Guardians of the Galaxy #3 – Review

By: Brian Michael Bendis (Writer), Steve McNiven, Sara Pichelli, John Dell (Artists), Justin Ponsor (Colorist)

The Story: As J-Son, king of Spartax and father to Peter Quill, is acting like a royal jerk, the team has to be rescued from captivity.

The Review: I had my doubts about this series. Being a huge fan of the previous volume, I just didn’t know if Bendis could pull the big cosmic ideas that Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning threw in each and every issues. Worse yet, he had changed a couple of elements that I loved from the previous iteration in favour of adding some elements that were most probably due to editorial demands more than anything. It’s easier to sell the book if Tony Stark is in it after all, with the character being one of the breakout stars from the movie universe they had created. I had tons of reasons to be wary of such a move on a property I loved.

Now, I’d like to tell you that this issue blew me away, that my fears were silly and that Bendis has a brilliant future ahead on this title, but that would be partly true. I am mitigated after reading the conclusion to the first arc, as there are several elements that work and some that just don’t. It’s a mixed bag of quality with some pretty nice things and some that just felt wrong to me.