We’re two issues into the Original Sin crossover, Guardians of the Galaxy #19, and I think this may be the last book I buy with the Original Sin header. This story arc has promised to finally answer what happened to Starlord, Nova, Drax and Thanos in the cancerverse after The Thanos Imperative. Although this has led to a slight diversion from the ongoing story, I’m happy that Marvel took the time to go back and explain what happened instead of ignoring the continuity like they occasionally have in the past. I do have a theory that the reason for addressing this is somewhat related to the successful Guardians of the Galaxy movie based off the past Guardians series and trying to bridge the two series more coherently for new fans of the series.
The Marvel all-star, Brian Michael Bendis was the writer for this issue. Ed McGuinness did the pencils. Mark Farmer, Mark Morales, John Livesay, and Ed McGuinness did the inks for this issue. Jason Keith did the colors and VC’s Cory Petit was the letterer. The cool cover with Starlord and Nova was done by Ed McGuinness and Justin Ponsor.
Guardians of the Galaxy #19 Plot
Issue #18 left us with Starlord wielding the cosmic cube and this issue starts right there. Then Starlord uses the cube to seemingly kill Thanos once and for all (again). Sadly, this doesn’t work as well as Starlord, Nova and Drax had thought it did and Thanos shows up again to kill Starlord. They then realize that life and death aren’t constants in the cancerverse, like they are in our dimension. After they have this revelation, they come face to face against a parallel version of the Avengers called the Revengers.
Guardians of the Galaxy #19 Words and Art
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Brian Michael Bendis has done a good job handling this story without losing all of the momentum that the book had. The major way that he does this is by making the book a story being told by Starlord to Gamora instead of just a straight up flash-back. I haven’t read the Abnett and Lanning run on Guardians or any of the related cosmic books in that era. I assume that all of this accurately coincides with those books and the one complaint that I have is that he didn’t give really give any background information as to where this story begins. I do have a basic knowledge of these events and what happened, but I would be afraid that this may turn off new readers and people with a lower overall knowledge of the Marvel universe.
The art done in this issue was done by Ed McGuinness. I really liked his artwork throughout the issue and the one character who I especially like his interpretation of was Thanos. The major problem that I had with his work was how he drew Starlord. Maybe the problem lays more with me than his actual work, but his Peter Quill looked too much like a young blond Wolverine for my taste.
This was a pretty good overall issue that started to get us closer to the answers that this storyline promised. For anyone who read the first Guardians series with this team I would definitely recommend picking up this arc and trying out this series.
CBH Score: 4.3/5 Stars
There’s so much wrong with this issue that I don’t even know where to start. I’m not one to diss people for small mistakes, but this issue was so ripe with them, that I think Bendis probably went out of his way to disregard Thanos Imperative completely, _while_ trying to say it’s what happened. From the top of my head:
1) Death killed the Cancerverse people for real, and crippled the Many Angled Ones, so there’s no way the Revengers could be revived, or even those bugs be left alive.
2) Wanda siding with the Revengers, when she was against them in the original.
3) The Cancerverse Mar-Vell could take all of them (Thanos included) by himself.
4) Cap’s shield changes shape, and the shield slicing through Nova’s arm. Even if Nova is not totally invulnerable, he’s still way faster than that shield.
5) Star-Lord explaining to Gamora about the Revengers, when she had fought them before.
6) Star-Lord mentioning Galactus, when they saw the Galactus Engine already, and it was destroyed in their universe.
7) Star-Lord having the Elemental Gun (what the hell is “set to hurricane”?), when in the original he had Kree SMGs _because_ he had trouble with the gun.
8) In Bendis’ story they’re fighting there for hours, while in the original it was stated pretty clearly that it had less than 1 minute before it was destroyed.
9) The whole Cosmic Cube thing. It was stated a few times that it only had juice for one last shot.
10) There are probably more, I just don’t remember.
I’m still holding hope towards this all being a mind battle or an illusion, because this is some of the worst writing I’ve seen this decade. I’ve read comics for 12 years and never saw an issue with so many factual and continuity errors at once.
Spot on, I didn’t even think about Wanda showing up with the Revengers and how ridiculous that would be in context.
I’m with you hoping issue #20 gets increasingly insane and it’s revealed Star-Lord is fabricating a story (Gamora should have already called him on this), or this was all altered reality due to the presence of the Cube.
It’s interesting to get your perspective on this issue having not read the earlier Marvel Cosmic run from Abnett and Lanning. I mostly enjoyed this issue and the fact they’re finally addressing the continuity, but then when I went back I started to realize this storyline doesn’t mesh with the Marvel Cosmic stories at all.
The biggest problem? At the end of Thanos Imperative they restored death to the Cancerverse. That was actually kind of the whole point, and what allowed them to seemingly defeat the Revengers and evil Captain Marvel. So the notion that Thanos (and everyone else) can’t die is completely and embarrassingly contradictory.
I’m usually all for writers not getting too tied to continuity in order to tell a good story. But the attempt to reference Thanos Imperative and then to get it entirely wrong is bizarre. I can understand why a lot of fans of the original are mad. And I won’t even get started on Cap’s shield taking out Nova the way it did…
Anywho, highly recommend you read the original 🙂 It’s an awesome run.