Before we start digging in to this issue, to really get the necessary background, I should bring up the first two issues of the spinoff series Guardians Team-Up – because naturally, I’m sure there were fans pointing to Bendis’s GotG and saying “Yes, this, we want more of this!”  I think these two issues are a handy summation, a microcosm if you will, of everything wrong with Bendis’s lazy writing – for example, the alien Chitauri demonstrating one of my top pet peeves by haphazardly alternating between translated speech and unintelligible squiggles, depending on whether or not Bendis feels like letting the reader know what the characters are saying to each other.  Not to mention the apparent necessity to include every character in every team involved in every crossover.  Look at this cluster@#$%!  That’s twelve Avengers!  Dear reader, do you think that even a fraction of all these characters are going to actually contribute to this story?  Not even kidding, master of kung-fu Shang-Chi’s only, only line in this entire issue is, “Okay, wow, space people.”  It’s what I absolutely do not understand about crossovers these days: why include EVERY character if they’re not going to DO anything?  I know a case could be made against crossovers like the Infinity War where everybody assembles only to stand around in the Baxter Building, but if you want to know what Vindicator or Multiple Man think about what’s going on, you can find out in their respective series.  But do you… do you think anyone who’s a fan of, say, Cannonball is going to be happy that he shows up in this story, only to say things like “Gesundheit!” when Drax yells “Chitauri!”?  Why not, instead of all the Avengers, perhaps just invite… some of the Avengers?

But anyway, I’m getting off-track.  You can sum up this entire waste-of-Art-Adams’-talent issue in one sentence: the GotG are pursued from space, they crash into Earth (conveniently), meet the Avengers, have a pointless fight with some Chitauri for a while until they fire off a giant knock-out energy bomb I mean “genetic disruptor,” and then Nebula spacenaps Gamora.  (But my sole favorite part of this issue was good ol’ Hawkeye just trying to eat his sandwich in peace, but then hanging his head in resignation after two spaceships flew by in quick succession.  Thank god for you, Art Adams.)

The second issue begins with a moderately-humorous scene of a policeman and an EMT standing alongside the crater left from the Chiaturi battle, littered with unconscious Avengers and GotG.  The raccoon bits are as tired as ever, but I did think “Is that a tree or a sculpture of a tree?” “Were they fighting over it?” was pretty funny.  When wondering aloud whether or not these are the actual Avengers, one asks, “Where’s Thor, then?”  Because hey yeah, where is Thor, Brian Michael Bendis?  Despite the new Thor not yet having anything to do with the Avengers, we clearly saw her in the first issue, standing silently in the background with a stupid blank look on her face, probably just enjoying that incredibly hilarious banter as much as the rest of us.  It turns out Thor is but one of the Avengers that vanish between issues without explanation, also including Captain America, because clearly the story could not sustain the weight of its own cast of characters.  But I would like to take a moment to direct your attention to page eight, panel four – take a close look there between Smasher and Spider-Woman.  What the @#$% is that scribbly bull@#$% supposed to be?  Is that Angela?  Freyja?  Bundegarde the Forgotten?  ‘Cause it’s sure as @#$% not Thor!  And on this subject, in the second issue, we also have this funny ha-ha joke about the GotG forgetting Venom was on the team.  I guess it’s kinda funny, until one realizes that (a) the GotG clearly have too many members for any of them to be treated like actual characters instead of one-note gags, and (b) Venom is yet another character dragged into this mob scene of a story, only to pointedly, emphatically contribute nothing to the story in any discernible way.

But my long-winded point is that this issue introduces Kindun the Living Planet, who I guess is like Ego the Living Planet, only boring and stupid.  He’s just this guy?  Just this boring generic alien guy?  And instead of a personality or backstory, all he does is keep reiterating, “I am this planet.”  Okay, cool!  How does that happen?  How does a guy become a planet, or vise versa?  Did… did you want to demonstrate what “I am this planet” actually means by doing something while the rest of the Avengers cut through the Chitauri like so much fodder?  Or… could we get maybe a flashback to explain what this guy’s deal is, instead of devoting several bland pages to reminding us that Gamora and Thanos know each other?  Because, yeah, Kindun is mad at Thanos for doing something to him however-long ago, and now he’s… taking his vengeance out on Gamora?  Who doesn’t even seem to recognize him?  Which makes me feel like I should probably conduct a study on how many Bendis plots are predicated on someone seeking vengeance against someone they’ve never met to get back at some uninvolved third party, because it’s easy to write an antagonist that just acts like an irrational lunatic, isn’t it?  And speaking of easy writing, this issue follows a standard Bendis plot structure: someone gets kidnapped, several dozen characters stand around for several pages yammering about the hows and whys and wherefores, then they somehow [plot–convenient teleporter Manifold] go over there [to the other end of the galaxy apparently] and get said kidnapped character, nothing at stake, nothing changes, the end.

