Review: Guardians of the Galaxy: Best Story Ever

Normally, I’m a Tim Seely admirer.  I’m a huge Hack-Slash fan and think his work on said comic was absolutely brilliant in that it breathed fresh air into a pretty stale concept.

That’s why it so pains me to have to say that “Best Story Ever” is a terrible misnomer for this comic.  It’s certainly not the worst story ever.  Bendis writes those.  But “best story ever” is quite a stretch.  The best stories for this team were written by DnA.  It’s all been downhill since they were fired.

The problem with this story is that it tries too hard to mimic the movie.  And it fails.

I’ll cut the movie some slack because in order to recoup the rather large monetary investment to produce it, it had to be written to appeal to the lowest common denominator of movie goer.  Fine.  I don’t like it that the concepts were watered-down, and it was played too much as a farce for cheap laughs, but I’ll tolerate it for the above given reason.

Comics don’t have the same up-front investment as movies.  They can afford to concentrate on quality and even be written for a niche audience.  So Marvel doesn’t have to try to mimic the movie.  Trying to mimic the movie will always just result in what this comic ultimately is – a juvenile farce played for way too many cheap laughs – most of which are duds.

I mean, come on.  The entire mission is about stealing a toilet because Rocket broke the only toilet on the ship?  Really?  Doesn’t this take bathroom humor to an all new low?  Murdering dozens of sentients at a warehouse just to steal a toilet?  Is the team that amoral?

The art is certainly an improvement over the regular fare on Bendys’ book, but it just can’t make up for the weak story. 

Sorry, Seely, but I hope you direct your talents to something else in the future, because this effort is a fail.  Only a zombie could love this – another episode of Marvel Cosmic gone horribly wrong – again thanks to Brevoort and Alonso.