Adam Graham's Blog: Christians and Superheroes - Posts Tagged "1969"

Guardians of the Galaxy: Tomorrow's Avengers, Vol. 1 by Steve Gerber

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This book collects the early appearances of the original Guardians of the Galaxy Team that feature Major Vance Astro from Earth, Charlie-27 from Jupiter, Yondu from Centauri IV and Martinex, the Crystal Man from Pluto. Later Starhawk and Nikki, a Mercurian Girl were added later. The book features the Guardian's pilot story in 1969's Marvel Superheroes #18, their Guest Appearance with the Thing and Captain America in Marvel Two-in-One #4 and 5 and with the Defenders in Giant Sized Defenders #5 and Issues 26-29 before they took over Marvel Presents for Issues #3-12.

The stories are okay. The pilot issue by Arnold Drake introduces but doesn't give them a lot of definition. Writer Steve Gerber's obsession with them, even to the point of bringing modern Marvel Characters to the future in these crossover stories explains why the Guardians survived, even though the actual stars really dominated the stories. I liked the idea in Marvel Two-in-One #5 that Captain America's legend inspires people fighting for freedom even a millennia later and the Guardians' big focus is on freeing the Earth which both the Defenders and Captain America and the Thing gave them a hand towards.

In Marvel Presents #3, this plot was dispense summarily so that our heroes could enjoy the freedom of the Stars with Starhawk joining the series and Nikki coming along to be the "token woman" to quote an interview with Gerber published in the back of this volume. Such brilliant character development led to some flat characters. He worked in one dimension to each character, with Vance he chose to make him unbalanced. A dubious creative choice given that as someone originally from the 20th Century was actually the character readers could relate to. Gerber focused on social commentary including the idea that the apocalypse was brought about in the 1980s as a result of not banning aerosol spray cans.

However, as often happened at Marvel in the 1970s, Gerber became over-tasked as evidenced by Issue 8 which mostly reprints a Silver Surfer story with a half hearted Guardians frame around it. Gerber started Part One of the origin of Starhawk but ended up handing the storyline off halfway completed to Roger Stern without actually knowing how it ends. Stern actually does a pretty good job with the hand he was dealt and finishes the series off with style.

This is a very choppy and uneven series of comics. This answers the question of the origins of the original Guardians of the Galaxy Team and provides some average comics (through Issue 8) and then the book gets a bit better.



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