An overstuffed mash-up of everything you could possibly think of.

The inaugural run of Guardians of the Galaxy started out better than it finished. It started out with a pretty simple premise, and then got more complicated as it went on, when Abnett and Lanning started throwing everything but the kitchen sink into the narrative, including of course, many instances of characters coming back from the dead, among other cliches.

I still liked this overall, especially the first half of it. The characters are likable, the dialogue is snappy, the situations operatic. But I feel like the whole COSMIC TO DO of it all got in the way of those things this time around. It wasn’t exactly confusing, but sorting out all the plot threads got to be a bit tiring, and the more stuff got shoved in towards the end, the less I cared. Also in this one, like in the last one, I think Abnett and Lanning relied a little too much on characters and places that existed elsewhere in the Marvel chronology. There’s no reason it couldn’t have been a little more self-contained, even despite the fact that all these characters came from their own stories.

They also switch artists in this one, not quite in an alternating pattern, and this had the unfortunate effect of making me prefer one over the other. The one was more like the cover, supposedly ‘realistic’, and yet I found his panels cluttered and overdramatic. The other guy had a supposedly ‘cartoony’ style, but his art worked much better for the story. It simplified it enough for the story to shine and not come over nearly so overbearing. If the whole run would have been drawn by that guy, it would have been bumped up an entire star. (Not sure if it’s Walker or Craig that I liked more.)

Overall, glad I read this, but I won’t be buying my own copy.