Why So Blu?

‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ Reborn in 3rd Volume

Back in the early 90’s I was pretty big into comic book buying. Then I slowly faded from the pop culture media and it soon drifted out of sight, out of mind. It wasn’t until about 5 years ago or so that I decided to see what else was out there in the way of new titles these days. The first book I bought? Guardians of the Galaxy. It looked like a fairly off the wall, entertaining read. That certainly turned out to be the case but I continued on with the sci-fi rag-tag team of heroes. Apparently sometime between now and when I distanced myself from that series, it died out, which seems logical as it was getting rather tedious and boring. This week Marvel is proud to announce the rebirth of the series with issue #1 of Guardians of the Galaxy.

If you missed the news in recent months, Marvel’s next big film project will be Guardians of the Galaxy (due out 2014).  It’s basically a team, who in issue #1 we already find assembled, that exists to protect the galaxy (yes, I double as Captain Obvious).  Think of them as the Green Lanterns of Marvel…but without the glowing jewelry…and there’s way fewer Guardians than ring bearers…okay so they’re not all that similiar, but work with me here, you get the idea.  The team is lead by the half-human, space age-pistol-toting Star-Lord.  Along his side is the most dangerous woman in the universe, Gamora, the tree-like Groot, the artillery-respecting rodent Rocket Raccoon, and muscle-bound barbarian Drax.  Oh, and let’s not forget the newest member, Tony Stark!

Written by Marvel standout Brian Michael Bendis (New Avengers, Ultimate Spider-Man), the revised telling of the Guardians’ story comes forth in the premier issue of the new third volume.  Teaming up with Bendis is artist Steve McNiven (Civil War, Wolverine) who brings a very detailed and eye-appealing style to the story.  So how does the pair work together overall?  I could look over the artwork of McNiven all day.  Bendis’ efforts here, however, seem strikingly familiar to when I picked up issue #1 of volume 2 half a decade ago.  The book is entertaining enough to buy issue #2, but I have the sneaky suspicion I will lose interest soon after.

You can expect a lot of plasma blasts, alien invasions and severed parts in the series, but at the end of the day, I can’t help but think of the team as a poor man’s space Avengers.  The characters just don’t seem that interesting to me, although Marvel did pre-empt issue 1’s release with an issue 0.1 in February covering the background of the team’s leader, Star-Lord.  I just find names like that very cheesy and reminiscent of bad sci-fi films.  It’s difficult to take him seriously.  On the bright side, there is some fun to be had in this book.  You get to see a good butt-whooping in its later pages and it is a light read, but again, I don’t foresee a lot of wow factor here for the long term.

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