Guardians of the Galaxy comics

So, thought I'd check out the 2008 series since the movie's coming up and I wanted to do my homework. Going in, what should I know? The plot summary on Marvel Wiki is degenerating into gibberish for me.

Yeah, the wiki is not all that good if you go without any frame of reference. Okay, first don't try to read the whole article. Focus on what is important. This is usually the first few paragraphs (for the general idea/origins) and the last few (current status). In the Guardians case I believe all you need to know, before starting the following:

First paragraph on the article, edited to remove meaningless stuff. It is the basic premises, nothing else is necessary, I think. Everything else is covered on the series itself or its sequel. Sure, the heroes themselves have their own complicated background as well, but those should be explained in story if relevant.

That said, I think I made a mistake when I suggested you that wiki in the other thread. The idea was for was for you to check out specific stuff that the book don't clarify, if you got curious, not to search for synopses. For example, if the Shi'ar got name dropped but not explained, you could go there to know more if you want. Or you could ignore if continue as well as they probably shouldn't be much relevant. I suggested it to serve as a trivia guide, so to speak.

But even then I think it was not a terribly good idea. The wiki is very complete (lack of synopsis aside) but it is always over detailed. There is no introductory paragraph in most articles, so it is not all that terribly. My bad.

So, new idea. If you want a basic synopses, to get an idea of what a book is about. Try the wiki were are on. This is half of what TV Tropes is about, after all. Otherwise, check Wikipedia. And for the "trivia guide", search first in Wikipedia. If it is something major in story there is a decent change to having an article there^note they have an article on the Shi'ar, for example and they are more user friendly. Only if that fails you go to Marvel Wiki.

edited 28th May '14 11:02:42 PM by Heatth

The problem with our page on it is that IMO there's too little explanation of the plot. I also have the hardest time taking anything and boiling it down to its essence.

the basic plot of the 2008 series was starlord gathers a group together to be a team of heroes to protect space, and their reactions and interference in the various cosmic events going on

But as far I can remember, that is the all the plot. Starlord reunites a bunch of different heroes, together they fight galactic danger. Pretty much each arc have its own story, so the overall plot is actually very simple.

This kind of stuff is common with super heroes. The Avengers usually don't have a major overarching thing going on, for example. They are just the Earth Mightiest Heroes and the solve problems that endanger Earth as they come. Sometimes said stories takes months if not years to be resolved, but overall it return to the status quo after everything is done.

I think part of my problem is I don't know what to filter out in order to leave behind only the basic stuff that I should know. Every comic ever seems to hit me with 14,000 things at once and I'm like "okay, what's relevant here?"

Let me see if I can summarize things for you:

Marvel Cosmic, as it exists today, started with Annihilation - I didn't read this series, but as I understand it the jist of things is that Annihilus, the Fantastic 4 evil flying bug villain from the Negative Zone, invades the universe to destroy it. Lots of destruction happens, the entire Nova Corps aside from Richard Rider (the classic, human incarnation of the character that people are probably most familiar with), Galactus is captured and used as a weapon, and Thanos teams up with Annihilus because it's causing a lot of death and he things that's what Death (the character) wants. Ultimately, Thanos turns on Annihilus to free Galactus, but in the process gets killed when Drax the Destroyer punches him through the gut. Then ultimately, the invasion dies when Nova pulls Annihilus inside out (literally).

Next came Annihilation: Conquest, which follows up on Annihilation and lays the seeds for the comics that would drive Marvel Cosmic for the next couple years or so. Here, the Phalanx - a bunch of robot aliens that like to assimilate people and stuff - launch an invasion of Kree Space by taking advantage of the chaos caused by Annihilus. They create an energy shield around Kree space to keep people out and take over pretty easily, mostly leaving pockets of resistance. They're also lead by a version of Ultron who they see as a father figure.

Here, there's the Annihilation Conquest Star-Lord mini-series which is basically a prelude to and leads into the Guardians of the Galaxy series that would follow. It included Star-Lord himself, Rocket Raccoon, and Groot. There's some other characters as well, but none from the movies that are part of the team. This is also the comic that establishes the now classic Rocket Raccoon and Groot duo dynamic, though Groot doesn't have his 'I am Groot' schitck here yet.

