After
the insanity of issue twenty five, what with Galactus and the giant sized
Silver Surfer, it looks like it’s time to scale things back a bit. What’s that?
It’s time for another annual?
Jeez. So much for scaling things
back. Here we go with another sixty-four
page romp in the thirty-first century.
Luckily
for Jim Valentino, he had some help on this annual. Instead of doing it all himself, he enlisted
the services of a multitude of artists for the various stories, while still
writing them all (he even added a short story and a couple pinups). The first, and main, story revolves around
the Galactic Guardians and utilizes Herb Trimpe on pencils. Now go to Google and type in “Herb
Trimpe”. What comes up is not at all
indicative of the artwork on display during the 90s from him. Herb has been around for decades, and it
looked like he decided to adapt his style during the Liefeld-boom of the early
90s. That would be fine if he didn’t
just look like a terrible carbon copy of Liefeld, taking all of the stylistic
flourishes that Liefeld brought to his work (poor anatomy, etc) and
embellishing it. It’s even worse because
if you look at Trimpe’s old stuff, he can really draw! To see him debase himself like that is silly. So right off the bat, the art is forgettable
at best. To go from Valentino’s solid,
if unspectacular pencils, and the Mark Texeira issue which is still the
highlight of the series in my opinion, to this is a major downgrade. I could spend 10,000 words pointing out all
of the anatomical and storytelling flaws in this issue, but instead I’ll just
focus on the art as a whole…it’s bad.
The
story is decent. It’s the first real
mission for the collected Galactic Guardians, and it’s a doozy. Mainframe has apparently contracted a virus
and he and his world is basically collapsing.
To make matters worse, The Intimidators-formerly the Minions of Menace
(remember all of those characters that Brahl was breaking out of prison for the
last six to eight issues, well that’s what they’re called apparently) are
behind the plot as they are using this virus to get revenge on the Guardians of
the Galaxy (even though they’re not even in this story). The
Galactic Guardians come together and are immediately thrown into the fire
against the Intimidators, who they easily dispatch. However Brahl remains unharmed (despite the
fact that he lost his mustache along the way) and unleashes our old friend
Korvac on the Galactic Guardians.
Remember Korvac from the first annual?
The near omnipotent being that gave the Guardians a run for their money
even as a baby? Well apparently he was
somehow attached to the computer virus that infected Mainframe, transforming
Mainframe into an amalgam of the two beings.
Korvac
kicks the ass of the Galactic Guardians, until Phoenix (who up to this point
has been contained in a stasis chamber because of, you know, the whole,
destroyer of worlds thing) shows up and kicks his ass. It must be real nice to have a god on your
team, even if you break him out only when things get too hairy for the regular
team. And that’s it, enter Phoenix Ex
Machina, exit bad guy.
Our
next story, by Valentino with an art assist by Kirkowood Studios focuses on
Replica and the Protégé (in a story that actually comes before the first story
in the annual as Replica is recruited to be part of the Galactic Guardians in
the Trimpe-illustrated story). This
shows how, and why, she came to leave the Protégé’s side. Basically it boils down to Replica doesn’t
want to be there anymore as she is having a conflict between her allegiance to
the Guardians (who she wasn’t with for that long anyway) and her faith (which
is more of a creepy-cult than a church).
Instead of putting herself in the position to have to choose between the
two, she steals a space ship and runs away.
After a
couple Valentino-penciled pinups we take a trip to Yondu and Centauri IV (where
he was left after issue 25) with the help of Valentino and penciller Matthew
Jorgensen. Not only do we get to see how
the Centauri IV population is living, and how they idolize Yondu, but Yondu
also is given his hand back. No longer
does he have a multi-purpose weapon attached to his wrist, which begs the
question, if they were able to do that from the get-go, why did they bother
with the weapon-hand? Why not just give
Yondu, who is incredibly adept with weapons to begin with, a normal hand and
let him carry on as if nothing happened?
This isn’t addressed because we are too busy watching Talon be Talon and
witnessing pleasantries between the Guardians to actually deal with continuity
issues. Everyone then says good bye to
Yondu and leaves him on his planet, with his people.
The
final story, written and penciled by Valentino, is basically a rundown of the
Guardians’ rogues gallery. If you didn’t
realize it from the first twenty-five issues (and two annuals) the Guardians
have a pretty lame rogues gallery.
And
that’s it! Aside from some terrible
artwork in the first story, this annual wasn’t too bad. Next week we’ll continue with issue
twenty-six of the series, where we get to learn the secret origin of the
Guardians (aren’t you excited? I’m
excited!)
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