Nothing like leaping into the Old Hunger.
Creative Staff:
Story: Dan Abnett
Art: Gerardo Sandoval
What They Say:
To save the future, the Guardians must reach into the past, and that means striking a deal with the Old Hunger. But the Old Hunger is the most powerful entity in the Galaxy, and it’s not a good idea to wake him up, or to by-pass his invincible herald, Stormfront! Meanwhile, Vance Astro has encountered a Guardian that he forgot ever existed, and she’s none too happy about his memory blank. Time to make friends again fast before the A-Sentience gestalt of The Stark destroys them all! Cosmic action and mind-blowing Sci-Fi adventure!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
After three issues of continuous action and more characters being introduced. Guardians 3000 took the welcome stop of just slowing down the last time around. This gave Vance and his group a bit of welcome knowledge about what was going on by talking with A-Sentience and understanding some of the threat, though realizing that the whole thing is one huge problem on a nearly impossible to think about scale. With a few of the players coming into contact with each other, there was a lot to like in seeing the interactions as they played out since we’ve largely got a group of loners and rogues here who work together for the common cause. Most of the time. What complicates it all even more? The timeslips.
That’s the big issue here in a couple of places, such as with what Vance, Starhawk and Martinex have to deal with as the arrival of Nikki Gold has thrown their time with A-Sentience into utter chaos since she came in guns blazing. Nikki knows Vance and has quite the history with him going by what she says, but Vance and the others have no clue who she is, which frustrates everyone, especially since Nikki is all about lots of shooting and explosions and loving every second of it. We do get some decent moments as they try to figure things out, but Nikki’s so outgoing and firm in her belief that she takes everything the wrong way and is all about just doing what she wants, which is mostly destroying the A-Sentience ship. There’s a lot more to be explored with her and she’s definitely a strong player, but it’s hard to say too much because she’s a big old unknown at this point.
Speaking of big old unknowns, the other team is facing their own problem as they want to go visit the Old Hunger in order to get info and figure out what to do. The problem is that where it resides is off-limits by order of the Nova Corps, which is made up of just Rael Rider now. She’s intent on keeping them out, which doesn’t sit well with the team in general and certainly not this incarnation of Star-Lord. There’s some fun dialogue between the two of them as he lays out what’s going on and what they’re going to do, and how she kind of missed that he never came out of transluminal shift as they arrive at the domain of the Old Hunger. It’s an intriguing place with its massive gravitational event and the way so many different species come to pray, especially those that have lost worlds to the Badoon. The attempts to meet with the Old Hunger don’t exactly go well and it turns into a fight with the Herald that’s there, which makes it obvious who the Hunger is if you didn’t figure it out already, but it’s just a lot of fun in watching this particular ragtag group operate and get closer to their frightening goal.
In Summary:
With this installment of Guardians 3000, things move along at the brisk pace we had at the start once again and that works well as there’s a lot of characters and a lot of smaller conflicts underway. There’s still the central mystery of why all of this is going on, though it’s easy enough to imagine it ties into the Secret Wars event this year, but watching as reality keeps changing for the cast here in 3014 is definitely a lot of fun. The introduction of Nikki hasn’t clicked for me yet, but since I get to enjoy the back and forth between Rael and Star-Lord, it’s a decent trade-off. The book works the two stories well here and I’m excited to see what will come next as they potentially meet with the Old Hunger and what that might reveal, It’s a very fun read and another absolutely gorgeous book in general with its dynamic and energetic design. Very, very fun and recommended.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Marvel Comics via ComiXology
Release Date: February 11th, 2015
MSRP: $3.99
