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Guardians Of The Galaxy #8: Review

Nov 2020
Al Ewing, Marcio Takara

Story Name:

8: Business as usual

Review & Comments

Rating:
4 stars

Guardians Of The Galaxy #8 Review by (November 6, 2020)
This issue like the last is cover-bannered Empyre Aftermath.

Profiteer was introduced in Empyre: Fantastic Four #0 running her sideline Casino Cosmico where the FF rescued a pair of Kree and Skrull kids. And she was seen off in Empyre: Fallout FF 1-shot when she tried to reclaim them.

Knull is the big bad Klyntar symbiote who is building up to the King In Black event. The Guardians will get involved in #10.

But next issue we'll see what happened to Peter Quill after he Marvel-died in #2.





 

Synopsis / Summary / Plot

Guardians Of The Galaxy #8 Synopsis by Rob Johnson
Marvel Boy (Noh-Varr) and Nova (Richard Rider) are delegates to the Galactic Council in the newly-built Proscenium. Marvel Boy has been accused of killing 2 other delegates. Rocket Raccoon and the rest of the Guardians Of The Galaxy have intervened to sort it out.

Rocket takes another swig from his hip-flask of booze and summarises the position. The Kree Imperium and the Skrull Empire have merged into the Kree/Skrull Alliance, which worries the rest of the Galaxy. They don't know what to make of the new joint Emperor being the Earth superhero Hulkling who has ended the Kree Civil War between the Imperium and the Utopians. And this Council meeting is to determine the new Galactic political situation. Marvel Boy, the Utopian delegate, managed to get it agreed that the Alliance should submit to weapons inspections. So to celebrate he goes to the toilet where he murders the Zn'rx delegate and Val-Lorr of the Kree Imperium.

Kl'rt (Super-Skrull), delegate for the Skrull half of the Alliance, points out the seriousness of the situation. The death of Stote, Emperor of the Zn'rx (usually pronounced Snarks), will have set off a Snarkwar where the sons of his several Queens will lead their troops to fight for the succession. He claims something I think we've never heard before, that they will have telepathically sensed his death and the War will have already started. And it will cause immense collateral damage to non-Snark civilisations.

SS also adds that Val-Lorr discovered Noh-Varr standing over the body, and then MB shot him with Kree's own weapon. Marvel Boy claims that Val-Lorr killed himself because his gun misfired. Oracle-2 of the Shi'ar offers to scan MB's mind but Kl'rt pre-dismisses any exonerating result as fake news (such as a post-hypnotic cover story).

Rocket asks the Skrull to check that the gun is working properly by firing it at the floor, which works. Then he tells him to shoot Noh-Varr in the head. If it kills him it proves his guilt and executes him at the same time. Kl'rt happily complies, but when he pulls the trigger the barrel of the gun swivels back and shoots *him* through the head. Of course Rocket knew that's not where the shape-shifting Skrulls keep their brains. The weapons-expert Raccoon explains that he could tell that the gun had a built-in gene-scanner to stop it killing Kree (like Marvel Boy) by backfiring on the shooter. (But presumably it didn't have a safety check for if a Kree (like Val-Lorr) tried to kill another Kree.)

Rocket puts forward a theory that whoever supplied the gun wanted to reignite the Civil War and fracture the Alliance. Imperial Val-Lorr hated Utopian Noh-Varr and was likely to try to kill him, but that murder could be handled by Emperor Hulkling. However the opposite murder could potentially dethrone him and restore the fighting between Skrulls, Imperials and Utopians.

He also says that he's run diagnostics on the computer system and robotic staff of the Proscenium. They came up clean and tamper-proof, and there are no other living beings in the space station. So the guilty party is in this room. And he issues an order to the system to lockdown the building for 1 hour, and ignore him if he countermands the order (potentially under mind-control).

He then tells Oracle-2 and the Rigellian Mentacle to mind-scan the other delegates while the Guardian Moondragon scans *them*. Oracle objects but Mentacle declares her innocent and Moondragon vouches for them both. Mentacle then clears Marvel Boy, Kl'rt and Zoralis Gupa of the Galactic Rim Collective. Oracle vets Lani Ko Ako of the Badoon Sisterhood, Victoria of Spartax and Nova of Earth. Nobody actually mentions the Kymellian Nymbis Sternhoof (surely a prime suspect because Kymellians and Snarks are hereditary enemies) but Moondragon concurs that none of them knows anything about Stote's death.

However Heather Douglas tries a more general scan for thoughts of murder. No-one mentioned the Chitauri diplomatic drone Peacebringer above either but she *does* detect murderous intent there. Exposed it opens its chest to reveal a bomb within. It explains that the bomb isn't ready to go off yet and apologises for the delay in their deaths. Moondragon confirms that the Chitauri had nothing to do with the earlier deaths, this bomb was intended to kill them all.

Nova tells Hercules and Phyla-Vell to hold the drone down while he and Marvel Boy defuse the bomb. Noh-Varr blames the drunken Raccoon for locking them in with the bomb. Taking another sip Rocket expresses confidence in his bomb-disposal abilities while he gets on with exposing the murderer. Groot and Kl'rt join in the physical attack too.

Rocket's looking for someone who can fool top-level telepaths and has an image-inducer to mask her true appearance. He rounds on Lani Ko Ako who was the only 1 who didn't react to the Chitauri bomb. And the Sisterhood Of The Badoon never leave their planet, except for some outcasts who would never be chosen to represent them. He claims that she killed Stote to start the Snarkwar because it would be good for her weapons business. And she didn't have to provide Val-Lorr with a specially-rigged weapon because he figures she provided them to the whole Kree army. And she expects to survive the Chitauri bomb. To him this all adds up to an Elder Of The Universe, in particular the 1 known as the Profiteer. And Lani drops her disguise to reveal that it is indeed she. Profiteer admits to it all except the Chitauri bomb. But that will serve her purpose too by burying the evidence of her involvement.

Disarming the bomb is proving difficult to impossible. Then Zoralis Gupa gets a phone call. He tells the others that his home planet Silnius has been destroyed along with many others across the Galaxy including planets of most of the races here. He predicts that it will have a disastrous effect on the Galactic economy which is already fragile after the Alliance/Cotati War (in the Empyre event). No-one will be able to afford Profiteer's weapons. This makes her change her plans. The delegates need to live to mitigate the chaos, so she teleports herself and the bomb-laden Chitauri away. Rocket takes another sip and admits that locking the doors was futile.

Super-Skrull commends Gupa for his bluff but Zoralis says it was true. Something worse than Galactus is eating worlds. And a last message from Silnius named him Knull.



Marcio Takara
Marcio Takara
Federico Blee
Rafael Albuquerque (Cover Penciler)
Rafael Albuquerque (Cover Inker)
Rafael Albuquerque (Cover Colorist)
Letterer: Cory Petit.
Editor: Darren Shan. Editor-in-chief: C. B. Cebulski.

Characters

Listed in Alphabetical Order.

Marvel Boy
Marvel Boy

(Noh-Varr)
Nova
Nova

(Richard Rider)

Plus: Captain Marvel (Phyla-Vell), Mentacle, Moondragon (of Infinity Wars), Profiteer, Super-Skrull, Victoria (of Spartax).

> Guardians Of The Galaxy: Book info and issue index

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