Brian Bendis, Art Adams Launch Marvel's "Guardians Team-Up"

[Pat Thomas]

Let me guess the team up right there.

"Woah! You guys are aliens"
"Yep"
Rocket says something snarky
Groot says I am Groot and Kamala questions it
Villain appears,
They beat it
They go their separate ways.

I would be more optimistic if these things don't play out the same way each time. Marvel needs to stop with the constant mashing of heroes together and get franchises back to building themselves up again. Do you think Spider-Man would have caught on if all he did was hang out with the Avengers and X-men? No! They built his mythos! And that's what's wrong with the current GOTG book! Instead of building the GOTG with their own villains and plotlines, it has Iron Man, Carol Danvers and Venom tag along! The GOTG have no story of their own as they become second fiddles to the X-Men in their own book!

This is just killing me with Marvel! If you're gonna team up, at least use faces we haven't seen in a while! But having the same tired characters meet up over and over is going to run the well dry, and that's the same fate Kamala risks if she's just use for team ups that happen the same way each time!

One of the things Marvel Team Up (the first volume) did was occasionally bring in characters who had been in limbo forever. Of course, the majority of stories were with other
"name" characters, but just about anybody was a possibility if the author could make a viable excuse for them showing up. You're looking at things like a total pessimist since
you started posting here again. Do you even realize that? Every post of yours is negative. Are you really that unhappy? Try using the "glass is half full" analogy some, and maybe
you will start to see things a little differently.

[Anduinel]

My problem is this...why have Bendis write BOTH GotG books? So many talented creators deserving of an opportunity on Marvel's hottest property and they give it to Bendis? Ugh!

Big Two team-up and anthology books haven't had a lot of success in the modern market. If Marvel wants this title to last more than a year, a high-profile creative team is probably the strongest boost they could give it. I've got zero interest, but the sales charts say that Bendis moves books, so...*shrug*

[Derek Metaltron]

Bring on the Shadowcat and Lockheed team-up!

Ditto, Rocket and Lockheed together would be awesome. And Star Lord with Kitty for logical reasons. Maybe Star Lord and Gambit, Gamora with the female Thor, Drax and Hulk, Rocket and Howard the Duck and they're clearly suggesting a Groot/Man Thing team up with that cover.

[Zero Hunter]

I already dropped the main Guardians book because Bendis doing cosmic characters is about as exciting as watching paint dry. He sucked every little bit of fun of the characters and turned in some of the most generic strories he ever has written.. I actually would rather see Humphries doing the main Guardians book and just have Bendis doing the team up book.

[Superkreep]

Also, isn't the actually GOTG book a team up?

I mean, Iron Man, Carol Danvers, Venom, Angela, the X-men....

Like, how is this premise different at all?

THIS x1000000!
I've been saying this since the series launched.
The Main GotG book has the actual STARS of the series play back up to their special guests.
Little to no development for the actual GotG members just new perspectives for Tony Stark, Angela, Carol Danvers, Jeen Grey, Tyke, and Agent Venom...
the NON-Guardians who have nothing to do with them and never feel like they belong in the book from start to finish.
But Hey at least the guest stars get to learn about how "cool" space is.

It feels like like Marvel heard the criticisms and finally told Bendys they'll give him a Team-up book if he wants to keep writing more Avengers/ X-men stuff "in space" so badly...he just still has to include the GotG in there somewhere. Maybe now the main GotG book will actually focus on actual cosmic stuff like it was always meant to.

One good thing about this team up book is that Bendys will only be onboard for the opening arc after that maybe we'll get to see far better creators offer their spin on the title. Starlin (with Ron Lim on Pencils would OWN), Lanning, Abnett, Ewing, Remender, pretty much everyone else at Marvel really, and as hit and miss as Humphries can be I consider him better suited to the GotG universe overall than Bendys has been. My hope is that if any other writer proves to be strong enough to handle these characters then it will push Marvel to pull Bendys off the main book (which he never really wanted in the first place so I don't blame him 100% for the awful quality of the series).

One other thing of note here that proves just how WRONG Bendys is when it comes to the direction of the GotG: "Part of my uber-plan was to have the Guardians be more a part of the Marvel Universe and not off doing their own thing,"
That's the exact OPPOSITE of why Cosmic Marvel worked so well in the first place, the fact that they were off doing their own thing is why these characters had a chance to shine. They weren't playing second fiddle to Iron Man, Spidey, or Cap they took care of business all on their own. All he's done is take that AWAY from them and squeezed them into events like Infinity where instead of them taking point on something they would be experts on they played butlers to the Avengers for about 2 pages of inconsequential storytelling....these guys USED to stop Galaxy-wide wars from wiping out all there is and would prevent rips in the fabric of space-time from allowing other dimensional invaders from consuming everything. They used to be a super HIGH stakes team. Now all they worry about is waiting for something to happen to the most over protected planet in the cosmos...how "cool" is that?

