Hunting Angels In The Gutters: Guardians of The Galaxy #7 Review

Since Guardians of The Galaxy #7 has the names Brian Michael Bendis and Sara Pichelli on the cover, I will start by saying yes, there are at least three double-paged layouts in this book where you need to stop what you’re doing (which will be enjoying the actual story) to decode whether you need to read page one and then page two, or across the spine from the top. The bad news is that this is still a storytelling technique that drives me bugfuck nuts.

The good news is that I have long since learned, when I see the names “Bendis” and “Pichelli” on the cover, to stop with every page turn and decode how to read the pages before continuing my story enjoyment. But still, even though I have learned to look for the layout doesn’t mean I like it. It’s like an SAT word problem, or a solid donkey punch: you don’t start loving it just because you know it’s coming.

Jesus, I have been writing comic reviews for more then two years, and I have never started one by poking at a technical element of the visual storytelling before. Which should go to show just how crazy the whole cross-spine layout makes me… but which also might make make it seem like all I have to say about it are technical nitpicks and “get off my lawn!” screeching about more modern storytelling techniques. But that’s really not the case.

Instead, Guardians of The Galaxy #7 is a comic book that will play for any Browncoat. It’s one of Bendis’s “let’s alll sit around a table talking” issues that let’s the reader spend some quality time with a tight crew of a small starship, cracking wise in the face of danger while simultaneously trying to negotiate with and size up a potential enemy. And with its cocky and wisecracking captain, warrior woman second in command, and gunslinging goon backing them up, it’s a stupid hat and a misguided hero’s ballad away from being an episode of Firefly.

And I like Firefly. So I had a lot of fun with this book.

The Guardians have captured Angela, who they encountered after she entered the 616 Universe following the time rifts caused by Age of Ultron. The Guardians know that she isn’t anything that anyone in the Marvel Universe has encountered before, and she is shocked to find out that Peter Quill and Tony Stark are from Earth – a land she only knows from legends in her homeworld… which is Heven, as Quill and Stark are equally shocked to hear. As the team banters (and flirts with the pretty redhead who calls herself an angel), she describes the event that brought her there, and it’s an event that Quill recognizes. So he releases her and allows her to travel to Earth, while following along just to make sure she’s not a psycho or something, and then there is a shared moment. Right before the apocalypse.

And really, that’s it: the team hanging around on the ship, making a bunch of conversation about what to do about Angela, who is just sitting in a cage telling her story. There is some posturing and a flashback of Angela hunting, but otherwise there is nothing in the way of action in this issue… but that is okay, or at least it’s okay with me.

Comics fandom are of a split opinion about Bendis’s tendency to, every few issues, do one of his “dudes having a conversation” issues: some people love them, others find them boring and a waste of good punch-up space. And I am firmly in Column A. Look, Bendis cut his teeth on self-drawn crime comics about hustlers, scumbags and sneak thieves; dialogue and story are what the man does best. And this issue has some fun and killer dialogue in it:

Rocket Raccoon: You should really apologize to her, hitting her like that.

Gamora: You told me to!

Rocket Raccoon: And you do everything I say?! I’m clearly wrongheaded.

Groot: I am Groot.

There’s a ton of fun stuff like that in this book, which not only make it a joy to read, but which help us get to know the characters better. Bendis shows is Quill and Stark trading wisecracks (and in a book where Quill isn’t necessarily the best-known protagonist, playing him against Stark is a nice quick shorthand way to show us the kind of guy we’re dealing with), Gamora leaning toward violence as a first response, Rocket as a leering joker, and Groot as… well, Groot. Whatever the hell that is. The point is that, if you’re into fun dialogue, there’s a lot to like here… and if you’re new to the title, it’s a decent place to jump in, get your bearings, and get to know the players without getting too confused.

And more importantly for me, it was  decent way to get to know Angela. When Neil Gaiman created the character back in the early 90s in Spawn, I wasn’t reading it, because in general, that book sucked. So all I knew about the character was that she was a bargaining chip in Gaiman’s lawsuit against Todd McFarlane over Miraclemen. And Bendis does a decent job showing us at least a bit about who she is, where she’s from, and some of what she can do. It’s a short primer, but it was much appreciated by this new reader who saw this unknown character at the end of Age of Ultron and said, “Yeah? So what?”

This book has two artists – Pichelli does the sequences with Angela and the team, while Valario Schiti (who I’m guessing took no end of shit over that name in junior high school) did the sequences of Angela in her homeworld – and normally splitting art in a single issue that way really irritates me. However, here it makes sense. In the 616 sequences drawn by Pichelli, the lines are fine and the facial expressions are exquisite (there’s a ton of emotion even on Rocket’s face), but the figures are generally realistic and believable. Schiti’s work on the Angela-in-Heven, however, is more garish, action-packed and stylized, and gives Angela a set of tits that would defy Jovian gravity… which makes a hell of a lot of sense for a set of visuals that, for all intents and purposes, are meant to be taking place in the heart of the 90s Image Age of comics. So the dichotomy in the styles really worked for me. However, I can live a long and full life without having to try and decode another two-page layout where the panels at the top left of page one terminate at the spine like a standard layout.

There isn’t a lot – okay, there isn’t any – action in this book. But it was still a hoot for me to read. The dialogue is a blast to read, and it’s a good entry point to get to know these characters a few months before the movie comes out and just before they become players in the Infinity crossover going through Marvel right now. It’s a good time… but make sure you stop and decode how you’re supposed to read the thing whenever a page of art isn’t backed by an ad.