The shell around Ego the Living Planet has hatched, and a far greater threat has emerged. Dormammu, the dread lord of the Dark Dimension, has come to Earth-616 with a legion of even more powerful Mindless Ones, and it’s up to the Guardians of the Galaxy, spread across said galaxy, to stop him. Guardians of the Galaxy #16 is written by Al Ewing, drawn by Juan Frigeri, colored by Federico Blee and lettered by VC’s Cory Petit.
Matt Lazorwitz: Mark, it is a pleasure to be pinch hitting on this week’s new, action packed issue of Guardians of the Galaxy. This issue kicks off the arc that a lot of what we’ve been seeing in Al Ewing’s recent cosmic work has been leading to.
Mark Turetsky: It’s an honor to come in and talk Guardians. The superhero team is expanding and bigger than ever, and so, too, must the review team (no, seriously, Charlie and Allison are busy this week)!
Annihilation Everywhere
Mark: It’s really cool that Al Ewing, in a series that has seen members of the team looking back on their roots, has the Guardians of the Galaxy returning to the roots of the modern team. Not to Annihilation itself, but to a follow-up to Annihilation!
Matt: Yes! I met or fell in love with a lot of these characters thanks to Annihilation: Conquest, when the Guardians were mostly gathered as a cosmic Suicide Squad, so to go back to that big cosmic war, to flat out call it a follow-up, is exciting. Do I really expect this to be “The Last Annihilation”? No more than I expected “Final Crisis” to be, well, the final Crisis, but moving back to that mammoth space battle is something we haven’t seen Ewing do yet, and I’m excited to see what he does with it.
Mark: It’s also kind of a Ewing staple that he’s more or less chaining crossover issues into one another, coming out of the Hellfire Gala (though last month’s Guardians issue didn’t explicitly bill itself as such, it totally was). One of the things I really like that he’s doing here with such a big team is separating them out, then reshuffling the groups and coming up with new combinations of characters to team up. It comes off less like this is a team and really more of a cast.
Matt: You’re spot on there. There’s both a nostalgic feel for classic Silver Age team books, where that was the staple, and a very modern Ewing vibe, because he never sacrifices the character for the plot. It’d be easy to step away from all the work he’s done to develop this group and just do a full on fight issue, but we still get some touching Teddy/Billy moments, forwarding the love… triangle maybe between Gamora, Star-Lord and Nova, and lay with the political intrigue that has underpinned so much of this run and his work on S.W.O.R.D.
Mark: And while that’s essentially what this issue is, a fight issue, it’s a really well done one. Everyone gets their moment. My favorite is probably Drax reverting to his Infinity Watch-era personality and making awful jokes because that’s what he thinks is expected of him. Almost like he’s been watching the MCU version of the Guardians. Were there any particular character moments that stood out to you?
Matt: I was happy to see Nova smile. We spent a good part of the early issues of this series seeing Rich start to process years of accumulated trauma, so that moment where he goes full on Human Rocket? So good to see! Part of that is, I think, Star-Lord being alive, since he blamed himself for Peter’s death, but still, this guy started out as one of Marvel’s attempts to recapture that Spider-Man magic, and so to see him smiling again is a return to form, looking back on better times.
And do not tease me with the Infinity Watch, Mark. I have been waiting to see what Al Ewing can do with my favorite Marvel character of all time, Adam Warlock. I need to see that.
Mark: He’s also my favorite, and I’d love to see him come back. It’s notable that one of his more recent rebirths was in Annihilation: Conquest: Quasar, which was a Phyla/Heather two hander, so the team is pretty ripe for his reappearance. Still, I kinda feel like at this point, Rich and Peter are approaching Adam and Thanos levels of intertwined death-rebirth cycles (but with maybe slightly more implied romance?).
Matt: I dunno, there can be some weird tension in some of those Warlock/Thanos scenes. I kid! I kid! Well, mostly.
Mark: It’s an issue like this where Juan Frigeri really shines. The throngs of Mindless, the big space fights. It’s not as clever in layouts as we got from Juann Cabal, but it has a great clarity to it. Despite the massive cast and different locations, I never felt confused as to where we were or what was going on, which can frankly be a challenge in an issue like this.
Matt: Frigeri also has a great sense of body language. There are some great moments of character acting in this issue. The splash page of Nova saving Gamora and Rocket jumps out immediately, but there are smaller, more subtle moments. The intimacy of two longtime friends shown between Nova and Star-Lord and Drax’s thumbs up as he makes a joke are both great character moments that he absolutely sells.
Dormammu Has NOT Come to Bargain
Matt: So, we are really only one issue into this event, but what are your first blush impressions of this iteration of Dormammu?
Mark: It feels extremely Annihilation, doesn’t it? Instead of the Annihilation Wave or millions of Ultrons, it’s a giant wave of Mindless Ones. The big difference, which I don’t think we’ve seen the full ramifications of, is that unlike Annihilus or Ultron, Dormammu is specifically a magic-based villain, whereas the other two are sci-fi villains. It’s a bit of a surprise, frankly, that Doctor Doom has been taken off the table for this issue, since this should kinda be his whole deal, right? At least we’ve got Wiccan to be the team wizard!
