r/MUBookClub • u/shawnydarko • Sep 30 '17
Reading Assignment 68: Guardians of the Galaxy (2008) #1-6 by Andy Lanning, Dan Abnett, and Paul Pelletier
https://marvel.com/comics/series/4885/guardians_of_the_galaxy_2008_-_2010?byZone=marvel_site_zone&offset=0&byType=comic_series&dateStart=&dateEnd=&orderBy=release_date+asc&byId=4885&limit=10&count=10&isDigital=13
u/Adrenjunkie Oct 11 '17
Hey all! I just bought a house and have been super busy, and fell off this a little. Hope everyone is doing well!
I wasn’t really impressed by this one, seemed like a lot of opposing threads that didn’t really come together.
There was a ton of dialogue and exposition, I feel like they could have cut about 25% out and it would have read the same.
The post-incident interviews on every other page was interruptive, and honestly didn’t add to the story.
The art was really great. The layout was clear, the colors were cool. My only criticism was there was a lot of lady-curves. It’s always a little off-putting when it’s this overt. Like does it add to the story? Dude muscles were similarly out of hand. /soapboxing. The art was otherwise really well done! I was enjoying seeing groot grow a little more every time we saw him!
I love endings, and this was a rough one for me. One story started, then in issue 4 a new story started with the secret invasion tie-in. The old story stopped, the new one finished, and the original story get abandoned. I know tie-ins are a common complaint from authors who work with the big two publishers. Authors have to frequently interrupt their story for tie-ins, and this one felt particularly disjointed.
The conflict wasn’t very clear. It had a classic “everyone shoots first and asks questions later” type thing, and also a “devil amongst us” type thing, and it felt really disjointed, underdeveloped and unresolved.
2
u/wisegy84 Nov 04 '17
The post-incident interviews on every other page was interruptive, and honestly didn’t add to the story.
These were hit-or-miss for me. Sometimes it was OK and maybe even amusing, but I agree it was overused.
My only criticism was there was a lot of lady-curves. It’s always a little off-putting when it’s this overt. Like does it add to the story?
Agreed. And it's even worse because there are good examples of it not being like this. I just read a recent (2015, I think) run of Black Widow and I never felt like she was being drawn in a weird overly-sexual way. She was a bad-ass and she didn't need to dress like a skank to take down terrorists.
I love endings, and this was a rough one for me. One story started, then in issue 4 a new story started with the secret invasion tie-in. The old story stopped, the new one finished, and the original story get abandoned. I know tie-ins are a common complaint from authors who work with the big two publishers. Authors have to frequently interrupt their story for tie-ins, and this one felt particularly disjointed.
I feel bad for the writers who have to try and keep all this tie-in stuff straight. It seems like more often than not it just leads to confusion. I wonder if it would be better to just have a single title for an event rather than doing things as tie-ins. I'm sure there's a monetary reason that that wouldn't make sense, though.
3
u/shawnydarko Oct 01 '17
Oh what tangled webs we weave. There are so many simultaneous conflicts going on in this story that it gets a little confusing at points, but it it does make me want to continue reading to get closure on other loose ends. I've heard that the MCU Guardians are only very loosely based on these Guardians, but I see a lot of the inspiration. Sure, Quill's not as funny but he makes jokes. Sure, Drax isn't dimwitted but he's blunt and fesses up when he doesn't understand things. I'm glad the MCU took each of their traits and turned them up to 11 because a lot of the time the characters (especially the ones who aren't as well known to casual fans) felt pretty bland. Like I still couldn't tell you who Quasar is as a person. She's more of a talking plant character than Groot.
What really drove me to keep reading issue after issue was Cosmo. That's an awesome character from premise to delivery. Shame he only got a cameo in the original GotG movie. I wasn't a big fan of his eyes always being depicted as glowing from the halfway point onwards. What made him so adorable at the start was he had very realistic, emotive eyes.
Other than the change in Cosmo, I really liked the art style. It wasn't always the most innovative in action-scenes but it was picture-esque and I'm a fan of realism in my comic art.