EXCLUSIVE: Guardians of the Galaxy Return In "Avengers Assemble"

[smo5000]

there are too many earth's/realities/dimensions/[random thing here]-o-verse's going on, I cant tell wtf was retconned, reworked, or simply brought back because of TV/Movies. The new Big2 motto seems to be "Write yourself into a corner, then retcon the existence of corners".

I still enjoy a decent amount of these comics but some titles are just complete crap that only succeed in confusing the long-time reader while showing the new reader exactly how easily comics shed their past.

I'll shut up now and just keep reading.

[Soundrave]

The reason no one brought up the original Guardians of the Galaxy has nothing to do with not reading any cosmic series and everything to do with the fact that the modern era team is the one being used.
If the original team were used then people would talk about that group.

Yeah, it's pretty much like responding to a review of Marvel's Avengers movie with:

"Heh, the internet...some people are completely forgetting that there was a British television series in the 1960s called 'The Avengers.'"

[USERNAME TAKEN]

The reason no one brought up the original Guardians of the Galaxy has nothing to do with not reading any cosmic series and everything to do with the fact that the modern era team is the one being used.
If the original team were used then people would talk about that group.

I understand.

I was reacting to some posters that are asserting that DNA Guardians of the Galaxy was the only/definitive interpretation of the GoTG.

My point is people are over-reacting to a story that:

A. None of us have read.
B. To a "potential" (this hasn't been confirmed yet) Guardians of the Galaxy book by Bendis.

People are already complaining that the way Peter Quill has been brought back isnt right... We don't even know how this takes place yet.

[Desaad]

All of which could have been avoided if Marvel had really been trying to explore the cosmic side. I just kind of feel that there was much more to be explored than they did. Like, I think of Gruenwald's Quasar and just how much we got to see like the Stranger, the Watchers, the universal aspects and abstracts, the Nexus of all reality, the Elders...it's just hard to feel like post-Annihilation the scope of Marvel cosmic ever really expanded. Of DnA's run, the reveal of Nowhere was one of my favorite moments. Setting up a homebase in the decapitated head of a Celestial? That's the kind of stuff I wanted more of.

Well, I sort of agree and disagree.

First of all, let me say that I LOVED Gruenwald's Quasar. If not for the character work than for a lot of the cool, smart, cosmic concepts introduced. It was far, far better than the Starlin stuff that was running against it at the same time -- Infinity Gauntlet should NEVER have beaten out Cosmos In Collision as the summer event, and at no point did any of the subsequent infinities and Warlock series' rise above mediocre.

That said, I really appreciated Giffen and Schmidt coming on and changing the focus of the cosmic stuff from the heady, frankly poorly done cosmology (honestly, only Gruenwald EVER did anything interesting with it post Kirby) and refocused on a sort of sci-fi, Kirby style cosmic. Big stuff, but less concerned with all the Dr. Strange cosmic beings (Eternity, Living Tribunal, Death were all primarily Dr. Strange guys), more concerned with cool sci fi concepts like teleportation tech or culture building and the like.

My problem with DnA wasn't that they made it too grounded, my problem with DnA is that they made it to SUPERHERO. Guardians of the Galaxy was little more than JLI in space. The team operated in the same basic fashion as every other team, the things they went up against were pretty standard. I wanted weird, I wanted bold, I wanted intricate, and instead I got Nova going up against a few humanoid aliens or the Guardians up against Ultron or whatever.

I wanted 2000AD (which is where they both made their bones!) and I got standard Marvel/DC.

Giffen had it right, 100%. The cosmic stuff was never better than 'good', and usually was nothing more than 'okay', once he wrapped up Annihilation and Starlord.

[USERNAME TAKEN]

Well, I sort of agree and disagree.

First of all, let me say that I LOVED Gruenwald's Quasar. If not for the character work than for a lot of the cool, smart, cosmic concepts introduced. It was far, far better than the Starlin stuff that was running against it at the same time -- Infinity Gauntlet should NEVER have beaten out Cosmos In Collision as the summer event, and at no point did any of the subsequent infinities and Warlock series' rise above mediocre.

That said, I really appreciated Giffen and Schmidt coming on and changing the focus of the cosmic stuff from the heady, frankly poorly done cosmology (honestly, only Gruenwald EVER did anything interesting with it post Kirby) and refocused on a sort of sci-fi, Kirby style cosmic. Big stuff, but less concerned with all the Dr. Strange cosmic beings (Eternity, Living Tribunal, Death were all primarily Dr. Strange guys), more concerned with cool sci fi concepts like teleportation tech or culture building and the like.

My problem with DnA wasn't that they made it too grounded, my problem with DnA is that they made it to SUPERHERO. Guardians of the Galaxy was little more than JLI in space. The team operated in the same basic fashion as every other team, the things they went up against were pretty standard. I wanted weird, I wanted bold, I wanted intricate, and instead I got Nova going up against a few humanoid aliens or the Guardians up against Ultron or whatever.

I wanted 2000AD (which is where they both made their bones!) and I got standard Marvel/DC.

Giffen had it right, 100%. The cosmic stuff was never better than 'good', and usually was nothing more than 'okay', once he wrapped up Annihilation and Starlord.

I agree with this post 100%.

[Desaad]

As is the perennial Bendis apologist.

