Never pick up enemy weapons. Never.
Creative Staff:
Story: Brian Michael Bendis
Art: Valerio Schiti
Colors: Richard Isanove
What They Say:
Meet Emperor Quill and his Imperial Guard. What brings the Guardians into their crosshairs?
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Getting back into the Guardians of the Galaxy in the first installment was a fairly easy thing even though I’d barely read any of this current crop of characters, being a fan of the 30th century cast of characters myself. The draw here continues to be the cosmic side of things and the cast of characters involved since the team has a fairly fun makeup with The Thing here and my longtime favorite of Kitty Pryde. Part of what the wanted to do in the first installment was start drawing everyone together that had been cast in different directions recently and little focus was given to the way, for the better at the moment. With everything hitting on Spartax now, where Quill is Emperor, it’s a solid enough launching point and allows for a good central point to do things.
This installment thankfully does give us some welcome backstory as to what’s going on with Hala. Schiti’s given the task of several pages of info dump material and he delivers it beautifully with some two page spreads that lets it flow, inform and entertain well. Making clear why she’s so intent on eliminating this team makes sense as does letting new readers to the cosmic side, or the comics in general, see the end of the Kree empire and some of the fallout from that. Hala’s narrative is a little awkward at first with what it wants to do, but as it progresses you get her barely controlled rage and see her as a strong and welcome Accuser in the tradition of old. Her intensity to deal with the Guardians and their involvement, believing them the cause of the end of an ancient empire that protected the galaxy from so much, hits all the right notes.
The action does dominate here in general as Hala’s attack is pretty intense with a wide range of destruction in the tightly packed capital city. The fun comes in seeing the team react, especially since Ben takes point after Kitty discovers she can’t disrupt Hala’s technology with the phasing. It has a lot of fun to it as we see them work to deal with her and I was even amused with the banter afterwards about what’s sexist, since Ben is certainly an “old school” character even in this ageless universe of comics. Naturally, there are bigger problems at play here and things don’t go smoothly, but Hala’s involvement ups the ante quickly in the book as her desire for revenge is now putting both Spartax and Earth at risk. It completely and totally makes sense, but I’m already cringing at the idea of a return to Earth for this book. Part of my reason for being into it is that it’s away from all the events there. Hopefully it won’t be a long trip and that we don’t lose any members just yet.
In Summary:
Guardians of the Galaxy has a solid issue even if aspects of it makes me wary with where it’s going to go. I really like the team dynamic and what it does and I’m amused by the situation that Quill has found himself in as he’s just barely above the level of a puppet it seems with his position on Spartax. There’s a lot of information brought out at the start here and it helps to set the stage well while also reminding of recent events and how it’s impacting everything here. The characters are fun to watch and listen to and Schiti really has a great dynamic range here in presenting the action and other elements. It’s smooth, fun and a very engaging read the first, second, and third time to get all the details.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Marvel Comics via ComiXology
Release Date: November 25th, 2015
MSRP: $3.99
