Guardians of the Galaxy #18 Original Sin Tie-In Review

Writer: Brian Michael Bendis

Artist: Ed McGuinness

Inker/Colorist: Mark Farmer/Justin Ponsor

For years, we wondered what really happened during the showdown between Nova, Star-Lord and Thanos. The loss of Rich Rider during this ordeal raised many questions that Star-Lord refused to answer. Until now, Gamora has allowed Star-Lord to keep his silence. However, Gamora’s lost her patience and she’s determined to pull the truth out of Star-Lord—whether he likes it or not!

The Ups: A story that was 4 years in the making is finally being paid off and, as always, Bendis delivers. Dating back from “The Thanos Imperative” arc (where Rich Rider and Star-Lord battled Thanos in the Cancerverse, and only Star-Lord and Thanos emerged with Rider being left behind), Bendis tells the story through Star-Lord recalling the events while narrating certain points through a third-person perspective. While this first issue in the story was light on the dialogue—especially during all the action scenes—the build up created a lot of tension and gives you the feeling that you might know where the story is going, but I feel a big twist coming. What truly shined in this issue was the outstanding art work from McGuinness, Farmer, and Ponsor. McGuinness gives us a blast from the past with the character designs for Nova and Star-Lord, but making the classic outfits looks better than they ever have. The amount of detail put into the three focus characters as well as the backgrounds and effects were top-notch quality, worth bring in a major crossover event. Farmer and Ponsor make this issue the visual feast that it is with making the action scenes what they are. For a sci-fi, power-driven space fight to truly shine, it needs to have powerful color and ink work to make these characters more outstanding and majestic than they are and the whole art team accomplished the task, and then some.

The Downs: No problems here.

Overall: Sadly I wish there was more I could talk about in regards to this issue, but if you’re like me and itching to know what happened, anything I say about the story will spoil it. While Bendis didn’t tell the whole story yet, his build up (which he’s famously known for) truly paid off and I cannot wait to see the conclusion. Fan or not of the artwork, you have to appreciate what the team of McGuinness, Farmer, and Ponsor did for this issue. Calling this animation movie quality artwork doesn’t even do this justice. Go get this now!

Grade 5 of 5