor Drax.  Bendis just can’t get his characterization right.  In this issue, he’s raves about the vortex being a “tool of the devil” as if he’s one of the psychotic people you see living on the streets of any large city.  Does that sound like Starlin’s Drax?  Or Giffen’s/DnA’s Drax?  Or even the imitation of Gunn’s Drax that Bendys is apparently shooting for, but like a bad marksman, just keeps missing?  Nope.  This is definitely Bendys’ Drax – no defined personality and just around to make random stupid comments and to occasionally punch something.

Did anyone else find the “lover’s quarrel” between Starlord and Kitty just flat out annoying?  Again, something out of a bad sitcom where the guy wants to do something stupid and the oh-so-much-wiser girl tries to talk him out of it but he does it anyway and, of course, he’s wrong.  Seen that anywhere before?  How many times?  And Bendis zombies criticize me for calling Bendis’ writing hackneyed.

I will say that I liked Gamora’s upgrade – but only because it restored her to the bad-girl/bad-ass characterization of Giffen/Dna along with a version of her sexy Annihilation-era costume.  The rest of the upgrades were real yawners.  And horror-of-horrors, NINO makes an appearance at the end and gets upgraded into – you guessed it – and even more manga-ish uniform!  Seriously, let’s just make the little idiot the Power Ranger that he is and sweep him into the dustbin of comicdom where he belongs.

It’s fitting that G3K and GotGINO were released in the same week so we could perform a direct compare-and-contrast between the two books bearing the Guardians name.   G3K remains an awesome read that treats the Cosmic concepts, characters, and fans with seriousness and respect.  GotGINO continues to be a parody of Cosmic.  To make a cinematic comparison, G3K is to GotGINO, as 2001: A Space Odyssey is to Spaceballs.  Sorry, Mel Brooks fans, I don’t mean that as a compliment.

I’m not a big fan of Schiti’s art in general, but I will say it was a fine grade of average this time out.  Keith’s colors were quite well done.

In sum, with Bendys at the helm, GotGINO remains a waste of color glossy paper.  If you’re a true Cosmic fan, the best thing you could do is leave this on the shelf along with NINO, LSLINO, and RRINO –  and instead buy multiple copies of G3K.   In other words, use your money to support true Cosmic – and leave the parodies of cosmic to die deaths of cash starvation.