Six
weeks (or six months back in 1990) has finally brought us to the final chapter
in the quests for Captain America’s shield.
Now all the Guardians have to do is defeat Force and secure their prize. We saw in the last issue that that’s not
necessarily an easy task, and by the looks of this cover, they won’t be able to
easily complete their objective. Let’s
see how it turns out.
We open
with a nice title page that shows all of the players (almost like the old Rob
Liefeld X-Force issues did. From there, we travel to a factory within the
planet where the inhabitants apparently used to build their spaceships. The two combatants from the Guardians in this
round are Starhawk and Aleta, the husband and wife team that used to share a
body. Can you say…awkward? Needless to say, they start out by having a
married couple’s quarrel over the fact that Starhawk kept Aleta locked in his
body most of the time, oh and the simple fact that he (in her estimation)
killed their children. Now in his
defense, he said that he did not kill the children, just didn’t prevent them
from being killed, which, when your claim to fame is that you are the “one who
knows” is pretty much the same thing. Of
course during their fight, they don’t notice Eightyfive and Tachyon, two
members of Force that are their opponents.
Eightyfive is basically an alien Magneto, with not only a mastery over
magnetism, but also the same backstory only on an alien planet. In fact, his name: Eightyfive, comes from the
bunk that he was housed in on the alien planet, so any real identity that he
may have had is long since gone. This is
a pretty decent origin for someone, even if it does piggyback Magneto’s. Because of this origin, he has trouble being
the ruthless villain that gels with the rest of his teammates, as he has Aleta
dead to rights and moves to let her go before realizing that she has
disappeared. 
Starhawk
has trouble with Tachyon almost immediately (though we know nothing of Tachyon’s
origin, his powers are light-based and, as deduced by Starhawk, fairly reactive
in nature). Starhawk, after figuring
this out, just stands around waiting for Tachyon to do something. Instead, he is teleported away to the room
with all of the other Guardians. We join
the action that ended last issue, with Martinex appearing to be at death’s door
and Charlie-27 grieving over him.
Starhawk shows up and says that Martinex is not dead and then attempts
to heal him with his light powers. How
that works, I have no idea, but it at least causes Martinex to start breathing
again. The whole time this is happening,
Yondu is off by himself feeling super emo.
Then, without warning, everyone is teleported away.
They
are teleported to a glass penalty box where they get to watch the final
contest, Vance Astro vs. Interface, for the fate of the shield. Before the fight can begin, the two
combatants need to stand around, in the most awkward and unnatural poses
imaginable and shit-talk each other.
Vance does most of the talking, which means that as soon as the action
starts, he is defeated almost immediately.
Interface grabs the shield and holds it up victoriously while Vance
looks on and cries. This brings up a
valid point. How does his suit
work? If Vance’s skin is exposed to the atmosphere,
it immediately starts to decay, as seen in this very issue. Yet, I would assume that inside his mouth is
not covered in whatever material the suit is made of, and there are obviously
holes in the suit to allow tears to come through. This is probably the biggest WTF plot point
that Valentino leaves hanging. 
Interface,
triumphant as ever, holds the shield aloft and commands that the other
Guardians follow his lead. They laugh
him off, and he eventually realizes that the shield is not some magical
talisman that makes people follow you like he thought that it was. At this point, he chucks the shield away and
Vance crawls over and grabs it, making a speech about how the shield was a
symbol and that people followed Captain America because he was the bee’s knees
or something like that. The shield
represents an ideal and everyone wants to follow the ideal. Vance goes on some more about his man-crush
on Captain America and then Force, clearly the losers at this point, are
teleported back to their ship where, instead of going to finish off the
Guardians (because comparatively speaking, the Guardians are incredibly
overmatched) they decide to stick to their plan of just being a ‘for profit’
group of supervillains and fly away.
We
check back in on the Guardians who are now faced with Mainframe, the voice they
have been talking to all along in the facility.
It turns out that Mainframe is actually Vision, the old Avenger just
repurposed. He tells the Guardians that
the game they were playing was to test their worth in terms of being able to
acquire the shield and it’s pretty clear that without Vance’s speech they would
have lost as they were soundly defeated both physically and in terms of their
objectives. Vision also tells the
Guardians of the lost group of mutants that they have been searching for since
one of their first appearances in the Marvel Universe. Not only does it tie up the current search
for the shield, but Valentino then sets up the next story by tying it into the
Guardians’ past. A well-done effort all
around for him.
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