Just in time for that Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, the final installment of the blockbuster trilogy that put Kiiiiinda on the comics map in the first place, the Guardians of the Galaxy have a brand new comic in which the team…is very different from their movie incarnations. Frankly, I admire the chutzpah.
It’s been about two years since the Guardians had their own Marvel Comic series, and this new series, written by Jackson Lanzing and Collin Kelly with art by Kev Walker, leans towards the mystery of their very changed circumstances – especially Groot’s.
What turned Groot into a force of interstellar malice, a swarm of roots and branches making disastrous visits to planet after planet, roots and branches looking for anything and anyone to take root in?
What else is happening in the pages of our favorite comics? We’ll tell you. Welcome to Monday Funnies, Polygon’s weekly list of the books our comics editor liked last week. It’s part society pages about superhero lives, part reading advice, part “check out this cool art.” There may be some spoilers. There may not be enough context. But there will be great comics. (And if you missed the latest edition, read this.)
Guardians of the Galaxy #1
Image: Collin Kelly, Jackson Lanzing, Kev Walker/Marvel Comics
Guardians of the Universe #1 puts that question front and center, as we pick up a Guardians team that movie fans would know by name – Peter Quill, Gamora, Nebula, Mantis and Drax (Groot’s friend Rocket conspicuously absent) – in medias res. Dressed up as a space western, they try to convince a distant space city to board their ship and evacuate before the worst happens.
The worst is “big fall”, the arrival of a giant ball of unkempt plant material with a face, and it wants to make everyone big. Our team barely makes it out of the world alive, and with only half the people they tried to save – and it looks like they’ve been half a step ahead of Groot for some time. But as to how their big tree friend ended up in this state, that’s a story Lanzing, Kelly and Walker plan to reveal in future issues.
Eight Billion Ghosts #8
Image: Charles Soule, Ryan Browne/Image Comics
Eight billion minds – the comic about what happens in the first eight seconds, minutes, days, etc. after each person on Earth is given their own personal one-wish spirit – closed last week. On that sprawling timeline, Charles Soule and Ryan Browne go through just about every permutation you could get if every human on Earth were granted one irreversible wish at the same time. But EBG never gets so caught up in its own thought experiment that it forgets to be about people, and it never gets so caught up in its characters that it forgets to be about how some people would wish for the utterly absurd.
If you haven’t read, the trade collection hits the shelves in July. This is a good one.
Star Wars: Return of the Jedi – Ewoks #1
Image: Alyssa Wong, Caspar Wijngaard/Marvel Comics, Lucasfilm
If you read one Star Wars comic this month, get it Star Wars: Return of the Jedi – Ewoks #1, because despite that blatant name, it’s a three-story anthology of wordless stories told by a group of Ewoks sitting around a campfire. You have a fable for all ages, a story about monsters in the forest and a little Ewok who wanted to go to space. Sweet and simple, one and done. These are the good things in life.