It’s
double-sized anniversary issue time again!
Here are the major dangling plotlines that you would hope are resolved
(or at least pretty close to resolved) in a double-sized issue:
The
fate of Starhawk and Aleta.
Talon
vs. Mephisto/Malevolence
Who or
what is Ripjak?
Vance’s
new suit?
What is
going to be done about the Beyonder and the Protégé?
We
begin wrapping up plotlines by visiting with Talon who, surprise, surprise is
getting hit in the back. He is currently
being tortured by Malevolence until he relinquishes control of his amulet. He continues to resist and instead just flat
out escapes. Why he couldn’t have done
this last issue, or at least before his injuries accumulated I have no idea,
but it sure seems like the Guardians only use their powers when it is
convenient in terms of the plot. Well,
for whatever reason, Talon uses his magic, gets away and then complains about
his back even more while doing so.
Unfortunately, in getting away he runs right into Mephisto, so that plan
didn’t work too well after all. 
From
that we go to Yondu, who is having some sort of fire-centric spirit dream. He snaps out of it only to be confronted by
the cold reality that he is still standing in the hand of a Celestial amongst
the Gods of the Marvel Universe. We are
delivered back to the harsh reality that last issue displayed to us. The man-child known as the Protégé, Joffrey
Baratheon before there was a Joffrey Baratheon, is now an omnipotent being,
along the likes of the Living Tribunal.
In order to counteract Joffrey, the Gods must band together, using all
their energy to teach that punk kid a lesson.
This means that the Hawk God needs to let Starhawk and Aleta go so that
he can focus his energy on more pressing matters. He does just that. They no longer have any powers, but at least
they’re alive.
As the
Protégé gets attacked by the Gods, he determines that his best course of action
is to call in his own fighting force in the form of Mephisto and
Malevolence. Of course when he teleports
them in, Talon tags along. All bringing
in Mephisto and Malevolence does is give the Guardians someone to duke it out
with. They can’t fight Gods so they were
going to spend their entire anniversary issue on the sidelines if it wasn’t for
the summoning of villains more their speed.
Everyone
continues to fight until the Protégé determines he’s had enough. Before he can destroy everyone though, the
Celestial blasts him. The only character
that has done nothing for the better part of three issues has finally decided
to join the fracas, and has turned the tide for the good guys. Of course.
Whenever something needs to wrap up quickly in this comic it falls to
whatever Deus Ex Machina Michael Gallagher has dreamed up at that moment. Thank the Celestials there’s only twelve more
issues to go in this series.
Wait a
minute though, were you concerned that we haven’t heard from the mutants in a
while? You’re in luck because we get to
check in with them as well. We get the
chance to see that they have created a perfect clone of Charlie-27, one that
Rancor mutilates straight away.
Back in
the realm of the Gods, the Protégé is captured, encased in energy, something
that literally could have happened two issues ago. Now that we’re wrapping things up, the Hawk
God has decreed that he will permit Starhawk to live again, but Aleta doesn’t
want the power, she would rather be with Vance…until she turns around and
realizes that he is just a guy in a containment suit again and no longer has
that sweet headband. Starhawk is
therefore granted the full complement of his powers, but the Hawk God has one
last trick up his sleeve as he tells Starhawk that the parents he thought he
knew, were not really his, but were really just fattening him up to make a meal
of him. The Gods then banish the
Beyonder to his own universe. He is
lonely here, being omnipotent is hard after all, but he realizes that because
he gave the suit to Vance, he can use it to spy on the Guardians through Vance,
he has a connection to that other universe.
The
Gods then place the Protégé in an hourglass which is quickly filling with sand
as his punishment. The Guardians get all
bent out of shape about this and the Living Tribunal just blinks them out of
existence and back to their own universe instead of listening to them. Instead of crying over the fate of the
Protégé, Vance asks Yondu if he’ll rejoin the team, which he agrees to, even
though a few issues ago he was pissed at the Guardians for screwing up his
homeworld, and while Starhawk and Aleta fixed the timeline, I don’t think
anyone has mentioned that to Yondu. He
must have just forgot.
To wrap
up the anniversary issue, we have Uilig, the last Watcher telling us the story
of the War of the Worlds, because we haven’t heard that three or four times
already. The excerpt in this issue does
nothing but tell us everything we already know from every other recap as well
as a general recap of the first fifty issues of this series.
Next
Issue: We take a slight detour and check out the Galactic Guardians limited
series. It’s four issues of…fun I guess?
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