Before this issue dropped, we were given a preview issue of the Guardians of the Galaxy where we saw the origin story of Star-Lord. Yes it’s about the 30th time his story has been told in print, but with the upcoming Guardians of the Galaxy movie and the series always being a niche in the Marvel Universe. Honestly I feel it was a safe play, and they should have broken it down more and given a mini-origin of all of the team. What matters though is we’re done with that and from the first official issue the story is starting off strong!
We begin the issue with Star-Lord in a bar in the middle of nowhere trying to pickup a woman when he’s annoying interrupted. While no guy likes to be interrupted when that happens, it’s probably worse when the person doing the interrupting is surrounded by a squad of guards AND that person is your father, the emperor of the Spartoi Empire.
Honestly I felt this was the weakest part of the issue. I’m not sure if it was because of how the characters were drawn (which was probably a big portion) or how ludicrous the situation felt. Still it leads into something fun. Also when we switch from the bar to an actual space fight the visuals really start to stand out.
His father sits him down and ends up telling him that no one is allowed to interfere with the Earth from this point on as a contingent of species have come together and make this a rule.
Star-Lord’s response? To tell his father to go and ‘krutack’ himself (ahh alien languages, the ultimate way to get around swearing.) All of this in his opinion will only paint a bright target across the Earth and he will not have any part of his father’s plan. As a Guardian of the Galaxy he will make sure to keep his home world safe.
While Iron Man was in the preview issue being told Star-Lord’s origin in this issue it would appear they are randomly meeting up. It’s a decent way to introduce some of the characters of the Guardians to new readers while not going into too much detail. They happen to meet up randomly in front of a Badoon.
As there is never anything good that happens when the Badoon are involved we instantly see the cast break out into an all out fight with them. While the Guardians are able to take out quite a bit of the force it looks like the fight was happening out of a certain blue planet that is now off limits.
The fight has come to Earth and now we’re going to see how the Guardians of the Galaxy are really going to fit in the standard Marvel Universe!
It wasn’t the strongest of first issues as it tried to blend a mixture of information for new readers as well as those who followed Guardians of the Galaxy in the past, but when it got to the actual story line that’s going to be happening I was sold. I was a bit curious as to how Tony Stark was going to go from the Guardians of the Galaxy to the current Ultron story arc that is going on but with the team ending up on Earth at the end of the first issue I’m sure they’ll have an easy lead in to explain it.
Writer: Brian Michael Bendis
Artist: Steve McNiven
