(w) Brian Michael Bendis
(a) Steve McNiven (pencils) John Dell (inks) Justin Ponsor (colors)
After playing coy for a few months following the explosive success of The Avengers at the global box-office, Marvel Studios has announced that the next property they plan to launch will be based on their long-running title Guardians of the Galaxy. In support of this effort, Marvel's publishing arm has recruited two of their top talents, writer Brian Michael Bendis (New Avengers) and artist Steve McNiven (Civil War) to reboot the comic-book series of these characters and, Marvel hopes, raise their profile a bit in time for the movie's 2014 release date.
Guardians of the Galaxy #.1 is the origin of Peter Quill, aka Star Lord. It begins thirty years before the present, around the time of his conception.
His mother Meredith Quill is living by herself somewhere in rural America, having apparently just broken up with her boyfriend or husband, when a spaceship crash-lands, and the lone occupant, a human-looking man, crawls out. He later wakes up in Meredith's house and introduces himself as J'son of Spartax, a king from outer space. As he spends the following days repairing his ship, he and Meredith fall in love, and from their romantic encounters Meredith conceives a child. Unfortunately, J'son has to return to his planet of origin, where he is fighting a fierce war which, he claims, the earth is not ready for, and for which reason he cannot take Meredith with him. After J'son takes off, leaving Meredith only a space-gun and their child to remember him by, Peter is born and grows up without a father, and all of the resentment that comes with that. Fortunately, however, as he grows it becomes clear that he has an innate spunk and an inclination to help the helpless. Unfortunately, when he's ten years old, the aliens at war with his father come back to his mother's house with something very nasty in mind for him and his mom.
Considering that this issue is meant to kick off a series designed to elevate a B-list (or arguably even C-list) Marvel property to the A-list, I was somewhat disappointed to see A-list creators Brian Michael Bendis and Steve McNiven doing the comic-book equivalent of phoning in their performances.
Bendis' script starts off with some promise, with a lonely but spunky Meredith Quill talking to her mother on the phone, then interacting with J'son of Spartax, first with alarm, then trepidation, then finally affection. Their conversation when J'son eventually returns to his intergalactic war is written well-enough, and to me there was some genuine emotion there.
Ironically enough, it's when their son, Peter, supposedly the main character of this new series, is born, that the story starts to go downhill.
Bendis comes out strong with some nice character-defining dialogue for Meredith Quill, who is portrayed as an emotionally-strong woman, who is capable of recovering from a bad relationship and holding a gun to an alien, but one who is not beyond starting up a relationship with the same alien she has nursed back to health. Of all the characters depicted in this issue, her arc was easily the most interesting, and that could have rubbed off on Peter had Bendis' script had them interacting more. Then again, while Bendis is easily one of Marvel's most talented writers, he has had his low points and oddly enough it's on the "tentpole" books that the quality of his writing tends to dip. Had he written this book the same way he did his run on Daredevil I would probably have enjoyed this issue much more than I did, but apart from those brief, well-rendered character vignettes with Meredith Quill, Bendis seems too preoccupied with the notion that he's setting up Marvel's next big thing to really shine here.
The bigger disappointment, for me, was easily Steve McNiven's artwork. I have been a fan of this guy since I first saw previews of his work on the defunct series Marvel Knights: 4. I bought up back issues of the long-gone Crossgen series Meridien on account of his work. This guy is one of my favorites, and yet, for all of my adoration of his work, it really falls flat here. I could blame inker John Dell, but it isn't just down to sloppy inking here; to me McNiven's pencils look nowhere near their best. I've seen his art looking off before, but as near as I can recall this was when he was under the duress of deadlines; this series kicked off his run (unless it was belatedly prepared after the real issues of the series were in the can) so I can't understand why he starts off his new series so weakly.
The book is not without its pluses; with 31 pages of story it's a good 10 pages thicker than the usual comic-book these days, and even McNiven on an off-day is still better than most other artists at full-strength.
The thing is, this issue was meant to introduce a new series that has been billed by Marvel themselves as "the year's biggest book," so I can't help but feel underwhelmed by what I actually read. I can only hope things will pick up when the book starts in earnest with issue #1.
3/5
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