Marvel Presents: Guardians of the Galaxy #5. A New York state of mind.

The visitor stats to the World's Greatest Blog tell me that now is the ideal moment to cash in on the impending release of the new Guardians of the Galaxy movie by posting an article that mentions the Guardians of the Galaxy a lot.

But how can I contrive to post an article on here that mentions the Guardians of the Galaxy a lot?

How?

How??

How???

I know!

I'll do a review of an issue of the Guardians of the Galaxy!

I suspect that anyone who read the Guardians' original run in Marvel Presents most remembers the issue where, in search of a transistor with which they can repair their obviously state-of-the-art spaceship, four of the Guardians find themselves on an alien world almost identical to New York circa 1980.

Needless to say, with their highly developed social skills, it's not long before they're all involved in various scraps and scrapes, with Charlie-27 in a post-bar-brawl police cell, as Nikki finds herself at war with a religious cult, while Yondu and Vance Astro find themselves accused of theft from a radio shop.

And, needless to say, there's a twist in the tale when - rescued at the end of the mag, with seemingly all of New York out to kill them - it turns out the world is in fact not a planned society but a lunatic asylum that resembles New York because the inmates have been left to create the society that best suits their madness.

The decision to launch the Guardians into space was clearly an attempt to redo Star Trek and nowhere is that more obvious than in this tale, which is clearly inspired by those Star Trek episodes where Kirk and friends found themselves on planets that resembled prohibition America, Nazi Germany or Ancient Rome.

With its not exactly subtle satire by Steve Gerber and Al Milgrom, it's not what you'd call a classic but it's all good fun and passes the time painlessly while fitting into the vibe you got from Milgrom during his run on Captain Marvel. In fact, you could easily imagine this being done as a one-off Captain Marvel tale. Whisper it quietly but you could even imagine it being done as a Jim Starlin Warlock tale, with Adam, Pip and Gamora in the Guardians' place. In the latter instance, you suspect the satire would have been handled more darkly and more bitingly.

My favourite character in this story has to be the Mercurian Nikki who comes across as a less irritating but more troublesome predecessor to the X-Men's Jubilee.

The most annoying character has to be Vance Astro with his non-stop racism directed at Yondu. It might have made sense for him to look down his nose at Yondu as an ignorant savage when they first met but, after all the adventures they've had together, you'd have thought he'd have learned some sort of respect for him by now.

Marvel Presents #3 - The Guardians of the Galaxy.

I'm not sure what it says about me but the upcoming Marvel movie I'm most excited about is The Guardians of the Galaxy.

Admittedly, the only other Marvel movie I can think of that's in the pipeline is Ant-Man, so it's probably not that great an achievement on behalf of the space-bound adventure. But, still....

As the film features a talking raccoon and a talking tree, this excitement probably suggests I've blown some sort of fuse and succumbed to a madness brought on by decades of breathing in ink fumes.

But, of course, whatever it's appeal, the movie features a totally different cast from the set of characters the comic possessed in my youth.

As that comic was one of my favourite strips when I was a lad, that suggests it's time to take a look again at the very first issue of their short-lived run in Marvel Presents.

The thing that first strikes you upon reading Steve Gerber and Al Milgrom's tale is that it's an issue of two halves. Clearly, like anyone with any sense, Gerber can't wait to get the Earth/Badoon War out of the way, as he brings it to an end in short order, with the Sisterhood of the Badoon showing up to take away their reprehensible menfolk for a fate that's clearly going to be worse than death.

The second half of the tale deals with the various guardians then finding it impossible to fit into peacetime society until they have to be whipped away by Starhawk to fly off into space, looking for suitable punch-up opportunities.

To be honest, it's not a totally compelling start to the series. For me, the reptilian Badoon were always the worst alien species in the Marvel universe, being even less impressive than the Krylorians who were so bad that they themselves were barely more than stand-ins for the Toadmen from Outer Space.

