Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 4: Original Sin
There have been a couple questions hanging over Bendis’ incarnation of this team ever since it was formed. Namely, “How did Starlord, Drax, and Thanos survive the destruction of the Cancerverse?” and “Why did they make it back when Richard ‘Nova’ Rider didn’t?” These are questions that needed to be answered since these character were pretty much left for dead at the end of Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning’s “The Thanos Imperative.” With “Original Sin,” Bendis finally gets around to answering them about as well as you’d expect. If your expectations were like me, however, that translates to “not very.”
Much as I like Bendis, he’s dealing with something here that doesn’t really play to his strengths. His take on “Guardians” so far has been very continuity-lite, emphasizing accessibility over history. It’s worked to good effect on most of the other titles he’s written over the years where you’re only required to know the basics of the character and then the writer gets on with telling the stories he wants to.
The thing is that Bendis has shown himself to not be all that interested in dealing with continuity problems or issues set up by other writers on the titles he takes on. His runs on “All-New” and “Uncanny X-Men” would appear to be exceptions, until you realize that he was one of the many writers on “Avengers vs. X-Men” which set up the status quo he was working from. However, in dealing with what happened to Starlord, Nova, Drax, and Thanos, Bendis is forced to find some explanation as to how all of these characters escaped from the Cancerverse after it was all set to implode on itself at the end of “The Thanos Imperative.”
If nothing else, the story fits well into the mandate for “Original Sin” tie-ins which dealt with long-buried secrets finally being revealed. It’s just that Bendis decides to serve it up as three issues of fighting and shouting that can be summed up like this:
STARLORD & NOVA: Suck it Thanos! We’ve got front row seats to watching you die! Wait, why are we not dead yet?
THANOS: RRRRRAGH! This is the universe where life always wins! Now give me the Cosmic Cube so I can get us out of here!
STARLORD & NOVA: NUH-UH! You’re evil!
DRAX: Hey, I’m not dead! *starts punching Thanos*
CANCERVERSE HEROES: Uh, we’re still here. And we’re EVIL! RRRRRAGH!
[Much punching, dying, and resurrecting later…]
NOVA: Man this is getting boring. Tell you what, I’ll use the Cosmic Cube to turn me into a door that will get us back to our universe. I won’t make it back, so don’t tell Gamora I loved her. ‘Kay?
STARLORD: ‘Kay. At least until I can milk it for max drama.
This is… not Bendis’ finest hour. I expect better from him than three issues of yammering about a Cosmic Cube and heroes hitting each other repeatedly. Ed McGuinness does his best to energize the fight scenes, and all this is a good showcase for his skills. The man does big fight scenes extremely well, and there’s no denying that he’s the right man to illustrate a dust-up between the above-mentioned characters. Same goes for Valerio Schiti in the issue he illustrated, but I’ll get back to his contributions to this volume. The problem is that there’s no substance to any of this fighting. It’s just several characters shouting and having a circular arguments over the course of three issues until one of them finally decides to advance the plot.
I’m left feeling that all of what went on here could’ve been compressed into one issue. The fact that it was stretched out to three feels like utter self-indulgence on Bendis’ part. At least he still manages to provide a passable explanation for why these characters are back in this universe. That said, I didn’t go back and re-read “The Thanos Imperative” to see how well it matches up with the finer details of that story. It’s not like I wanted, or needed, more reasons to dislike this story.
Things do get better with the second story as we catch up on Flash Thompson and the Venom symbiote after they got lost in the shuffle following “Guardians Disassembled.” Thompson is slowly losing control of the symbiote and trying to find a way back to Earth in a quiet but vicious manner. After a chance encounter has him crossing paths with Gamora, the rest of the Guardians show up and manage to get the symbiote under control. Then it escapes on the ship and I was prepared for a game of “Who’s going to be Venom-ized now!?”
That is what happens for the middle part of this story as Groot, Rocket, and Drax are taken over by the symbiote in turn. Probably the most interesting thing to see while this happens is Rocket managing to keep the symbiote in check as he tries to convince Starlord to give him the ship. It’s an impressive bit of restraint from such a trigger-happy character. Still, the best part about this arc, and the story in general is Schiti’s art. The guy has impressive chops for both action and alien design and seeing his many symbiote designs is a visual high point. He’s also quite good with the characters themselves, coming up with a wide range of entertaining expressions for the cast in the arc here.
I’ll also give Bendis credit for coming up with an appealing retcon for the symbiotes themselves. All of the action here winds up taking the Guardians to their home planet where we get a helpful explanation as to what was going wrong between Flash and Venom. It works for me because it’s a nice swerve from what I was expecting to happen when everyone got to the planet (MORE FIGHTING!) and helps flesh out their history in a way that accounts for why the symbiotes have functioned as both heroes and villains over the years. That explanation is conveyed over four impressively detailed, if occasionally hard-to-follow, pages. Even if it is a giant retcon, it’s a far more satisfying explanation to the story at hand than the one Bendis provided for what happened to Starlord and company in the Cancerverse. So yeah, Bendis can be concise when he wants to. It’s too bad we had to see him show complete and utter disregard for this idea in the same volume.
The business with Flash and Venom also sets up the “Venom: Spaceknight” series well enough and the volume leaves off on an idea that leaves me optimistic for the title’s future. I mean, if Bendis can’t capitalize on the idea of “Peter Quill: President of Spartax” then I think that there’s no point in following this title into the post-”Secret Wars” era. Considering that a third of the next volume is going to be tie-in issues to “The Black Vortex” crossover, is anybody willing to bet how likely that’ll be?