Fearless Defenders 12, Guardians of the Galaxy 9

Fearless Defenders 12
Bunn (w) and Sliney (a) and Gandini (c)

The Fearless Defenders, upon defeating their Caroline Le Fey-gathered adversaries a few issues ago, captured Enchantress, Ruby Thursday, and Quicksand and were able to gain from them the whereabouts of Le Fey's final plan, which they of course then proceed to crash. As a fight breaks out between the Defenders and the Doom Maidens, Annabelle pleads to Valkyrie to come and join the fight, hot off a fight of their own which made Valkyrie feel like she was losing herself to Annabelle. They talk about it a bit and decide to revisit it later as Valkyrie takes the forefront, leading the other Defenders into battle and eventually overrunning the Doom Maidens and Le Fey, who steps into the energy pit they had managed to open which was supposed to bring something much worse. Misty has new recruit Frankie Raye AKA Nova (but not that one) siphon off the energy of the pit, saving the world from its destruction. Of course, that was only one of Le Fey's plans; it was really secondary to the success of her first plan, bringing back her mother, Morgan Le Fey.

This issue has all of the makings of a huge rush job. I've talked a lot about this series being one that was ultimately hampered by tie-ins to events, eating up what must have been right around half of the total issues. Tie-ins can absolutely still be useful to a series in terms of building character or, in some cases, still showing a good segment of plot. In this case, I think any kind of plot we got during a tie-in was shoehorned in and we really only got character from Annabelle, Valkyrie, and a little bit Hippolyta. By and large, the size of this team and the number of plots it had to run through made it very difficult to devote any real time to establishing characters other than the focal point of this series, which was very clearly the Annabelle-Valkyrie relationship. Now, as the series ends and we get the hurried last issue, plot starts leaking out all over the place and everything has to very suddenly come to a head. The story feels rushed and fairly forced; again, not a surprise considering it's just off of its INFINITY tie-in, which was kind of just off it's hugely unnecessary AGE OF ULTRON tie-in. I'm surprised Dani Moonstar didn't get them wrapped into BATTLE OF THE ATOM. I think this is a book that Marvel wanted to succeed but panicked a bit when it wasn't fiscally succeeding and forced it to try to sell with the bigger books while not allowing the story the room to grow on its own. Ultimately a lost opportunity. I've seen a lot of comic pros on Twitter calling this series truly remarkable and something that will change comics but I never once got that sense. I would say the last DEFENDERS series (headlined by Matt Fraction and the Dodsons and, eventually, Jamie McKelvie) had a bigger impact on comics as a whole and was really Fraction's Marvel-launching point for trying out the sorts of new things that he gets to play with regularly elsewhere. Overall, FEARLESS DEFENDERS feels like it will be the smallest of footnotes, more a horrible excuse for not giving female-led books a chance than seen as something that changed comics.

Guardians of the Galaxy 9
Bendis (w) and Francavilla (a and c)

The GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY INFINITY tie-in concludes as Peter and Rocket, alongside Abigail Brand, are saved by the sudden re-appearance of Angela, crashing into the PEAK and giving the others a chance to regroup and push forward in the hopes of bringing down Thanos' blockade around Earth and granting the Avengers access to the planet. The downside of this issue is that we already know they get through because shifting comic production schedules means that INFINITY has officially ended and yet, here's this story that's integral to the ending. Angela holds Thanos' troops at bay while the others move on but she's pretty quickly overrun herself before being rescued by Drax and Groot. Aboard the PEAK, Peter manages to lower the shield around Earth and let the Avengers back in but he, Rocket, and Brand are set upon by more of Thanos' guard and rescued at the last second by Gamora, who regrets the way she left. They flee the PEAK together and Brand, despite her love for the ship, blows it up behind them.

As I said before, the stakes were somewhat lowered here by the fact that we already knew that they'd successfully lower the shields and let the Avengers back onto Earth, since we already saw the Avengers back on Earth. The drama, then, comes from the idea that the Guardians might not all make it out of this or that Angela might not make it out or whatever other drama you can glean from it. Perhaps you can't glean that much because the writing is so overly quippy and back-and-forth that it might give you something of a headache instead of building a sense of tension. There's also a growing sense of Peter as the ultimate love interest, which is something that Bendis puts into every single of his books and it's equally annoying everywhere he does it. He's done it with Hawkeye in AVENGERS, he's done it with Cyclops in UNCANNY X-MEN (and, to a lesser extent, Scott in ALL-NEW X-MEN), and now it's happening all over again as Quill takes center stage for a possible love triangle here. Woo. It's a little hard for me to shake the image of Bendis writing this dialogue, this hilarious back-and-forth in the middle of intense action scenes, and flipping down his sunglasses, smirking at how cool he's being. It's not an easy thing to shake and it's maybe a bit unfair but boy is that sentiment there the more I read this. Can't win 'em all, right?