Matt: And I wonder if some of the things Ewing did with Peter Quill when he was having a whole other lifetime in another reality, the entire lifetime where he became this powerful nigh-godlike being, might come into play as well.
There is definitely an Annihilation Wave vibe here, which I like. The Mindless Ones have mostly been sort of one note, just these shambling rock guys. The variants on them, the ships and the like, are a cool take, and something we haven’t seen before, as far as I know.
Mark: I got a Battlestar Galactica-reboot vibe from them. They’re like how the Cylons could be robots, but could also be the ships themselves, without the need for a pilot. (Also, the name “Mindless Gun” is great)
Matt: Oh, good call. Now, will the Mindless Ones be hopping into a new world every 33 minutes? (Deep-ish cut from the BSG reboot, but I stand by it.) But that particular nerdery aside, I want to know more about Dormammu’s plan. Is it just, “Hey, I’m a big head who can spit little heads and I’m here to wreck shit?” That’s ok, but I think of Dormammu as more of a schemer, so is there more to it than that? Or is this the payoff of the scheme; he’s now on the mortal plane and can wreak havoc as he chooses.
Mark: It’s definitely more than just plain wrecking shit, as you put it. I’m also wondering if his return in the body of Ego the Living Planet might be setting up for even more team reunions. Last time Ewing wrote Ego (to my knowledge, at least) he had joined forces with some truly universal-level beings to form The Eternity Watch in the pages of Ultimates^2. In an arc that started by reintroducing Ewing’s Progenitors from his Inhuman comic Royals, nothing is off the table for this event.
Matt: That’s a run I missed. It’s on my to read list, and looks like it’s moving up the stack. I love a writer who builds a whole corner of the universe of his own through different titles over time, and Ewing has been slowly doing it for sometime.
Uneasy Lies the Head That Wears the Crown
Matt: Before I start, I need to point out that the above version of the quote is correct, from Henry IV, Part 2. “Heavy lies the head…” is a common misquote. I finally get to put my degree in Shakespearean Studies to work here.
Mark: I guess now really is the winter of your discontent, huh? (ain’t I a stinker!)
Matt: Anyway, this issue gives us a couple of moments for Hulkling as Emperor of the Kree/Skrull Alliance, where he has to put being emperor above his desire to fight side by side with his husband, Wiccan. Teddy has slowly been growing into this truly noble and selfless reuler, even when it hurts.
Mark: And there’s this underlying theme of one’s duty versus one’s personal feelings coming into play already. We’ve got Hulkling and Wiccan making hard decisions about their responsibilities to their empires, snd maybe they’re at odds with their responsibilities to each other (not to mention the return of Captain Glory on the final page). I predict we’re going to see more relationships tested in this way by the end, especially with Nova’s happy rescue of Gamora. Ewing is reminding us of all the personal bonds between characters before he tears them apart.
Matt: Oh, yes. I can’t help thinking that this is where we’ll get a payoff to that last page tease/reveal from Empyre Aftermath: Avengers, with S.W.O.R.D. swooping in to save the day as Teddy lays seemingly defeated.
It’s interesting to see a Guardians book that is so grounded in interpersonal dynamics. Romance has taken a backseat in most of the Guardians runs starting as far back as the Abnett & Lanning run; there were little bits of it, like Gamora’s heartbreak when Adam Warlock went full Magus, the tragedy of Phyla and Heather leading into Thanos Imperative and your mileage may vary on the Quill/Pryde romance, but those were never as front and center as it is here. Ewing is adding a nice soap opera to this book, between Gamora/Peter/Nova, Phyla and Heather, and Herc and Noh-Varr. And I am here for that.
Mark: Speaking of Noh-Varr, he’s not in this issue, but Captain Glory is the 616’s version of his father, so maybe we’ll get some drama out of that relationship as well. Or not!
Matt: I had forgotten their relationship! I figure Noh-Varr’ll be riding to the rescue with Star-Lord and S.W.O.R.D., as the last issue of that book listed him as in attendance at the Hellfire Gala, even though I don’t think he was at that meeting of representatives. Ewing has a lot of threads he can pull for interpersonal drama, and I doubt he’s going to forget any of them.
Marvel Minutiae
- So,the name of the Kree in charge of the construction project on the new Throneworld is Phor-Mann? Nominative determinism worthy of a Batman villain.
- Did… did Doctor Doom really tell his teammates(-ish?) that his wedding was a “diplomatic dinner.”
- For being “Mindless,” that Mindless Gun certainly did use a clever tactic, teleporting to have Gamora and Rocket’s ship right in their firing range.
- Dormammu says, “Ego is gone! I wear his shell like the skin of a snake!” I would assume that was a miscue in the script, and meant to be “shed his shell.” Either that or snakes work differently in the Dark Dimension.
- Maybe Dormammu has only scotch’d this snake, not killed it (how’s that, Mister Shakespeare?).
- There’s something really satisfying about Nova’s big “BOOOM” panel.
Mark Turetsky
Matt Lazorwitz read his first comic at the age of five. It was Who's Who in the DC Universe #2, featuring characters whose names begin with B, which explains so much about his Batman obsession. He writes about comics he loves, and co-hosts the creator interview podcast WMQ&A with Dan Grote.