It's in the second half of the issue that things get more interesting. We get Yondu deciding to kill himself but then changing his mind, when stabbing a caveman makes him realise he still has a self-preservation instinct and therefore must have a reason to live. Martinex, meanwhile, encounters racial prejudice against those made of carbon. Charlie-27 quits his job as a construction worker, after getting fed up of his boss. In the most emotionally-charged section, Vance Astro's inevitably still tormented by having to wear a glorified gimp suit at all times if he doesn't want to be reduced to dust.

This in mind, Starhawk beams them all up to the spaceship and they set off into space in a scenario that no doubt owes nothing at all to Star Trek.

Bearing in mind my affection for the strip, it'd be easy to bemoan the fact that the original characters aren't going to be in the movie but the truth is, with their sheer absurdity, the characters in the film seem to have far more potential to hold the audience's interest than the originals would have. For all their appeal; with his bitterness, sense of isolation and short temper, Vance Astro is the only genuinely compelling character amongst the originals.

So it's not a great story but it does at least get rid of the less-than-majestic Badoon nonsense and sets things up for the series' far stronger and quirkier tales to come.

Having said all that, if there's no mention of the originals at any point in the movie, I shall be even crosser than Vance Astro always was.

And that's saying something.

Grrr!

Marvel Presents #4. The Guardians of the Galaxy.

I first came across the Guardians of the Galaxy in Marvel UK's Planet of the Apes comic which reprinted their début outing.

I wasn't impressed.

For a start, they looked bad. And, for another thing, so did their enemies.

Their enemies were an alien race called the Badoon who, in some far-flung future, had conquered the Earth and its colonies. As far as I was concerned, if the Marvel Universe needed another race of aliens, it wasn't the Badoon. Obviously someone had got the word "baboon" and changed its first syllable to "bad" to let us know they were, well, bad.

Leaving aside the fact they were clearly reptilian and therefore not baboons, the trouble was they weren't only bad they were rubbish. "We shall overcome," sang the Guardians at the end of that tale. If it was reader apathy they were hoping to overcome, frankly, I didn't fancy their chances.

But, in Comicbookland there's rarely life without hope and they were brought back by Steve Gerber who slotted them into The Defenders comic and brought the whole Badoon saga to a welcome end. Needless to say, with Gerber in charge they were a much more interesting proposition. Like the Defenders, they were a bunch of misfits - in this case, having to hang out together because they were unable to fit into a post-war society. They also acquired two new members; Starhawk and, in this issue, a young female Mercurian called Nikki.

Frankly, to my eyes, Starhawk was a bit of a stiff. He was a man of mystery and,  aside from coming across as irredeemably pompous, men of mystery rarely sustain interest for more than five minutes. On top of that, he kept turning into a woman of mystery. Just what we needed, two persons of mystery on one starship.

Nikki was much better. Just as the addition of Valkyrie to the Defenders brought an extra dimension to an otherwise all-male strip, so the addition of a teenage girl to the previously all-male, all-square Guardians changed the gang's dynamic for the better. In this tale, the Guardians, having failed completely to cope with life in a normal society, have got back together to do the Star Trek thing and, thanks to Starhawk, are on the trail of a huge beast that eats stars.

Needless to say, despite being led by, "One who knows," by the end of the issue it's all gone belly-up and they're facing doom but what's interesting to me is that, the ending aside, not a lot happens in this tale. Basically they hang around talking about stuff, then Nikki shows up and they talk about some more stuff and then, at last they get to face up to a giant monster.

This follows on from the previous issue where, also, not a lot happened. It was an approach that reminded us that Steve Gerber was nothing if not unconventional. And maybe this refusal to toe the comic book line guaranteed the strip a one-way ticket to cancellation but perhaps it was also this refusal to do the expected that secured the previously forgettable Guardians a place in my heart. Even in their revamped form they were never quite as good a strip as The Defenders but, when it came to reader apathy, they had at least overcome.