Guardians Of The Galaxy Annual #1: Review

Jun 2019
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Story Name:

(no overall title)

Review & Comments

Rating:
4 stars

Guardians Of The Galaxy Annual #1 Review by (June 15, 2019)
Silver Surfer saving everyone else from the black hole occurs in SS: Black #1. It seems he was also responsible for attaching Cosmic Ghost Rider's chain to Beta Ray Bill's Stormbreaker which got the small group out of the hole who went on to become the new Guardians Of The Galaxy. Surfer himself was sent back in time to near the beginning of the universe where he confronts the dark god Knull.

We 1st met the Krallian Skrulls on Kral-IV in Fantastic Four #91-93 where the kidnapped Thing had to fight in their arena. Their last app on Kral-X was in US Avengers #11-12.

The Kree's ruling Supreme Intelligence was destroyed (again) in the Black Vortex crossover between GOTG and X-Men.
Kree in an alternate timeline used a cut-down Plex Intelligence as the AI in their spaceships. Some time before when 1 ship crossed over into the main Marvel 616 universe and crashed on Earth only Noh-Varr (Marvel Boy) survived with a seed of the Plex.
In the Royals limited series Marvel Boy and the Inhuman royal family used the Plex seed and the remains of the 616 Supreme Intelligence to create the Extreme Intelligence to rule the Kree again.

Avril Kincaid 1st showed up as a SHIELD Agent in Captain America: Sam Wilson #7 and she almost immediately got the Quantum Bands and became training as the new Quasar. She fought through Civil War II and Secret Empire, and sacrificed herself in SE#8.

Druffs had a cameo intro in Fantastic Four #37 and played a minor role in the Kree-Skrull War in Avengers #94 where their [invented by the writer] rapid breeding was used as a torture device. Any collision causes a Druff to split into 3 new Druffs, threatening to smother Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch. Since then they've also featured in an issue of Thor and 1 of Silver Surfer (set on their homeworld Ryas).

The Universal Church Of Truth was a mainstay of Jim Starlin's run on Warlock. It was led by a Matriarch and worshipped Adam Warlock's evil side the Magus. In GOTG it has frequently tried to resurrect Magus.

Magus was originally Warlock's future self gone bad but Adam died, preventing that self from existing. But then Warlock was reborn from his Soul Gem, and a new version of Magus split off as Adam's evil side for the Infinity War event. He kept being defeated and returning. The last time he was killed by Ultron in Infinity Countdown Prime but Gamora revived him in Infinity Wars #6 with the intention of teaching him to be good. But that seems to have gone by the wayside as Gamora is back in GOTG, and my money's on the Patriarch in this issue being Magus. Especially as that's the image Warlock saw as he left the black hole.





 

Synopsis / Summary / Plot

Guardians Of The Galaxy Annual #1 Synopsis by Rob Johnson
This issue describes what happened to some of the characters who escaped from the black hole after #1 of the series. There is a framing sequence and 3 individual stories.


Frame: Faith
Writer Donny Cates. Pencils/inks John McCrea. Colours Mike Spicer.

Opening section:

Some mystery hooded guys are asking Cosmo the Space Dog if he's located the other heroes who fell into the black hole. They want to save them like they saved *him*. Cosmo says Silver Surfer pulled him and the others out of the hole but they are now scattered through the galaxy. These guys then rescued him from space, and now they have sent faith-drones to find the others. And Cosmo now gets reports back that some drones have been successful.


Story 1: A long time in politics
Writer Al Ewing. Pencils/inks Yildiray Cinar. Colours Rain Beredo.

Nova (Richard Rider) is in a space bar. The scanner's broke so the barman asks for cash. He doesn't have any usable money but Quasar steps up to pay. Rich had heard about Quasar and others falling into a black hole. Wendell Vaughn explains that Silver Surfer got him and some others out but he himself is still trapped (see Silver Surfer: Black #1). They talk about how Galactus is feeling after reverting from the golden Lifebringer to the old World Devourer. Nova didn't think the Big G could get depressed but Wendell says "He's just this guy, you know" (according to Gag Halfrunt his personal brain care specialist).

Wendell then asks why Richard why he's on therapeutic leave from the Nova Corps, so Nova tells him about an incident 8 days ago in the Kral system where Skrulls pretend to be US Prohibition mobsters.

The Skrulls in the rest of their empire didn't approve of the Krallian Skrulls. Nova was on Kral-IV to stop a troop of Skrull soldiers looting and killing, which was against the Nova Corps Pan-Worlds Treaty agreed to by the Skrull Emperor Kl'rt (Super-Skrull). The soldiers refused to stand down and Rider was  forced to kill them to stop them killing civilians. But then he got an urgent message from Commander Scott Adsit telling him that the Skrulls had pulled out of the treaty. They were going to cleanse the Kral system and Rich had better leave immediately.

