Moondragon vs Moondragon? The Fight Comes to a Stunning Conclusion in Guardians of the Galaxy #5

Selfcest. Autovore. Moondragon/Moondragon/Phyla-Vell. When Moondragon lost Phyla-Vell her whole life shattered. Broken, beaten and poisoned by the Dragon of the Moon, she pushed forward for reasons unknown. At least until she realized that another Moondragon, a perfect version from a utopian alternate universe, had slipped into the 616. Misguided and filled with venom, she sets out on a quest that will color the rest of her seemingly imperfect life. #angst #SOMUCHANGST #drama #alternateuniverse

Part 5 of Guardians of the Galaxy by Al Ewing (WeirderAl), Juann Cabal (The_Layout_God), Federico Blee (OhTheHueManity), and VC’s Cory Petit (ScarletLett3rs)

Charlie Davis: So Allison…I need a drink. Like. For real. This issue did so many awesome things that I had to sit down and process my genuine JOY and surprise. That rarely happens with comics.

Allison Senecal: At this point, if this doesn’t get my vote for best series of the year, something is wrong with me. Believe me when I say “the Heather/Phyla fic I wrote in my head in college but never typed up” is a compliment. (If you didn’t get our summary opener, it’s an attempt at an Archive of Our Own-format fic entry, as best we can here.) [Ed. Note: One editor laughed his butt off.]

CD: I am constantly taken aback but the balance that Ewing strikes in this comic. One part heavy character beats, the other a nice cocktail of plot and superb pacing. Even if this issue was basically an ode to Moondragon, everyone still felt realized and present. The plot didn’t slow down and we even moved things forward!

AS: It’s pretty perfect. We get a bit of character spotlight in every issue. And the team still gets to do explodey stuff. Everyone wins. As we figured by the end of issue #4 and the cover here…this week everything is coming up Heather. Or at least one of them!

“Why Does Alternate Heather, the Most Put-Together Heather, Not Simply Eat the Other Heather?”

CD: Hell, where do I even start with this. Moondragon is really the focus of this issue. The begins and ends with her, a nice bookend. But lest we forget that there are two Moondragon’s, one bitter and broken and the other, as perfect as she is, still attempting to help her team. You and I knew this confrontation was coming, but honestly I didn’t expect it so early in the book. I have enough slow burns in everything else I follow at the moment that I didn’t need another one! Thank you Al Ewing for my life. I really can’t say enough about the dialogue here. Two people who are the same and yet, the influence of the dragon is dripping off of 616 Hearher’s words here. She’s been planning and waiting and just like I called it, she wants the alternate Moondragon’s life for herself.

AS: Woo, baby, a telepath battle. God, I always love it. This conversation, and eventual confrontation, between the two Heather takes place entirely inside 616-Heather’s mind, which is just as it should be. These two don’t even need to move to fight. I think people often forget that Moondragon is on par telepathically with folks like Jean Grey, though that may have changed since Jean’s resurrection. What I loved most here was Heather’s palpable grief and anger. The Dragon is feeding the feelings already bubbling up inside her. She doubts herself. She still misses Phyla. She’s more than a little jealous of the other Moondragon. She’s lonely. All she needs is a tiny push and it’s on! No questioning, just “$%S@&, you stole my life, let’s go”. Understandably. It’s a bit meta. We got these alternate universe versions of Heather and Phyla while our Heather languished unused for years. Let’s…fix that, eh?

CD: It confronts a whole lot of things in the text and outside of it. Gone for years to be lost and forgotten and then suddenly there is another you less broken and in need of fixing, so of course they choose that one. It speaks to trauma, anxiety and depression in a lot of ways as well. What you sink to in your lowest of lows. What you think might fix the ache in your soul. Ewing has such a good command of what’s going on inside of 616 Heather’s mind and Cabal does such an excellent job of helping us visualize it all. Alternate Heather’s mouth and eyes bleeding black—being swallowed up by all that darkness from 616 Heather. It’s SO GOOD.

AS: I got real emotional at this sequence. Other-Heather is obviously deeply compassionate, but she’s still take-no-crap. After all, she is a Moondragon. Our Heather is, as you said, essentially eating her alive. Seemingly. Other-Heather has also somewhat manipulated events to her advantage. What one Heather sees as revenge gone wrong and an eventual defeat, the other Heather has seen from the start as a rescue. A rescue of her other self. It’s so deeply sugary that I should hate it. It’s just on the edge of “love will save the day” but this time love is another self and that other self sees how low you’ve become. SHE PURGES THE DRAGON (and seemingly all that it represents) AND SHARES HER WHOLE LITERAL SELF WITH 616-HEATHER! WHAT?!

CD: With a good ol fashioned kiss on the lips. See the selfcest warnings at the top of the page (no flames please). No, but honestly I didn’t see this outcome coming at all. And like you said, I feel like I should be mad that there isn’t more to this than “let me share myself with you” but it’s executed so well that I can’t help but love it. Of course AU Heather would try and save herself—she is from the super hero dimension after all. It’s also something deeply personal. A hand reaching out in the darkness. Two become one or at least inhabit the same body and man it’s really satisfying.

AS: Where is my alternate dimension non-depressed Allison?? Where is She??

CD: If you find her, please let me know.