Man, I wish the sentient embodiment of an entire planet were in the hands of a writer who knew what he was doing.  Also, why go to the effort of creating a halfhearted original character when you could have made use of the Living Planet that already exists?  We only recently had a miniseries where Thanos launches an attack on Ego, which was awesome.  (There was one part where the narrator said the most disturbing thing he’d ever seen was Ego breaking into a smile – and it was!  It was disturbing!)  Ego had as much motivation to retaliate against Thanos as anyone!

Anydangway.  This brings us here to the final issue of the current run of GotG before Secret Wars, and with that in mind, I thought the world-destroying cataclysm looming over the horizon at the end of the previous issue was the same cataclysm from every other Marvel series right now.  But nope!  Gamora wastes no time in informing us that the planet on a collision course with Spartax is actually our old friend “the Kindun,” once again seeking vengeance against Gamora.  She flies off to confront the planet while the rest of the GotG participate in uninspired fight-banter against — you guessed it! — the CHITAURI!  Yes, the same boring, generic, one-dimensional, no-dialogue alien monsters who bring absolutely nothing to a story, but who you might remember from that movie that time.  And poor Rocket Raccoon… he’s always been a bit of a funny cartoon animal, but at least before Bendis he was a character capable of offering more more than just stupid unfunny space-swears over and over and aaaaauuuggghhh GOD.  Why has no one told him that there’s more to writing a sci-fi space-alien comic than making up funny-sounding nonsense words?  Why has no one told him about that most fundamental rule of writing, “Less is more?”

So, yeah.  Gamora confronts Kindun, who looks like he’s been hitting the space-gym since their last encounter.  He tells the Chitauri to shoot her with their laser-guns (“I want to see her dying breath.  I want to show it to Thanos as recompense for what he has done to us.”  Yeah, that’ll teach him to do whatever it was he did!) (Also, um… how do you show somebody someone else’s dying breath?  Are… are you having one of the Chitauri film this, Kindun?), and is surprised when they do not kill her.  Gamora then takes the position of sensible rational character vs. jabbering lunatic, telling Kindun to stop this misguided fight, pleading with him to just leave and not force her to kill him.  Then he orders the Chitauri to kill her, there’s another fight scene where she slaughters everybody, and again she tells him that she hates Thanos too but he really needs to stop threatening her and her friends!  And then the Chitauri and the planet retreat to fight another day, yaaaaay.  (Star-Lord: “Is it me or are they getting farther away?!”  Rocket: “I just thought I was getting taller! (Finally.)”  Hahaha because he’s a cute little funny animal!)  Gamora then tells the team that she has to leave because she’s become a threat to their safety, prompting the following speech that I find to be both a sincerely admirable attempt on Bendis’ part to imbue Gamora’s character with some personality and conflict and goals, and, simultaneously, a totally overwritten wankfest:

Star-Lord: “No, no, no… no one blames you for this.  We’re all a threat to all of our safety.”
Rocket Raccoon: “It’s kind of our thing.”
Gamora: “I now have the power to find and destroy Thanos, and until I do, until the galaxy knows that I have done this once and for all… I cannot let what almost happened today ever happen again.  I cannot let you be attacked for the legacy I carry with me.  Please relate this to Drax and Groot.  I do not believe I could look right into Groot’s eyes and say this to him.  I love you all too much.  You have no idea how much.”

Haha, yes!  Groot is truly the moral compass of the Guardians of the Galaxy, the finest of us all.

Finally, I want to share with you the advance solicitation for this issue: “Guardians no more?  Following the Black Vortex, the Guardians have come into conflict with one another more and more.  With rifts forming between them, will their friendship and history be enough to hold the team together?”  The thing of it is… none of that is true.  None of that is what happens in this issue.  They actually just fight against a bunch of aliens and a villain who doesn’t have any legitimate reason to hate them.  The team is getting along with each other as well as they ever have, for a bunch of space-misfits who have no reason to stick together as a team.  And they don’t actually break up.  The issue ends with a pouty moody Star-Lord sitting in the Spartax throne room, still nothing more than a blandly-handsome wise-cracking screw-up who continues to run away from the responsibilities of adulthood while he runs around playing space-pirate, and his fiancee Kitty Pryde continues to raise questions to which Bendis himself does not know or offer any answers: asking Star-Lord what he wants to do, and telling him it’s on him to decide what he does next.  (No, seriously, that’s the last line of this issue.)

And that’s the twenty-seventh and final issue of this run of the Guardians of the Galaxy.  If you liked that, do stay tuned for my upcoming multi-part analysis of why the Guardians of the Galaxy movie, as fun as it was, is the worst thing that could have happened to these characters!