It turned out that the 'cleansing' process had already turned the Kral sun nova. Influential Kral Skrulls had already evacuated. The process destroyed the Kral planets. Rider's Nova Force protected him but he saw the inhabitants of Kral-IV die.

Richard says that the Kree are going more hard-line too. The new Extreme Intelligence (see the Royals mini-series) was more conciliatory. But there's now a Kree civil war (see Death Of The Inhumans mini-series) and the warrior class are winning. And then they'll pull out of the Treaty. And everyone else is likely to follow suit.

In turn Wendell Vaughn reminds Rich of the trainee Quasar Avril Kincaid who was assumed killed in the Secret Empire event. When the Surfer used his Power Cosmic to expel the heroes out of the black hole Quasar helped with his Quantum Bands. And during or afterwards he briefly saw Avril and she tried to tell him something. Now he believes she's still alive somewhere and he's going to find her.

Wendell tries to persuade Rich that everything will work out OK. But Rider has seen too much to trust in blind faith. He thinks the (local) universe is on the edge of collapse, and 1 new unforeseen player in the game could tip it over.

Nova flies off, and Quasar hears a voice calling him and telling him to have faith. And all goes white.


Story 2: Advent horizon
Writer Tini Howard. Pencils/inks Ibrahim Moustafa. Colours Jay David Ramos.

On the way out of the black hole Adam Warlock briefly sees a white-haired, purple-faced image of himself.

But then he lands on the planet Ryas, the homeworld of the little Druffs. He crashes into their temple but stops himself from hitting the ground. While floating he effortlessly repairs the damage he's done. The Druffs understandably think he's their god. He is led to their king who hails him as the promised one. But Adam doesn't know who they are.

The king explains how they have spread throughout the galaxy, where they are seen as fast-breeding vermin. But their god doesn't see them like that, and after a recent especially long drought he began sending down globes full of food and water and fuel. Warlock denies sending them but says he will go to see this god.

He flies into space and finds an orbiting entity who claims to have once been a man but is now evolved into something more. It turns out that he is fattening the Druffs up so that they will breed a mighty army who he can lead to conquer the Galaxy. He also says that if Warlock kills him the Druffs on this planet will die out.

Warlock does destroy the 'god'. But then he swears to take his place and ensure that the Druffs survive peaceably.


Story 3: You're only young once
Writer Zac Thompson & Lonnie Nadler. Pencils/inks Felipe Andrade. Colours Mike Spicer.

As Darkhawk falls *into* the black hole Chris Powell is separated from the Raptor armour Razor. Chris's life flashes before his eyes. But then the pair remerge as they and others are expelled from the hole.

Darkhawk awakens much later on a spaceship to be confronted by a Skrull, a Kree and a Shi'ar. They accuse him of bringing a contamination from the black hole. But they also say "Have faith" and "Let us bless you with our light". They fight, and Chris discovers his Darkhawk body can now feel pain and bleed. And then he realises that's because 1 of his human arms is exposed within an exoskeleton, unlike the rest of the Darkhawk armour. And the armour no longer communicates with him.

The aliens leave him in a pleasant-enough cell where Chris starts to examine his new state. He can't will himself to become human, sending the Darkhawk body to Null Space. He feels no connection to the Darkhawk body. Finally he removes the helmet and finds himself inside the armour (which isn't how things used to work), but reverted to a young boy.

Then it goes white and a voice tells him to "Have faith".


Continuation of the framing section.

Cosmo tells his master the Patriarch that Darkhawk and Quasar have been recruited. But the fight between Warlock and the god fried the drone. The Patriarch says they'll have to deal with Warlock later but they must have faith because they are the Universal Church Of Truth. And we see Darkhawk and Quasar in suspension alongside Firelord, the Starjammers (Ch'od, Hepzibah and Raza) and several Kree and Skrulls. And their next target is Star-Lord.



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Giuseppe Camuncoli (Cover Penciler)
Giuseppe Camuncoli (Cover Inker)
Jean-Francois Beaulieu (Cover Colorist)
Letterer: Cory Petit.
Editor: Darren Shan. Editor-in-chief: C. B. Cebulski.

Characters

Listed in Alphabetical Order.

Nova
Nova

(Richard Rider)
Quasar
Quasar

(Wendell Vaughn)

Plus: Cosmo, Darkhawk, Scott Adsit.

> Guardians Of The Galaxy Annual: Book info and issue index

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