Review: Guardians of the Galaxy #6 (Bendis)

It’s really a shame that this book is called Guardians of the Galaxy when it’s such a pale imitation of all the preceding much better efforts using the same name. I wish Bendis, Brevoort, Wacker, Alonso, et al would just get it over with and re-name this book Space Avengers or, more accurately, Avengers in Low Earth Orbit, or my personal favorite: Holy Fark! Not ANOTHER Avengers Book!

Let’s face it; Bendis’ version of GotG is just another Avengers book. And even though the GotG is made up of people who actually have valuable knowledge about how the cosmos works, the politics of the local group of galaxies, and the advanced technology of the great powers of the local group – they’re relegated to wasting time protecting Earth from fairly minor threats while Earth’s protectors are in way over their heads out in the cosmos. Make any sense to you? Me neither.

So the woman who fought Ronan to a stand-still can’t take Angela? So the entire team that has fought The Magus, Thanos, The Phalanx, etc. (and won) can’t take Angela? But a single shot from Quill’s element gun lays her out? Right. Good one Bendis. And it only took you the entire issue to pull off that particular deus ex machina.

As usual, Iron Man is completely out of place, and Bendis writes most of the rest of the cast out of character – particularly Drax. At least he’s stopped trying to create stupid catch-phrases for Rocket. A great improvement in this book could be accomplished simply by dropping Iron Man from the cast and sending him back to Earth where he belongs.

“Editor” Wacker must shoulder a large part of the blame for the decline in Marvel Cosmic’s quality. He along with Bendis and Loeb seem hell-bent on erasing everything that made DnA’s revamping of cosmic into something worthy of a big budget movie, and replacing it with hackneyed storylines aimed squarely at the lowest common denominator of comic book readers. Thankfully we’re spared Wacker’s smarmy glad-handing of easily pleased non-cosmic fans as there’s no letters page to suffer through this issue. Coipel’s art is certainly respectable, but it’s not quite up to the bar set by Pichelli. It’s a shame the writing is not up to par with the art as Pichelli makes an excellent addition to the artists who render cosmic well. Ponsor’s colors remain at their usual eye-catching best. As usual, the art and coloring are the best things about this book.

I suppose the movie hype and the appeal to Avengers-zombies are the elements that keep this book selling as well as it does. That’s too bad as these characters deserve such better treatment than they’re now receiving. In the hands of a capable cosmic writer, GotG could be great again. As it is, Bendis’ GotG is just another Avengers-like glorification of mediocrity which is not truly written as cosmic and not truly meant for cosmic fans.