I meant to post this last night but went to bed instead. Here is part 2:
So one of my favorite recent titles was a book called Guardians of the Galaxy by Marvel. It was written by two British writer, Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning, who I recent had the pleasure of meeting at the San Diego Comic Con. They are currently writing Resurrection Man by DC, New Mutants by Marvel and Hypernaturals by Boom! In the GotG, they had the cosmic corner of the Marvel Universe to play with. Their work on Guardians of the Galaxy was, in my opinion, especially great. It was group of very quirky characters often thrown into situations that were over there heads. Really, really good stuff and I recommend picking up the trade paperbacks (for you non-comic readers, a trade paperback is a collection of a comics- usually a story arc that goes anywhere from 5 to 12 issues.
Marvel Studios at San Diego Comic Con announced their next five movie projects, three of them being sequels to Iron Man, Thor and Captain America, one being an Ant-Man film which has been in development for a long time, and the last is the Guardians. Many fans believe that this films will tie into the post-credit ending of the Avengers which features the cosmic villain named Thanos who wants to kill eveyone and everything. The concept art is featured above.
With the release of the Avengers movie, Marvel released an in-continity book called Avengers Assemble, written by long time Avengers writer Brian Michael Bendis and starring the cast of the movie. The most recent issue, #5, featured the Guardians. Except they weren't. Two of the members of the team were dead when last seen, and none of the characters sounded like themselves. So while it is the Guardians, a team I love and characters that I love, who appeared, it really wasn't. It was what seemed to be Bendis' version after reading a memo of the different characters but not actually reading any of the issues of GotG by Abnett and Lanning.
I don't want you to think I don't like Bendis. I do. I like a lot of writers. But as a fan, and an aspiring writer, I have to say, that not every writer can or should write every character. Lots of writers have, recently brought back characters that haven't been used in a long time. For example, Bendis use of Spider-Woman, or Paul Cornell's writing of the Black Knight are great examples of bringing a character back to the fore-front who haven't used in any substantial way in over a decade. And when you bring a character back, it gives you lee-way to write a character in a more jarring or different way than before. However, at times, some writers brings back or write a character in a way that takes a character in a new direction, that at times, does not work. When Grant Morrison wrote the X-Men, I thought his take on Magneto was interesting, but it didn't sound like Magneto. Matt Fraction writes a great Tony Stark, but his Captain America doesn't sound like Cap. And Bendis writes Spider-Man and Luke Cage in a great way, but his GotG just doesn't work.
Recently, I read an interview of Greg Rucka where he said that in his cross-over called the Omega Drive with Punisher, Daredevil and Spider-Man, he said that he gave the most of the writing of Spider-Man to Waid, cause he didn't feel comfortable writing Spider-Man. I wish more writers were like that.
So here's the thing. Marvel, if you're bringing back GotG, please don't just go with a big name writer, please go with writers who get the characters and will do interesting things with them in cool plots. I'd love it if you got Abnett and Lanning back, but even if you don't, please get writers who understand their limitations and understand the characters they are writing.
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