Previously
This is the part 8 in my continuing insane effort to try to read EVERY MARVEL COMIC EVER PUBLISHED. You can see previous posts using the tag "complete-marvel-run". This one is all about the Guardians of the Galaxy.
(Note: All volume nos. are based on the Wikipedia listings, except where they don't make sense)
Note: This entry is quite long, you can use the TOC to navigate.
Marvel actually has two versions of Guardians of the Galaxy, the classic team from the 1960s, and the more modern incarnation from the 2000s that should be more familiar to the MCU fans. We'll cover both!
Classic team
First appearance: Marvel Super Heroes #18 (January 1969).
The classic team consisted originally consisted of lone survivors from different Earth colonies in the year 3000 after a war with the Badoon. Although they were presumably originally from the 616 future and are often having time-travel-enabled adventures with 616 heroes from preent day, at some point the future Vance Astro met with his present-day counterpart and caused the timelines to diverge, such that the future Guardians team now (have always?) exist in a different timeline.
Marvel Presents (1975)
12 issues (2 issues Ulysses Bloodstone, 10 issues GotG)
The first 2 issues covered Ulysses Bloodstone, who I didn't know at all (I had previously read some adventures of his daughter Elsa). After the first 2 issues, the series featured the classic Guardians team until the end of its run. This was the first regular series for this team, previously they just had scattered appearances in various books.
Guardians of the Galaxy v1 (1990)
62 issues, 4 annuals
This was the classic team's first and only regular series, and it pretty much plays out like an "Avengers in space/the future" book, with weird things constantly happening to the team. Starhawk's powers kept changing and they got new members and lost members regularly. To tie in to regular 616 adventures, we get appearances from cosmic or long-lived heroes like Silver Surfer and Firelord and Wonder Man (going under a different name), and characters like a descendant of Wolverine, and somehow even (a version of) Doctor Doom has survived. I think quality-wise the stories in these books were about the same or slightly worse than comparable Avengers books of the era, even succumbing to the same 90s trend of edginess that infected many comic books of the time.
Limited series
Galactic Guardians (1994): 4 issues
This was a spin-off where Martinex tried to form a second Guardians team and they ended up with members like Firelord, a future bearer of the Phoenix Force, Hollywood (Wonder Man), a space Ghost Rider, etc
Guardians 3000 (2014): 8 issues
This was a limited series by Dan Abnett (co-creator of the modern GotG team) where the classic team have to deal with time fluctuations that was constantly changing their future. They eventually end up travelling back to the present day and teaming up with the modern team to find the source of the fluctuations and it turns out it was Korvac orchestrating things so that the classic team would bring Geena Drake to him. Despite stopping Korvac, they were unable to prevent the entire multiverse collapsing on itself, presumably due to the events that led to the multiverse being reorganized during the 2015 Secret Wars event.
Modern team
First appearance: Annihilation Conquest #6 (April 2008).
The modern version of the team was formed during the Annihilation event and put together by Dan Abnett and Lansing from previously existing and unrelated characters from the past 4 decades or so of Marvel history.
This era was a great time for cosmic Marvel stories, and I largely learned of the modern team through this Cosmic Marvel Reading Order that I found on reddit back in the day:
Cosmic Marvel Reading Order
I believe I have already previously read everything in this reading order, but for today I'll only cover the GotG one.
Guardians of the Galaxy v2 (2008)
25 issues (up to 2010)
The first regular series, by Abnett and Lansing, covering the aftermath of the Annihilation event and the War of Kings and Realm of Kings events. During the War of Kings event, a Terrigen Bomb detonated by Black Bolt's Inhumans created the Fault, a tear in the galaxy
Guardians of the Galaxy v3 (2013)
27 issues, 1 annual
One-shots:
- GotG and X-Men: Black Vortex - 2 issues
- Free Comic Book Day: Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)
Quill's team took a break for a couple of years before coming back under the stewardship of Brian Michael Bendis. This was the first of Bendis' two volumes, and because he was also the main X-Men writer at the time, he crossed over a lot with the team of young original X-Men he brought to the future. Specifically, this book included the Trial of Jean Grey and Black Vortex crossovers. And also the Original Sin crossover, but that's not strictly an X-Men thing.
This was also the time when the team had way too many Earth heroes joining up. I think this volume had Tony Stark, The Thing (Ben Grimm) and Agent Venom (Flash Thompson) and Captain Marvel (Carol Danvers) join the team on different occassions. Neil Gaiman's character Angela also made her Marvel debut in this series and joined the Guardians for a while. Bendis also made Peter Quill and Kitty Pryde a thing, which I do not approve of!
