Thursday, March 20, 2014

Not So New Comic Review: Guardians of the Galaxy (1991) #26

                I know, you’ve waited for a long time to see this, the secret origin of the Guardians, and I don’t blame you for being excited as we have been teased with the “War of the Worlds” that basically wiped out most of the life on Earth and the Badoon committing genocide on multiple planets as major turning points in the origin of the Guardians, so it’ll be nice to fina….wait, what’s that?  The War of the Worlds is not touched on and the Badoon genocide is basically all done by the time we join this origin story?  Well shit, ok, let’s get this over with.

                The secret origin starts with Charlie-27 coming back from an incredibly long (six month) patrol.  When no one is there to greet him upon his arrival, he gets suspicious, and when the Badoon show up and start shooting at him, it’s confirmed, something is up and his people are toast.  Instead of sticking around though, he decides to enter an interstellar teleporter (or actually, the Badoon decide for him as they continue to chase and shoot at him until he teleports).  Charlie doesn’t even have the opportunity to choose his destination as he has to get the hell out of dodge to avoid certain death.  Luckily, Starhawk is pulling the strings to bring the Guardians together (which is basically the whole gist of this issue, and we get that reveal on page four) so he sets the teleporter for Pluto, Martinex’s home planet.

                Once Charlie is on Pluto, he’s greeted by more Badoon, and their creepy winged-cat things.  As he is running from them, he bumps into Martinex, who was just about to abandon Pluto as he is the last of his race left (he’s spent the last few months destroying files and research so it doesn’t fall into the hands of the Badoon).  Charlie and Marty then escape using another teleporter, this one set for Earth as they assume that Earth would be the last planet to fall.  They are probably correct, but they are also too late, as Earth has fallen. 

This is shown to be true because Vance Astro is held captive in front of a Badoon king (you can tell he’s the king because of the pope-hat crown he’s wearing).  We then get to learn all of Vance’s origin, being shot into space to check out a distant planet, but instead the technology for interstellar travel is developed only a few short years later, making his journey unnecessary.  Instead of getting a regular job, Vance decides to explore the terrain he was sent to explore anyway, even though it has already been explored for years.  It’s here that he meets up with Yondu, who is in super-savage mode (you can tell because of the ratty loincloth).  Vance and Yondu become tenuous partners from tehn on.  In fact, that partnership is about to be broken as the Badoon king instructs Vance to kill Yondu, but instead, they escape.  As they are getting to the teleporters, Charlie and Marty arrive.  Everyone fights off the Badoon and they escape.  It is then that they decide to band together as the Guardians of the Galaxy.


Next issue: We get to learn the secret of Talon (tell me you’re super excited about that one, considering the fact that Talon is such an awesome character).

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