Finally, I have seen reason. After years of being obtuse and foolish, I have dived back into the great cosmic sea that is Annihilation-era Marvel cosmos, but this time, I have come away seeing the light. This time, I have made my way all the way to this Modern Era Epic Collection of Guardians of the Galaxy, and I am made new in my understanding of how great this comic is.
Marvel Comics
This Guardians of the Galaxy run written by Abnett and Lanning (also known as DnA) is one of those runs where everyone who’s read it becomes a proselytizer of it. I don’t even know how many people have recommended it to me, or around me. Without even finishing it I can tell why.
The thing that I kept being amazed at throughout reading was how insane it is to have a cast this large. You’ve got: Star-Lord, Warlock, Gomorra, Drax, Rocket, Groot, Mantis, Phyla, and Cosmo as the main cast, but Moondragon, Bug, Captain Universe, Nova, and Major Victory all feature to varying degrees. What’s most important, though, is that almost all of those characters have meaningful growth, or at least some kind of nice moment each. It’s a sprawling cast, but it doesn’t really ever feel like there isn’t enough space for all of them.
Which nicely reveals that this run places character squarely at the heart in the best way. Each character has individual, layered motivations that interact with the rest of the cast in unique ways. There’s a little bit of choppiness where the team separates about ¾ of the way through, but even there, it feels like it feeds a larger story that will no doubt click together in the second volume, whenever it comes.
Marvel Comics
While that is a strength that I have no problems highlighting, one of my only problems with this collection is that this isn’t really where half of the character’s stories start, and isn’t the best starting point for their Epic Collections. And beyond that, they made the very weird decision to start with a mini that takes place before an event that makes huge changes to the status quo of multiple characters for the ongoing’s team. None of this is a huge problem, as Annihilation-era Marvel cosmic has been collected fairly well, but especially since Phyla and Moondragon’s story is so consequential to the larger Guardians of the Galaxy story, it feels like the context from their mini and Conquest would be put out alongside this collection.
The only other thing I wasn’t completely in love with in this volume was the art, which isn’t to say it was bad by any means. The artists here had to balance a massive cast while keeping pages legible and dynamic, and they did a good job across the board. Still, there were few times that the art really drew attention to itself, and in general only really existed to serve the story.
It feels like that was a lot of the philosophy across that era of Marvel Cosmic, and it clearly served as a draw, and captured people by delivering that way. I just wish they put up more striking images across those books.
Marvel Comics
Guardians Of The Galaxy Modern Era Epic Collection: Somebody’s Got To Do It is a book from an era where creators were able to tell long-form stories in comics and also spin off new long-form series out of them. It’s a book that funnels two huge events and like four miniseries, and is still sort of mostly readable on its own. It’s a wonderful artifact, but also just a great story, and I’m beyond excited to dig into more of that insane era.
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