Not so new comic review: Guardians of the Galaxy (1990) #1

                Hey, did you hear, there’s a Guardians of the Galaxy movie coming from Marvel?  Did you know that those Guardians of the Galaxy are not the originals, that they are from a comic book series from a few years ago and not the original lineup?  You didn’t?  Well you’re in luck because for the next few months, we’re going to delve deeper into the real Guardians of the Galaxy from their 90s comic book series, started by Jim Valentino.  The Guardians were originally created in 1969, but considering the fact that I have the entire run of the 90s comic, and that comic just builds upon the existing history, we’re going to use that as our basis for this team. 

Issue 1:  But Are they Ready for…Taserface

Cover:

                This is a classic 90s Marvel cover.  A heroic pose of the team, everyone exhibiting their powers (usually shooting something out of their hands) except for the bruiser, and you know he’s the bruiser because he has his teeth gritted.  This is a perfect “first issue” cover because its generic nature gives us as much information as we need to know in order to determine our favorite character.  For most people, in a comic like X-Men, they would choose Wolverine because he looks the most like a badass on every comic in the 90s.  Here, the clear favorite has to be Yondu, the blue skinned archer with the red sail/Mohawk thing.  Maybe that or Nikki, the girl with the fire hair.  Every other character design is fairly generic, so those two stand out even more. 

                Back to the cover itself. The art is good.  It does a great job of leading your eye around, highlighting the faces of every member of the Guardians, while moving in a circle around the cover.  There are so many characters that there is hardly any room for a background, but Valentino has at least thrown a few planets on a black background to show us that this does in fact take place in outer space, as if the word “Galaxy” in their name wasn’t a good enough clue.

                What I like the most is the coloring though.  Even though the coloring on Nikki is inconsistent from her color pattern in the interiors, I love the watercolor look that the cover has.  This is so much different than the flat, bright colors of many comic books of this time period, but not nearly as muddy as the digital coloring we see today.  I’m not sure if Valentino colored this as well but whoever did did an exceptional job of working with the line art to create a whole picture and not just layer colors on top.  This cover has the weight and feel of a real painting and definitely draws the eye to its presence on a shelf.  The logo itself is a school in how to do logos the right way.  It’s simple, relatively easy to ready (with the exception of the miniscule “of the”” in between “guardians” and “galaxy”) and the colors contrast perfectly not only with one another, but with the background as well.

Story:

                This issue picks up right in the middle of a battle.  You would think that would be confusing, as many people probably have not seen these characters before, or if they did it was so sparingly that they may not remember much about them.  This is where older comics really thrive.  Jim Valentino, instead of wasting two or three issues leading up to this showing us the characters and who they are/what they did, completed all of this in six panels spread over two pages.  At that point, we know all of the pertinent information to get us into the comic. 

                Further on in the comic we are introduced to the origin of the Guardians in case we haven’t been keeping up with the continuity to that point.  Not only that, but we are also given a written history of the Guardians by Jim Valentino in the back of the first few issues as well as told what issues to go pick up to read the full story.  This is how you promote your book within the book itself.  Valentino does a phenomenal job of not only progressing the story itself (though it’s a pretty basic one at this point) but also weaving the Guardians’ backstory into the framework of the existing story and making it work.

                Now, this comic isn’t perfect by any means.  Most of the problems have to do with the pacing: it’s kind of boring, even with the flashbacks thrown in, and the fight sequences aren’t spectacular by any stretch of the imagination.  The other issues have to deal with the characters, and only a few in particular.  The whole Starhawk/Aleta sharing the same body/used to be (still?) married is just weird.  It’s the wrong kind of soap opera that doesn’t really have much of a place in the comic and really just adds an odd element to the whole thing.  Also, while I like the addition of The Stark as the villains of this issue and the fact that the villains in the future are co-opting the technology and identities of the present really ties everything together, even more than the search for Captain America’s shield does, Taserface is just a cheesy, uber-90s villain.

Art:

                Valentino (with Steve Montano on inks) does a great job building the world through images while also being exceptionally clear in his execution.  I realize that it’s a little easier to do this in a foreign world where he can build architecture to look like something out of a Dr. Seuss book and not a New York City skyline, however he adds details where he needs to and the lack of detail and imagination in that design do not reflect an epidemic in his art as the rest of the designs are well thought out and very well executed.

                Valentino also uses other traditional comic book art tricks with great success.  His utilization of the fire as panel borders around the flashback sequences is inspired considering that that is how the flashbacks are presented to Yondu and Martinex.  The way that he draws (and Evelyn Stein then colors) the sequence where Nikki performs an acrobatic maneuver in her fight with Taserface is the right way to draw comics. Unlike many of his other image co-founders, Valentino is just a technically superior artist.  Everything from the perspective to the anatomy is spot on with none of it feeling forced or “stylized”.  The designs for both the Guardians and The Stark are pretty lame, but where Valentino lacks in his design sense, he makes up for it in his technical execution.

This would have taken Brian Bendis six issues plus an annual.

It's like Dr. Seuss and M.C. Escher had a baby on acid.  Not the most inspired design.

Can you explain to me why someone that wears a containment suit feels the need to wear a t-shirt?

It's like a creepy iron dominatrix convention.

Overall:  Seeing how well this series started out, and some fond memories that it kicks up in me just by looking at it (and those awesome 90s ads for Nintendo games, etc) this is a series of articles I can’t wait to delve deeper into.