Guardians of The Galaxy #17

By Brian Michael Bendis, Nick Bradshaw, Michael Oeming, Walden Wong, Justin Ponsor

Happy Guardians Week, everybody! With the movie about to open in North America this weekend, this is a great time to check in with the Guardians of The Galaxy and their ongoing series. If this is your first Guardians issue, don’t worry. The stories and art are usually much better than this.

Star-Lord and Captain Marvel certainly make for a great team. Stuck on Spartax, Quill finds the coolest way to get them away from the forces of his father and the Spartax empire. The whole situation with Peter Quill and his father is one of the best parts of this series.

Now it’s time for the bad stuff. The other members of the team have been captured in other places in the galaxy, which would have made for some fun stories for how they escaped or were rescued. Instead, Bendis takes the easy way out and all of them are just handed back to Star-Lord. It all makes sense, but it’s still a cop-out. Bendis is a seasoned vet and should know better. To make matters worse, the team doesn’t seem as concerned about the missing Flash Thompson as they should be. If this is the way they treat their own, consider my application to the GoTG revoked.

The art is also a bit of a mess. Bradshaw has been on the title for a while and has done some solid work. This issue, he only does the first eight pages. The rest is done by Michael Oeming. It’s not the worst artwork in the world, but Bradshaw’s is much cleaner. They also never transition into the new style. They just catch you off guard, which is very jarring and annoying.

With this being Guardians Week, we deserved more. However, Guardians is still a great series, so don’t let any of this fool you. Maybe the movie will make up for this major bummer.