Review: Guardians of the Galaxy #26

As far as silly situation-comedy-ish cliché goes, I will say that this issue is among the best of the worst.  Faint praise, but really that’s all it deserves.

On the up side, the well-worn clichés of someone being unwillingly elected to office, the duck-out-of-water scenarios, the enjoyment of the good life that the group falls backward into, etc. are not over-played to the point of being offensive.  But make no mistake – if you read this, you’ll be wading through clichés so familiar that you’ll know what’s going to happen before you turn each page.

On the down side, Bendys just can’t seem to get the character’s voices right.  He inexplicably has Drax yelling Shakespearean English such as, “Have at thee!” as if he suddenly channeled Thor.  He portrays Drax as completely unfamiliar with Earth culture even though Drax began life as a human.  This isn’t the historical Drax from Marvel Comics or even the Drax from Gunn’s movie.  This is some inferior, newly created Drax – born of Bendys’ unfamiliarity with the character. 

Bendis has never gotten Quill right, either.  Quill is no longer a leader capable of single-handedly taking on a Herald and winning.  He’s just a goofball screw-up who falls bass-ackward into situations and either has others rescue him from his stupidity or his srew-ups just luckily turn out right.

This incredibly stupid storyline of Quill getting married to Kitty is unspeakably asinine.  I weep for what cosmic has become under Bendys, Brevoort, Loeb, and Alonso.   This relationship is like every other one you see on any number of clichéd network situation comedies where the woman is the wise voice of reason and the guy is an idiot screw-up who couldn’t tie his own shoes without her.   I wish Bendis would just give this comic up and take a job writing one of those television rom-coms.  I’d call it good riddance.

The art and coloring has its ups-and-downs, too.  Some panels are impressively rendered and colored.  Others have Quill and Kitty with distorted facial expressions right out of a Looney-Tunes cartoon.

I suppose the Looney-Tunes comparison is fitting, though.  Because, after-all, Bendys is just writing farce.  That is the ultimate disappointment of what Marvel is now calling cosmic.  It isn’t serious anymore.  It is just second-rate farce to their serious Earth-bound superhero stories.