Bless My Soul, Herc Was on a Roll

AS: That’s the angst, now for the fun. We pick up where we left off with Gamora confronting Hercules, who is just a damn delight in this book. Giving us a new (entirely silly, and maybe a bit of a reminder of Herc’s younger years) Prince of Power for him to play off was such a great choice here.

CD: I really do love what they are doing here as well. I am not super familiar with Herc, but i’ve loved him every time he’s popped up in the book. He’s kind and he’s got a great plot hook with the God’s from the starting arc. You can’t help but feel for him and he does speak the truth to Gamora, even if she doesn’t want to hear it. I like that Quill still feels like a character in the book even as a ghost. He’s not just haunting Gamora, but the whole team really. If there is one thing I could maybe point at and say “lets not do this” about the book so far, it’s I need Gamora being motivated by something more than Quill’s death. Ewing is pushing against that narrative, but I think he’s pulling it off well so far.

AS: Herc has really grown over the years as a character. He’s a bit more humble than he used to be, a little less bombastic, though still gregarious and very much full of that zest for life. As we see here, he’s learned patience in battle, something the – I assume younger, but who knows in space, to be fair – Prince of Power hasn’t quite figured out yet. Prince is full himbo. Herc is tempered himbo. “For I do not even think once!” Of course you don’t, sweetie. Uh, and I adore the clever, clever use of the Quantum Bands.

CD: Ah yes! That was really great. Everyone still has all their little moving pieces going on as well. We check in with Rocket, Phyla and even find out what Noh has been doing while we kind of focus on our not so friendly sentient beaver. We’ve sorted through some of the things that make our teams of Guardian’s different and come back around to really what brings them together and make them ultimately the same. They are all pushed forward by Peter’s death.

AS: Can’t wait to see how this goes now. I didn’t think the other team would really be down for Gnawbarque’s mission if they knew what he was truly up to. If you forgot, that’s super-mining an entire planet til it dies. He’s like Beaver-Dario Agger in space. All they know is they’re acting as bodyguards against supposed “eco-terrorists” aka our main Guardians team, haha. Good to see how quickly they seem to trust Hercules there when he tells them to grab on before Noh Quantum swaps them with the beaver. I mean, obviously no one wants to get blown up, but still. There tends to be unnecessary drama with scenes like that sometimes.

CD: Due to the way things have been going, I am gonna assume it will get hashed out as soon as there is time to hash it out. There is still gonna be drama, obviously, but with the two Moondragon’s combined and Herc refusing to let Gamora walk down this angry path I think we are going to have a more nuanced story than “two teams fight”. I am so happy about that.

AS: Me too! There’s a lot of other ways to pull at the tension. We mentioned the possible Gamora-Rich tension last time, but now there’s undoubtedly going to be some Phyla reaction to the new Moondragons, too. Did O’Hare make it off-planet? I hope so, because he and Rocket doing the small fluffy murder-animal bickering could also be supremely fun.

Layouts, Colors, and Lettering, Oh My!

CD: Honestly Allison, I think we may have saved the best chunk for last. Juan Cabal is incredible on this issue and has been incredible since the series started. He deserves our praise and a long, long section in this article. Ewing is amazing, but Cabal has literally ascended to another level. Each page that calls for it, has layouts that blow my mind. I know that people think that Cabal is like Frank Quietly, but Frank Quietly could NEVER.

AS: At this point both Cabal has surpassed Quitely in pure creativity and style. When a writer lets Cabal loose and encourages wild layouts, damn. Blee’s colors definitely pair superbly with his cosmic work. The whole vibe here is “retro, but make it feel fresh”. I’ll keep banging this drum, but bright colorful cosmic series are light years (ha!) better than dull, gritty cosmic series. It’s something that Ewing seems to grasp, between this and his Ultimates.

CD: I honestly really don’t know anyone that would want dark and gritty cosmic things. It just seems so far away from what makes space so fun. And space is supposed to be fun. Don’t let anyone tell you differently. Blee and Cabal work in concert here in such a beautiful way and frankly they capture what marvel cosmic is supposed to be. Big ideas, working outside of the box, being FUN. Seeing the dragon of the moon wind around the page is amazing and the pages of both Moondragon’s intertwining and finally coming together are put together in such a way that the outcome was actually surprising. I really can’t do justice to what the art does in this book. It’s stellar.

AS: STILL not over the Quantum Swap pages. And this issue has the panel that says “TAG”, which is just a delight. Those Moondragon pages are breathtaking. The overlapping circles and serpentine spirals make you have to really root around for which Heather is which, and not in a bad way. Petit’s lettering for this series has been phenomenal, especially these last two issues, where he’s juggling two teams, two Moondragons, so many telepathic thought bubbles, phew. And you’re never actually confused. I love the muted sage tones for alternate-Heather, and 616-Heather getting the green green. I think it coulda been easy to do the opposite all things about their situations considered, but classic-Heather SHOULD take precedence in the color choice wheel. This is just such a well-crafted book, in all respects. Hats off to everyone.

CD: It really is the attention to detail that makes it so special. Everyone is working their hardest on this book, bringing the characters to life in a way that really seems special. Well-crafted is absolutely the perfect word for it and I hope this team gets to work together on another book after this one. Actually…I hope this book goes ok for a long, long time.

AS: Realistically, it’s Marvel so we can count on a solid ten issues. *Throws glove onto the desk of whoever makes those decisions.” I’ll be massively disappointed if the company doesn’t give Ewing room for his plans for this.