This run had some great art: McNiven, Pichelli, etc.
One thing I liked about Bendis' run is that he addressed how the rest of the galaxy feels about the Earth constantly being at the center of cosmic events that affect the entire universe. They were really made about the Age of Ultron event!
The FBCD book is the story of how Agent Venom joined the team.
Guardians Team-Up (2015)
Limited series - 10 issues
This was an anthology book of stories where Guardians teamed up with other superheroes, mostly Avengers. It was kind of a thing Marvel liked doing at the time.
Guardians of the Galaxy v4/v5 (2015)
1-19, 1.MU, 146-150: 25 issues
This was mostly a continuation of the first Bendis run, except it was relaunched post-Secret Wars due to the All-New All-Different Marvel initiative. Some fantastic art here as well by Valerio Schiti. This volume started out with Kitty Pryde taking over the mantle of Star-Lord because Quill became the leader of Spartax (Peter Quill came back eventually).
Guardians of the Galaxy v4 #12: Rocket explains Earth's problems
Guardians of the Galaxy v4 #12 (contd)
This second half of this volume had tie-ins with the Civil War II event and a consequence the Guardians were marooned on Earth for a while (Bendis just can't leave Earth behind!)
All-New Guardians of the Galaxy (2017)
12 issues, 1 annual
One-shots:
- Free Comic Book Day: Guardians of the Galaxy (2017)
This volume was by Gerry Duggan and mostly involved the team running heists against the Collector and the Grandmaster and also somehow becoming involved with the Secret Empire event.
The FCBD story is about how they got a new ship.
Infinity Countdown and Infinity Wars (2018-2019):
- Infinity Countdown - 5 issues
- Infinity Countdown: Adam Warlock, Captain Marvel, Daredevil, Black Widow - one-shots
- Infinity Countdown: Darkhawk - 4 issues
- Infinity Countdown: Champions - 2 issues
- Infinity Wars - 6 issues
- Infinity Wars: Fallen Guardian, Infinity, Prime - one-shots
- Infinity Wars: Sleepwalker - 4 issues
- Infinity Wars: Arachknight, Ghost Panther, Iron Hammer, Soldier Supreme, Weapon Hex - 2 issues each
- Infinity Warps - 2 issues
Infinity Countdown and Infinity Wars were crossover events overseen by Gerry Duggan, intended to set a new status quo for the Infinity Stones after the 2015 Secret Wars multiversal reset. Infinity Countdown featured the stones reappearing and coming into the hands of an unusual set of people - one of them was minor Daredevil goon Turk Barrett! Countdown led directly into Infinity Wars, which featured Gamora going rogue to collect the stones so she can free a remnant of her that has been trapped in the Soul Stone since the 90s trilogy of "Infinity" events.
TBH, these events felt like a flimsy excuse to set up the alternate-universe merged "Infinity Warps" heroes who were fanfiction-like combinations of different Marvel heroes, i.e. Arachknight was Spider-Man + Moon Knight, Weapon Hex was X-23 + Scarlet Witch, etc. Most of the "warped" limited series weren't that good, because the histories and supporting casts of both component heroes were kind of haphazardly thrown together to create a new "merged" origin and status quo etc.
Guardians of the Galaxy v6 (2019)
12 issues, 1 annual
Donny Cates: Infinity Wars aftermath, Rocket dying
This is a short Donny Cates run featuring two main plotlines: In the Infinity Wars aftermath, a bunch of cosmic "heroes" are warned that Thanos has set into motion plans to resurrect himself in the event of his death. Since Gamora killed Thanos in Infinity Wars, she is the prime suspect as the means of resurrection, so a lot of people are hunting her down, but eventually it is revealed Starfox was the conduit all along and Gamora is forced to kill him to interrupt Thanos' resurrection. The second half of the run focuses around Rocket who had abandoned the team post-Infinity Wars and how they need him to help stop a new version of the Universal Church of Truth
Guardians of the Galaxy v7 (2020)
18 issues, 1 annual
Al Ewing: Gods of Olympus, Dormammu the Living Planet, Cosmic Star Lord
Ah, I liked this one! This Al Ewing run featured an angrier version of the Gods of Olympus (and Hercules joining the team for a while), a story arc that involved Dormammu possessing Ego to manifest on this plane as Dormammu the Living Planet, and Peter Quill being sent to an alternate universe to live a very long alternate life before finding his way back to our universe shortly after he was presumed dead, and consequently gaining new powers and the title Master of the Sun. Also, Doctor Doom was a temporary member!?!
