As advertised, this 25-issue collection contains Al Ewing’s contributions to the Guardians of the Galaxy. Specifically: Rocket #1-6, Guardians of the Galaxy #1-18, and Guardians of the Galaxy Annual #1.
The collection starts strong with the six-issue Rocket Raccoon miniseries in which Rocket and various accomplices do heists and other crimes for some combination of profit and justice depending on who you ask. This mini has a lot of fun with the comic medium and employs a “prose gutter”, at times providing ongoing narration on the left third of the page while more traditional panels with action and dialogue occupy the remaining page space. Sure, narration has been used in comics for decades, but this specific use of prose allows for a noir feel that is more directly embedded into the story than an omnipotent narrator. Once Deadpool shows up, a lot of fun is had with it as he both converses with the prose and slides in and out of his own head as an alien cordyceps mushroom tries to evict him from his own mind.
Between the introduction of the now-iconic Murd Blurdock, space attorney, and Power Man, the Rocket issues establish just how funny Ewing can be. While the following Guardians of the Galaxy issues transition to a slightly more serious tone Ewing still has fun with it and there are plenty of laughs to be had.
The Guardians run covers a lot of ground to varying degrees of success. Star-Lord goes on a wild adventure of self-discovery that changes him both inside and out as he is emotionally affected and now seems incapable of wearing a shirt.
I would be lying by omission if I didn’t talk about how sexy so much of this book is. Hercules has a wild pair of the lowest-cut pants, Star-Lord is no longer capable of wearing a shirt, Marvel Boy and Hercules develop a thing, and the shameless flirting in all directions between Gamorra, Star-Lord, AND Nova makes for a lot of charged pages that add to the emotional turmoil of the story.
Events are a lot of things, both positive and negative, which sounds like a nothing statement but it’s accurate. The way The King in Black gets injected into these stories is annoying, yes, but not as annoying as it could be. The King in Black is not as destructive as, say, when a character suddenly falls into a coma in Hellcat because of Civil War II in a swerve that is incompatible with the tone of that book, but when you’re really vibing with the book it still takes you out of the story when suddenly, there’s a goopy dragon. A goopy dragon that is not present because of a consequence of the action of the story you just read, but because Marvel says it’s time for the event to happen.
Thankfully, Ewing takes advantage of the opportunity to bring his ongoing story to a halt and uses the opportunity to tell a closed-room, Agatha Christie style, whodunnit mystery.
Physically, this is a cool collection in a style that reflects how we actually talk about comics. When people say they enjoyed the Al Ewing run on Guardians of the Galaxy, this is a single physical object that contains the letter of what is being talked about. But that’s not quite true in spirit as comics are highly collaborative and the contributions of the many artists shouldn’t be deemphasized like this. Also, the lack of any Last Annihilation tie-ins, also mostly written by Ewing, makes the collection feel incomplete.
In all, this collection is genuinely good. Adventures are had, characters are explored, characters explore each other, there are plenty of laughs, and anyone interested in the Al Ewing run of Guardians of the Galaxy will be able to easily experience it.
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