But seriously, guys. We've all been reading Bendis' Marvel stories for over a decade now. He's pretty notorious for bringing back characters that had important deaths without giving an explanation. He's pretty bad at acknowledging developments that occurred in the books of other writers. And despite all Brevoort's nonsensical blathering about Bendis' need to get to the "core emotional truth," he's a writer who rarely gets the characters right . . . or at least the characters as they were portrayed prior to him writing them.

Why would you expect anything different here?

I agree that the Bendis hate here is...a little much. I mean I don't like the guy's work either, but he hasn't done anything wrong YET except for some really hammy Thanos dialog.

I'm sure they'll make a token effort to explain how the Guardians got back, and even if they don't -- it's not that big of a deal.

I suspect Bendis is going to screw it up somehow, but I will say that I'm excited to see some different takes on the characters involved. Too much of what has been going on was informed by the past, by what Starlin did. I'm looking forward to seeing someone who is likely to do somethign DIFFERENT, as there is always the chance it will actually be good. Not likely with Bendis, not for me, but at least different.

Anyway, he hasnt' done anything wrong yet. Calling this 'a mess' is ridiculous at this stage.

[Desaad]

I agree with this post 100%.

:)

I'm agreeing with you 100% on the Bendis hate. I don't like the man's work 99% of the time, but he hasn't done anything yet!

I do think this is an...ill fit for his skill set. But I appreciate, first of all, that Marvel is putting their biggest write in the cosmic 'universe', and I appreciate that he could very well do something different.

Marvel has been doing that for a while, and it's worked for them, even if it hasn't worked for me. Bendis is a great single character street level 'real world' writer, to me. Daredevil, for instance. Putting him on the Avengers made no sense -- it was playing against type. And, for me, it never really worked. I've liked two issues - TWO - out of his entire run, and both of them were single character focused 'real world' side tales during Civil War (Luke Cage by Lenil Yu and one that focused on a disgruntled Stark employee, I think drawn by Jim Cheung). But it's WORKED for them, financially, so good for them.

Hopefully we get Hickman at least playing tangentially with this stuff -- he's already done extensive work with the Kree, so if we get a sort of Kree/Skrull/Sh'iar thing going, I think it'll work.

[Nevets F]

I wonder if we'll find out where Moondragon, Mantis, Cosmo, Jack Flag, and Major Victory are?

I miss the team uniforms.

Ugh...I'm remembering how terrible DnA's writing got as time passed on GotG...how many times did they kill Phyla? Three? Bendis can't be worse than that. .

Could I ever hope for Cammi and Skreet?

[Desaad]

Exactly. DnA are so apt to play the death and rebirth card, it was honestly laughable at the end there. Every 3 issues someone died and returned.

I wouldn't expect Cammi and Skreet unless Giffen comes back, and he's firmly entrenched at DC.

[Superbeast]

I wanted 2000AD (which is where they both made their bones!) and I got standard Marvel/DC.

You're expecting a F-1 driver to drive the same in NASCAR more or less, DC and Marvel's expectations and practices are very different to 2000AD. If you want 2000AD, buy that. Expecting an American owned subsidiary of a conglomerate that includes a movie studio to function the same as Britain's longest running alternative comic owned by a computer games company is ridiculous. Just because the same people are writing stories at a different company doesn't mean the new company has the same creative freedom for their writers.

Also Cosmo is with the Annihilators. Who basically took the place of the GOTG... so why they haven't turned up but the GOTG has is just another asspull we are meant to excuse, particularly since they are all A-Class heavyhitters who the Avengers also recently teamed with and Thanos is also A-Class trouble.

[Desaad]

You're expecting a F-1 driver to drive the same in NASCAR more or less, DC and Marvel's expectations and practices are very different to 2000AD. If you want 2000AD, buy that. Expecting an American owned subsidiary of a conglomerate that includes a movie studio to function the same as Britain's longest running alternative comic owned by a computer games company is ridiculous. Just because the same people are writing stories at a different company doesn't mean the new company has the same creative freedom for their writers.

No, I'm not. I'm not asking them to reinvent the wheel, just to bring some free thinking, and something DIFFERENT, to their comics.

Hickman has all the freedom in the world, apparently, to do harder, smarter sci fi in Fantastic Four, which is an INFINITELY bigger big than Guardians of the Galaxy. Giffen delivered the same in "Thanos", "Drax", "Silver Surfer", and "Annihilation" before he went to DC, and did it at DC years ago on a book like "Legion of Superheroes" v3 and 4. Same with Grant Morrison in his Batman, Superman and..well, everything he does work. Blaming it on editorial or the Marvel brand is a weak and unsupported excuse, one that I see fans resort to too often.

Ooga Booga editorial bad!!!

No, the reality is that DnA had lost it. Lost steam, lost the muse, whatever. As someone who has read their work on the Legion, you could see exactly the same thing happening there; the wheels coming off as they started resorting to shock value deaths and resurrections. And now they've got free reign to do what they want at Boom, and their work looks terribly derivative of everything ELSE they've done.

[KraziJoe]

they need to stay on earth.
And how are they all breathing in space?

[tigerkaya]

they need to stay on earth.
And how are they all breathing in space?

Its a cover its supposed to give the theme there from space. Also earth is boring.

[Stopu]

I'm not. I'd rather the toys were left on the shelf rather than be broken and abused.

While I'm not one to go overboard, I'm actually really, really dismayed by this.

I didn't read all the thread but this represents my exact feelings.

[EduPezzi]

totally agreed with you