Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Avengers – Comic Book Review

Marvel Studios lit up the internet two weeks ago with their Guardians of the Galaxy movie trailer. I enjoyed that trailer. Lots of humor, fun characters, and I knew nothing about it really. Good enough to get me a smallish Guardians of the Galaxy comic – Galactic Avengers.

Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Avengers gives a good intro on the characters, though it feels more “Avengers” and less anarchic than the movie trailer.

There’s a new rule in the galaxy: no one touches Earth! Why has Earth become the most important planet in the galaxy? That’s what the Guardians of the Galaxy are going to find out! Join the brightest stars in the Marvel Universe: Star Lord, Gamora, Drax the Destroyer, Rocket Raccoon, Groot and Iron Man, as they embark upon one of the most explosive and eye-opening adventures ever!

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#1 – The Story

Cosmic Avengers is a decent introduction to the Guardians of the Galaxy, as it tells – essentially – the origins story of Star Lord / Peter Quill (including why he’s called Star Lord, which the trailer makes to be only his exaggerated opinion of himself.

To be fair, it’s a simple story. Alien ship crashes on earth. Lonely women nurses the pilot back to health. They fall in love, only for the space-faring pilot being called back to space by duty, while the women is pregnant.

Years later, the son – Star Lord – head to space himself in search of his father (who made an intergalactic career in the meantime). The odd twist …

… Spoilers! …

… is that the duty-bound father, lover and space-hero of the pre-story ultimately turns into the villain of the story, for no good reason I saw. It was an odd turn of events, but hey.

Also, Peter Quill – along with his friends (which includes Iron Man Tony Stark) – needs to save Earth from destruction. But that was a given, I suppose!

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#2 – The Action

The (presumably) biggest difference to the movie (or trailer) appears to be the action.

In the trailer, it struck me as a sort of Serenity/Han Solo-style space crew. In the comic book, the action is a lot more … well … comic-style. Hand-to-hand-fighting (including, literally, with axes and swords) against space-craft and fighter-jet appears to be a common strategy.

I suppose it works – given how it’s all about being over-the-top, etc.. – but it wasn’t my favourite part of the book (and I wouldn’t mind not seeing floating sword-fighters duel jet fighters in the movie).

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#3 – The Bonus Material

The entire book, while hardcover, come to about 136 pages, a good part of which are showcases of covers, as well as a few ads in the back. The main Cosmic Avengers story runs to about 80 pages or so, I guess (no page-numbers).

Another 20 to 30 pages in the end are short character-features on the characters that tag along with Peter Quill; i.e. Drax the Destroyer, Gamora, Rocket Raccoon and Groot. All of them are in various alternative art-styles, which I enjoyed. It makes for a nice break, visually.

The “short-stories” themselves were mostly bare-bones action-scene, with just enough dialogue to give the not-Peter-Quill-characters time to showcase their personality.

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#4 – Thoughts?

Is Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Avengers worth it?

If you want to take a peek at these characters ahead of the upcoming Guardians of the Galaxy movie, I would say yes. It cost me 9 quid on Amazon for a 136, full-colour hardcover book, which is amazing value (and it’s very well produced).

Moreover, Cosmic Avengers gives you an origins story for the central character, as well as character featurettes for the others, as well as a fact-pace no-nonsense story with lots of action that doesn’t need any in-depth Marvel-Universe knowledge.

It’s not an amazing story by any stretch, and some of the plot-turns left me a bit puzzled. It is fun pulp-comic-action though.

Z.