Guardians of the Galaxy #3

Jun 2013

Brian Michael Bendis, Steve McNiven

Story Name:

(no title given)

Synopsis

Guardians of the Galaxy #3 synopsis by Rob Johnson

Rating:

King J-son of Spartax receives word that, as per his plan, his son Peter Quill/Starlord has been arrested along with the other Guardians of the Galaxy. The Guardians had been led to break a quarantine round Earth in order to save the planet from Badoon attack. J-son is surprised to hear that Iron Man is with them.

In the arresting spacecraft the Guardians (Starlord, Drax, Gamora and Rocket Racoon) have been placed in stasis tubes. As the Spartax guards remove his armour Tony Stark tries to send a distress call to the Avengers. But soon he is in a stasis tube too.

The Guardians own ship is being searched for anything that might be a weapon. (Both craft are still in the Solar System.) The searchers know that Gamora is the daughter of Thanos, and they wonder if her father will come after them. One of the objects they examine is a fast-growing sapling in a tub.

Meanwhile J-son has reconvened the galactic council (Annihilus, a Brood queen, Freyja of Asgard, Gladiator of the Shi'ar, the Kree Supreme Intelligence and Y-gaaar the Badoon) from #2. He berates Y-gaaar for the Badoon attack on Earth, and the enraged Badoon tries to attack him. But they're all holograms so it's pointless. Y'gaaar denies the charge and says he only speaks for the Brotherhood of Badoon. There is also a Sisterhood.

Gladiator points out that Prince Peter and the Guardians also broke the rules. J-son counters that he has them under arrest.

The Supreme Intelligence offers to sort out the Brotherhood and Sisterhood of Badoon problem. And J-son's hologram leaves the council.

The rest of the council don't trust J-son. They think he's playing a deeper game.

Back on the Spartax warship everything has been brought aboard from the Guardians' ship, to the same room as the stasis tubes. The guards wonder if they've got all the Guardians. They seem to remember a Kaliklakian, a talking dog and a woodland creature being on the team.

They obviously brought the twig-in-a-pot aboard because they are suddenly attacked by the 'woodland creature' in the shape of the walking tree that keeps shouting his catch-phrase "I am Groot". After he has disposed of the guards, Groot figures out how to free his comrades. They quickly arm themselves. Stark's armour is too damaged to put back together, so he just takes a big gun.

They blast their way through loads more troopers until they make it to the control room. Tony gets them to check that Earth is OK, and there are no more alien spaceships around.

Then Starlord broadcasts a message to all Spartax ships, including his father's flagship. The Prince briefly describes what has been happening, and sows the seeds of distrust of King J-son among the warriors of Spartax.

Review / Commentaries

Guardians of the Galaxy #3 Review by Rob Johnson (June 16, 2013)

This series insists on disabling or removing Iron Man's armour, presumably to emphasise the real stars of the show. But a similar thing is happening in the current space-based run in IM's own title. And come to think of it he was in that state in a large fraction of Matt Fraction's era as well. Gamora is only the *adopted* daughter of Thanos. She's the last of the Zen Whoberi, a race killed by the Badoon (at least in the current reality). The Spartax troops refer to the Guardians as each being the only one of their kind. As far as I know Gamora is the only one to whom that description truly applies. The Brotherhood of Badoon all seemed to be males, so in early Defenders Steve Gerber invented the Sisterhood of Badoon of females who lived on a different planet from the males. They were presented as peace-loving in contrast to the warlike males. However in the Universal Inhumans storyline in Fantastic Four the Badoon were jointly led by a queen. But this may have only been a special subset of the Badoon, the Badoon equivalent of the Inhumans. Be that as it may, the Badoon discussed here are still separated by gender, but now the Sisterhood may be equally warlike. The suggestion here is that the Badoon attacking Earth in the last 2 issues were females. Looking back I see that the Badoon in #2 may indeed have been of the Sisterhood. However the Badoon in #1 claimed to be Brotherhood. Also, last issue I thought J-son and Y-gaaar were in cahoots, and Y-gaaar sent Badoon to Earth on J-son's instructions. This time it seems instead that J-son invited them to the council because he could trust them to be untrustworthy, and go where the council forbade them. But either way the plan can't actually have worked if it was the Sisterhood who turned up, and the male and female Badoon are still at odds. The ex-members of the Guardians that the Spartax recall are Bug the Kaliklakian and Cosmo the talking dog.

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