Guardians of the Galaxy v8 (2023)
10 issues, 1 annual
This is the latest Guardians of the Galaxy series, and while it's pretty short, it's quite good. It starts off with the Guardians (minus Rocket and Groot) trying to save a set of frontier planets/colonies from a terrifying phenomena called Grootfall which basically is a giant Groot meteor crashing into planets and effectively terraforming them.
One Shots and Limited Series
- Guardians of the Galaxy: Galaxy's Most Wanted (2014) - this is a Rocket and Groot adventure where they are bounty hunters before the GotG are formed. Inspired by the MCU movie, it is not set in the 616, but rather in an unspecified alternate universe
- Guardians of the Galaxy: Best Story Ever (2015) - a set of unreliable narrator stories spun by Quill and Rocket to distract their jailers as they are rescued
- Guardians of Infinity (2016) - 8 issue limited series - Rocket and Groot run into a mysterious structure in space and find themselves on an adventure alongside the classic Guardians team from the year 3000 plus a new heretofore-unseen spacefaring team from the year 1000 that also call themselves the Guardians of the Galaxy. This is far as I know the last known appearance of the classic team
- Guardians of the Galaxy: Dream On (2017) - The team is hunted down by intergalactic bounty hunter Death's End who uses a special dreaming machine to keep them under
- Guardians of the Galaxy: Mission Breakout (2017) - The Guardians are captured by the Collector (of course) and have to break out
- Guardians of the Galaxy: Mother Entropy (2017) - 5 issue limited series - Jim Starlin writes about the Guardians fighting against an extradimensional threat. The story is fine, but the art is by Alan Davis who I'm not very fond of.
- Guardians of the Galaxy: Bane of Blastaar (2023) - a super basic GotG story where they are hired to defeat Blastaar. Clunky dialog.
- Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind (2023) - I thought this title seemed familiar and turns out the book is basically an ad for a real-world GotG-themed ride. It's not even set in the 616!
We Have Caught Up!
I skipped a bunch of related series, notably solo series for the major team members that they launched post-Secret Wars. I figure I could save them for a second set of cosmic reads at some future point.
MCU Comparisons
The MCU Guardians are mostly based on a core group from the modern team: Peter Quill/Star-Lord, Gamora, Drax, Rocket and Groot. Notably, the only reference to the classic team in the first movie is a modern version of Yondu, who retains only the blue skin, mohawk and the use of the Yaka arrow. The comics would later introduce a present-day 616 Yondu as well, heavily inspired by the MCU version. Some other members of the classic team would appear as modern-day Ravagers in the second MCU film.
Progress Bar
Total issues covered in this post: 297
Total number of titles/volumes covered in this post: 38
Total issues covered so far: 3,841 + 297 = 4,138
Current total (released) according to the reference reading order: 34,670 (+196 from 2.5 months ago)
Progress: 11.9% (11.14% last post)
Progress has been slow. Notably, since the modern team were launched after I started reading a lot more comics digitally, I have already read many of the modern team's adventures but found myself re-reading all of them anyway as a refresher (and I enjoyed them anyway). I was previously counting on the fact that I had already read so many series during the past decades to bump up my % read, but if I need to re-read them, that means my estimate is probably way off. So my original estimate of finishing the complete Marvel run in 5 years or so is probably largely off-base and needs to be re-evaluated.
That being said, despite some recent slowdowns, I am still reading comics at a much faster rate than they come out. The stats above only indicate a +100 difference over the last 2.5 months, but the reality is more than that, since I don't write about the newer series until they're done. In theory anyway! In practice, I have finished a number of newer series already since I started and have not written about them. That implies that the limiting factor in how quickly I complete this run is my writing frequency instead of reading frequency!
Up Next
Not yet sure what to write about next. My "MCU Order" seems super loose nowadays! Some options:
- Ant-Man and Ultron related titles: This would be the next logical step in the MCU order, since Age of Ultron and Ant-Man films came after GotG v1.
- Heroes Reborn: As mentioned in the previous post.
- Jessica Jones related titles: This would still be an "MCU order" thing, except we would be following the "TV branch". It would also be rather short, since the character didn't have a lot of solo series.
- Claremont's Uncanny X-Men run: I started reading this recently, as I've never read all of it before, and mostly because I've been enjoying X-Men '97.
- Write a post about recent newer series I have finished. This might be the best choice, since in theory I don't need to re-read them! This is a bit complicated because most of the newer books I read are the X-Men related ones, and I kind of want to write about all of them together when the current Fall of X storyline concludes in a couple of months.
We shall see what comes next I suppose!