There's also the Nova series that begins here, too, which includes both Gamora and Drax as major players early on - those are the other two characters who are part of the team from the movie. It also introduces the location of Knowhere and its security chief, Cosmo the telepathic cosmonaut dog.

Following the defeat of Annihilation Conquest and the defeat of Ultron, this is where the 2008 series begins - following both Annihilation and Annihilation Conquest, the fabric of the universe is in tough shape. The Nova Corps are still down to just one member, Richard Rider, who doesn't want to rebuild them too quickly. So, in order to defend the universe and prevent the next major event, Peter Quill - Star-Lord puts together a proactive team to go out and stop bad stuff from happening before it begins.

Out of the gate, this team consists of him, Rocket Raccoon, Groot (who's just a little tree living in a pot at this point because his larger body 'died' turing Conquest), Drax, Gamora, Mantis (not part of the movie team), Quasar (Phyla-Vell version, not part of the movie team), and Adam Warlock (not part of the movie team). Major Victory (not part of the movie team) shows up in the second issue and joins soon after - notably, he's the exact same character from the original Guardians of the Galaxy run, complete with carrying around Captain America's shield. This is the run of the comics that the movie is going to be taking its cues from if you want to know where to start without reading the stuff surrounding the two Annihilation cosmic events.

So based on that, what else you need to get things sorted out?

edited 5th Jun '14 8:21:50 AM by TheSpaceJawa

You mean besides about fifteen years to read the eleventy billion other comics tied into this, plus another few hours to untangle what you just posted?

Let me see if I can make it simpler.

Aliens started a galactic war. A bunch of heroes stopped them. Other aliens took over another group of aliens. Heroes stopped them. Some of those heroes joined together as the Guardians of the Galaxy. The Guardians fought more alien threats here and there, including getting involved in another galactic war that tore a hole in space. The hole allowed another dimension to invade, and the Guardians had to use Thanos to stop it.

There you go. The quick-and-easy version.

If you're going to read the 2008 Got G series, you will probably want to read a lot of the other cosmic titles, simply because there was so much synergy between them. If you're not really interested in that, read the Got G series, make sure to read the recaps, and then read The Thanos Imperative, since it ties it all up.

No one here has an encyclopedic memory of comic stories, so if you don't ask specific things there's not a whole lot we can do for you.

So far my biggest problem seems to be remembering who's who since there are like 400 characters. Who's Richie?

He's Nova. Sorta like a space cop.

Richard Rider aka Dick Rider is a human Nova Centurion, the last Nova Corpsman left

Note to self: don't try reading this stuff when I'm tired.

If you're just looking for the essentials, I recommend reading the following:

• Start with the Annihilation: Conquest prelude issue and the Annihilation: Conquest Star-Lord mini series tie-in, followed by the Annihilation: Conquest miniseries itself.
• Then you should have most of what you need to read the Guardians Of The Galaxy series proper.
• In the middle of there will be the War Of Kings miniseries which intersects and directly interacts with the Got G series as it goes on.
• Then, after the series ends, there will be the Thanos Imperative miniseries which basically brings an end to the Dn A era of Marvel Cosmic, and it's a pretty big ending, too. Great read, in my opinion, and bucks the trend of most marvel event stories these days by being actually worth reading and not petering out at the end and leaving a bad taste in the mouth based on how it concludes.

Anyone able to back me up and tell me if I'm forgetting anything?

If it helps, the above is pretty much how I went into it, and I didn't even read Annihilation Conquest. Anything I didn't understand as I read the above series and tie-ins was pretty easily filled in by doing an internet search of some kind.

edited 8th Jun '14 12:05:23 PM by TheSpaceJawa

I think I actually started with Reign of Kings. I'm an X-Men fan, so I read the story with Vulcan taking over the Shi'ar Empire, and continued with the cosmic stuff from there.