Guardians of the Galaxy 15, Thunderbolts 26

Guardians of the Galaxy 15
Bendis (w) and Bradshaw and C. Stewart (p) and Bradshaw, Stewart, and Wong (i) and Ponsor (c) and Petit (l)

The Guardians have been separated and captured with Rocket landing with the Kree (to be experimented on), Gamora left with the Badoon brotherhood (to be questioned about Thanos), Drax left to the Shi'ar (to be punished), newly acquired Venom attacked on Knowhere by the Skrulls, Groot left with the Brood, and Star-Lord being held on Spartax. They all seem to be failing at escaping except, as the issue ends, potentially Star-Lord. Despite the cover, no sign of Captain Marvel.

Unless you're a completionist and you're looking to obtain this whole series, it's worth missing this one. There are tiny little glimpses of character in the way each Guardian reacts to his or her capture (Rocket shows fear for the slightest moment, Gamora refuses to stop fighting, Drax threatens calmly but sighs to his deceased wife, etc.) and obviously we see where everyone is but that's pretty much all that happens in twenty pages of book. There are as many double page spreads in this issue as I've ever seen and it ends up just meaning that we get less story in fewer meaningful pages. There's no doubt in my mind that this could have been done just as effectively in ten pages and we could have had another half issue to move to the next step, maybe featuring, oh, I don't know, star of the cover Captain Marvel. Seriously. Look at that cover. Is that the cover of a book that doesn't see nor hear about Captain Marvel in the slightest? It's a low score for this one, then, not because it's a particularly bad book but just because it slows things down at a time when things don't really need to be slowed down and it means you're paying full price for half a book's worth of content (not to belittle Nick Bradshaw and Cameron Stewart's work, which is fine but didn't blow me away to the point where I'll ignore a stagnant story).

Total Score: 2/5


Thunderbolts 26
Soule (w) and Diaz (a) and Silva (c) and Sabino (l)

Ghost Rider's been eaten by a swamp monster thanks to Leader's treachery and Elektra and Punisher have been crushed by a cliche. Deadpool saves Leader from Cordoba and his men, enraged by what they've been through, but it doesn't stop Leader from trying to kill Deadpool as they go into the temple. Deadpool sees through the ruse and stabs Leader but leaves him alive enough to still enact his plan and send Deadpool into a pool of lava. Leader moves forward to find the artifact their after, the head of a long dead Celestial left here by the ancient Deviants, a race the Celestials created then deemed imperfect and unfit to inherit the world. The Deviants killed the young Celestial and left the head here, hoping it could transform their people into something more capable but then lost it to time and struggle. Now Red Hulk's former men have found it and Mancuso, the one who reached out to Red Hulk, explains (after Red Hulk kills his one-time lover scientist lady who turns out to be a Deviant looking for this exact thing) what's happened since he found it. Leader arrives, drinks some Celestial blood, and has his head explode from the power. With his whole team dead, Mancuso tells Red Hulk that he has two options: for Mancuso to kill him and give him the death he seeks or to work for the light. After a moment's hesitation, Red Hulk chooses the light and we're transported back to the very start of this mission, where Red Hulk tells the team that they're actually going to do something else now.

It's Charles Soule's last issue on THUNDERBOLTS, which is rather a shame because he took this book that I found somewhat middling, even if it featured a team that really intrigued me, and he immediately made it something fun and fresh, completely worthy of my one-time excitement. Still, he leaves the book on an up-swing, with the team all alive and perhaps destined for bigger and better things. It's definitely entertaining to see how the final deaths play out (Deadpool has a particularly nice moment as he sees through Leader's attempt to kill him, though it still leads to Leader killing him) and it leaves the book in an interesting place where we know what these characters would have gone through and how they would have acted in this adventure but now this adventure never happened so they don't necessarily know how it would have played out. Ben Acker and Ben Blacker have a really interesting job to take on and I'm excited to see what they produce. But let's not forget to laud Charles Soule for his fantastic take on this book and for, as I see it, righting the ship as soon as he jumped on to it.

Total Score: 5/5