Guardians of the Galaxy: Gamora's Galactic Showdown

The Kiddo bought this at our school's recent book fair.

Title: Guardians of the Galaxy: Gamora's Galactic Showdown
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Date: 2017
Writer: Brandon T. Snider
Artist: Pascale Qualano, Chris Sotomayor

Not a comic. This is a novel for young readers, part of the Mighty Marvel Chapter Books series. While it's a prose story, it is full of color illustrations from the team of Qualano and Sotomayor.

The story involves a mysterious box that belonged to Thanos, but which appears to be keyed so that only Gamora can open it. Gamora wants to find the box in the hopes of furthering her quest to make peace with her past. But her sister, Nebula, is also interested in the box, lured by the possibility of it containing an item of power, and possibly also just out of spite to keep it from her sister.

Gamora's quest brings her into contact with a whole array of Marvel's cosmic characters, from her friends in the Guardians of the Galaxy, to Pip the Troll, the Collector, Captain Marvel, and Adam Warlock. Unfortunately, the effort to cram the book full of cameos detracts a bit from the story. It would have worked perfectly well with just Gamora, Nebula, Warlock (who does have an important role here) and maybe one or two others thrown in as sidekicks.

The bloated cast takes the focus off of Gamora too much, which is unfortunate, because Gamora's inner struggle is actually really interesting. Her search to resolve the conflicting loyalties of her abusive family situation with Thanos and Nebula and her loving (if dysfunctional at times) chosen families of the Guardians and the Infinity Watch is the true conflict in the story. And when it is the focus, the story works really well.

The violence is kept to a toned-down PG level, and some of the emotional issues are a bit overexplained, but the central quest is handled well, and Gamora shines in the parts of the story where she's in the spotlight.

Rating: 7/10

True Believers: Guardians of the Galaxy: Galaxy's Most Wanted #1

I picked this one up at the Shanghai Comic Con.

Title: True Believers: Guardians of the Galaxy: Galaxy's Most Wanted
Issue: 1
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Date: September 2016
Writer: Brian Michael Bendis
Artist: Valerio Schiti
Colorist: Richard Isanove
Letterer: VC's Cory Petit
Cover: Arthur Adams, Jason Keith
Editor: Kathleen Wisneski, Jake Thomas, Nick Lowe

After Peter Quill's brief tenure as the ruler of a planet came to a bad end, he finds himself on the run, along with Kitty Pryde (no, I didn't know she was in the Guardians either) on a prison planet with alien soldiers trying to kill them.

At which point they have an extended discussion about Kitty Pryde's fashion sense.

The idea here is that Quill has been left hopeless after recent events, and Kitty is trying to distract him enough for him to get his will to live back. I get what they were going for here, but it just didn't work for me. For one thing, there really wasn't any actual discussion of fashion. Nothing that substantive, anyway. And while this may seem like an odd complaint to make, the whole effect just came off as hollow, with no authenticity. It all felt like a big space-filler where little was actually accomplished.

Things picked up a bit when the action intensified, but the bad guys were generic, and the additional bad guys introduced at the end looked just as generic (if perhaps a bit more menacing) than the previous ones.

Kitty's rage as she describes the prison planet as a concentration camp packed some emotional punch, but would need more emphasis as the stories continues for it to really have an impact.

Rating: 4.5/10

Legendary Starlord #3

This is my second review from my Free Comic Book Day haul here in Vietnam. Free comics were limited to one per person (they actually had a pretty big crowd at the event). Since my wife and son were there, we took home three of the official freebies. I also bought a couple of comics to read with the Kiddo (who is just being introduced to the Marvel Cinematic Universe in the last year or so), so this is one of the purchased books.

 Title: Legendary Starlord
Issue: 3
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Date: November, 2014
Writer: Sam Humphries
Penciler: Paco Medina
Inker: Juan Vlasco
Colorist: David Curiel
Letterer: VC's Joe Caramagna
Cover: Paco Medina
Editor: Mike Marts, Xander Jarowey

Pretty basic story here. Star Lord wakes up in a jail cell, and goes about escaping. In between there is a hologram of a woman wearing a banana costume, a treacherous secret agent, a mysterious kid, a hot-rod starship, and a ton of snark.

Nothing in here is all that original, but it somehow comes together into a very entertaining story that does a nice job of matching the pacing and flavor of the Guardians of the Galaxy movie.

I read this out loud to the Kiddo (Guardians was his first Marvel movie, and he's become a pretty big fan), and he really enjoyed it.

More fun than it had any right to be.

Rating: 7.5/10