REVIEW: The Legendary Star-Lord, #6

[CBR News]

In "Legendary Star-Lord" #6, writer Sam Humphries and artist Paco Medina finally send Peter Quill and Kitty Pryde on a date, and chaos ensues.


Full review here.

[RobertoDaCosta]

not a bad book.. i just don't ship the Kitty/Quill relationship
so, i didn't care a lot for it.

[Superkreep]

Sorry for the long read below but this thread has been empty for a while now so I know there's plenty of room for it.
This is MY take on Legendary Star Lord #6 and really the series as a whole:

If you go back a few months you'll find I posted that I was actually enjoying this book and liked the fact that it had a better overall direction and focus than the main GotG title did. Whereas that book was all about showcasing special guest stars and being a gimmicky "GotG Team up" book (which is funny as hell considering recent announcements of a new title called "GotG Team Up") LSL seemed to have an actual mission statement; Quill was on a quest to power up so he can go after Thanos…not a very smart thing to do but if he’s all emotional then I guess I can forgive the crappy plan. There were a few hiccups here and there, Humphries slid into some really tired and cliché moments, (ie: Peter getting captured over and over again, and all the REALLY forced Kitty Pryde stuff.) But I dealt with it because at least THIS Star Lord was not just spinning his wheels and actually had some focus, he was interacting with new characters and building his own world rather than bumming around the Avengers playground like in Bendys’ GotG. I was excited about that, it seemed that after about a year of what CBR described as the “place holder” Peter Quill, (an empty suit of a team leader that we should all be in awe of but hasn’t done squat lately to merit that sort of attention) we would finally have a different voice on a character I once really loved reading.

In the earlier LSL issues it seemed like Humphries’ Star Lord actually DID stuff, he wasn’t waiting around at Space Starbucks to yell at his “Daddy” or just sit there wondering if some lame-ass earth girl likes him…he was still getting captured by the generic bounty hunter of the week for the 3oth time in as many issues but at least there was forward momentum leading toward this battle with Thanos. Like I said, he was building his own world AWAY from the terrible Bendys’ interpretation. So the Thanos battle takes place, and it’s rendered beautifully. The actual conflict was gritty and just a fun comic book punch fest. The dialogue from Quill felt strong but was a little lacking, they were clearly dancing around the elephant in the room and trying not to spoil the ending of GotG#20 in regards to what happened in the Cancerverse….which in the end turned out to NOT to spoil anything because the GotG issue that reveled the fate of his best bud Nova and how they all got out of the Cancerverse actually contradicted the action that took place in LSL,( ie : What firkin deal with Thanos?! There WAS no deal shown there!)

Jump ahead to this issue, where all of that forward momentum is gone and all we have left is the awful clichéd Bendys Star Lord moments. He’s still obsessed with Kitty “Put her back in that Space bullet already” Pryde and is lacking any other focus and he just sits around waiting to get captured, again…which he DID get captured AGAIN! It was old within the 1st 3 issues of Bendys’ GotG and Humphries does it again HERE?!!! Star Lord literally goes MAYBE 2 issues MAX before getting captured in whatever book he’s in, that’s his super power apparently. How did the reviewer miss this?! This is TERRIBLE creatively deprived storytelling. How the heck did this get a pass? Humphries took 2 steps forward and 3 steps back.

To top it all off the one remaining mystery, the identity of the new villain Mr. Knife was revealed and it was absolutely AWFUL. Most of us were figuring this could be some cool reveal like maybe a long forgotten ally turned enemy of Peter Quill’s, no he turns out to be the SAME BORING FRIKIN’ character who has been kidnapping Peter Quill since the first arc of GotG. This guy just FINALLY went away for about 3 issues after being the focus of several other equally bad “NU cosmic books” and he’s the big reveal?! We joked right here on these forums about how stupid that reveal would be, it was considered SO danm obvious/ done to death and lacking any sort of potential that we all immediately dismissed it. Yet THIS is the reality of this series now…the worst possible choice Humphries could have made and he made it. This Mr.Knife is supposed to be the “big Bad” of the upcoming Black Vortex event (which is rendered obsolete by Secret Wars anyway) so any and all momentum he could have brought into that is gone now by choosing to double down on yet another of the WORST aspects of Bendys GotG run. This character is so drab and boring. Honestly, the whole Spartax Empire has been a bust since their return. Talk about weak and unimpressive. The Shi’Ar were impressive, The Kree were Impressive, The Skrulls were impressive, The Spartax frikin’ SUCK. There is nothing unique or interesting about them or their culture, just typical Saturday morning cartoon villains without the style that are supposed to be a big deal.

Tch a “big deal”?! Wolverine with plastic sporks in place of his claws would STOMP that entire empire in no time flat.
They have not shown us ANYTHING that proves they are a force to be feared. Quite the opposite, they turned tail and ran in Infinity and literally fell into disarray by a crappy speech by somebody they never heard of telling them how mean his daddy is.

Humphries, Duggan and even DeConnick need to take some advice from James Gunn and NOT follow in Bendys footsteps. DON’T WRITE YOUR STORIES ACCORDING TO A BUSINESS PLAN!
All of these writer’s seem to be writing in order to push some editorial mandate, all of them have shown some strong writing skills on other titles but now seem bogged down with pushing some kind of agenda to provide adaptable content for the MCU. They have all presented concepts within their Cosmic titles that would seemingly lead to a strong logical narrative, but then the stories seem to get hijacked and are forced to use the “new hotness” that corporate wants featured in their stories even though far better alternatives exist, but because they are not what the company wants to focus on they don’t use them and they all went the cowardly corporate route instead. The direction they are going in is SO wrong, and it shows. The MCU has already rejected what Bendys has been pushing as cosmic, J’son has officially been labeled as lame and will not be used in the films, none of these new Cosmic books were referenced by James Gunn when developing the GotG film, quite the opposite he literally guided actors AWAY from the Bendys stuff. Maybe the comics should take the hint and follow suite, stay away from ANY of this “nu BMB cosmic” don't have the GotG just serve as a fire alarm to the Avengers. Let them stand apart from the others like they used to when they were great, when they were worth reading, let them be different. For those who care about numbers above all else just remember that over 700 million dollars has proven it's the right way to go.