Luckily the GotG film's director James Gunn sees things very differently from Bendys. Where is Bednys is all about giving us as little of the GotG as possible Gunn is all about keeping the GotG front and center: “I think it’s really about the Guardians and what they are doing. We’re not subservient to the Avengers. Guardians 2 is not a movie that’s made to move toward Infinity War. It’s something that’s made to move toward future cosmic movies, so I don’t feel that that is something that affects me that much.”

That's about as night and day as you can get between the two.
Gets me excited for the GotG movies but makes me face-palm at the GotG comics.
One approach made over 700 million and has won over both fans and critics the world over, the other approach requires constant sales stunts and gimmicks to just barely crack the top 20 in monthly sales and literally gets NO praise from any one other then obviously MU sponsored websites >cough*ign*cough<.

Who do you think is right?

[PaxHouse]

Except Angela vanished without explanation and Venom is now EEEEEVIIIIIILLLL!!!!

Actually, Angela's disappearance was more or less explained within the ORIGINAL SIN: THOR & LOKI Miniseries.

........As for Venom.....it's the symbiote that's "evil", since it tends to corrupts (most of the time) the host wearing the suit.

[Winterboy]

I want to see a Gamora/Black Widow team-up ASAP.

[neonrideraryeh]

I think it's cool that Guardians has become a big brand like how Avengers and X-Men have. Most books where either A or X so it's cool to have a third category be just as big.

They even named the movie after his awful Age Of Ultron event, when they thought the crossover would be an automatic hit. Once it was named and the event turned out to be a turd, though, I guess there was no turning back.

Just because the event wasn't that good, doesn't mean the title is bad. The title is still a good title for a movie.

[Songbird/Diamondback]

I think it's cool that Guardians has become a big brand like how Avengers and X-Men have. Most books where either A or X so it's cool to have a third category be just as big.


Just because the event wasn't that good, doesn't mean the title is bad. The title is still a good title for a movie.

I think they need to make GOTG it's own franchise more though. They made it too reliant on the other heroes that it can't sustain itself as a property.

[Taral-DLOS]

Just because the event wasn't that good, doesn't mean the title is bad. The title is still a good title for a movie.

Also, movie titles can be changed really really easily, even well into production (and I don't think the movie was very far into production when the Age of Ultron book came out). Star Wars Episode VI was called "Revenge of the Jedi" until only six months before the movie came out, when it was changed to "Return of the Jedi." Working titles are common in most media, no?

As for this book: I'm interested. While I don't mind team-ups, I'm not a huge fan of books where one issue is two or more separate standalone stories, but if the stories are good and well executed, then I'll check it out. Maybe preorder the first few issues and see what happens.

[Ceebiro]

Big Two team-up and anthology books haven't had a lot of success in the modern market. If Marvel wants this title to last more than a year, a high-profile creative team is probably the strongest boost they could give it. I've got zero interest, but the sales charts say that Bendis moves books, so...*shrug*

I wouldn't say Bendis moves books. He gets books with GREAT artists and big properties. Now that's not enough to maintain the sales his books get (Ultimate Spider-man is proof of that, as was Moon Knight), but we all know that X-Men fans are diehard especially when it comes to buying books that matter.

The thing is, when you have an artist of Art Adams caliber, you have the perfect opportunity to promote a less notable writer that's at least as good as (and most likely better than) Bendis is at telling a story.

[Ptrvc]

I think they need to make GOTG it's own franchise more though. They made it too reliant on the other heroes that it can't sustain itself as a property.

I enjoyed the movie.

Push them to hard, and I will start to hate them.

Just let them grow naturally.

Spiderman, Hulk, Wolverine, Iron Man, the Avengers, the X-Men, ETC. all became popular because they struck a chord with so many people, not because they got some mass marketing push to shove them in everybody's face.

[Ceebiro]

Interesting.

This book may in fact have rotating teams in the long-run, which isn't bad but raises the question of quality control.

[JamJams]

So does this mean that the main book is no longer going to have a rotating Avenger joining the team along with no more crossovers arcs with the X-Men? Otherwise I'm not sure why the book needs to exist because the main book already GotG-Team Up.

Also I see their outfits are the movie versions and not the ones in the comic, so I wonder if that will that be a change that also carries over to the main comic.

[Diamond]

I respectfully disagree. Art Adams was born to draw Rocket and Groot.

I agree, but I whish the story were written by someone else. I love Bendis' work in Ultimate Spider-Man, his Icon books, Daredevil, Alias, etc. but his run Guardians has been... underwhelming, to say the least.