Guardians 3000 is a 2014 series by Marvel Comics written by Dan Abnett with cover art by Alex Ross.
A revival of the original Guardians of the Galaxy, the series features them trying to stop the Badoon, only to discover something even worse behind them.
The series only lasted about eight issues, before being cancelled at the start of Secret Wars.
Guardians 3000 provides examples of:
- All for Nothing: The series in a nutshell. The team do what they can to find out what's wrong with time, only for it all to come to nothing when the Final Incursion destroys all reality.
- Big Damn Heroes: The series reintroduces Nikki in this fashion, blowing up a number of Stark units that were... talking with the team about potential solutions.
- Boom, Headshot!: In the final issue of the series, Yondu plugs Korvac mid-monologue, telling Geena he could only do it because she'd got him going. Of course, since this is Korvac, he doesn't stay dead.
- Call-Back:
- Due to a spot of time-travel, the original team meets the modern day Guardians, and they bicker about the shared name, along with the fact that the modern team had their own version of Major Victory.
- In issue 7, the two Guardian teams trace the temporal disturbances to Forest Hills, Queens.
- Casual Time Travel: Defied when the Badoon have found ways to prevent this. The team have to find a work-around using Galactus.
- The Chosen One: The 31st century Star-Lord, like his distant progenitor, was chosen for the role.
- Cool Old Lady: Rael Rider is over two-hundred years old, and she's a Nova Centurion (the last, actually). She's also incredibly snarky.
- Cool Spaceship: The Star-Lord of the 31st has inherited his predecessor's living ship, Ship.
- Crapsack World: The Guardians 3000 version of the 30th century manages to be worse than the original. The Badoon are killing off (or have already killed off) almost every empire out there, and no-one seems to be able to stop them.
- Downer Ending: Hoo-boy. The Guardians don't save their reality, and never could. Korvac's attempts to fix everything are scuppered by Doctor Doom's actions over in New Avengers, and all reality goes down the tubes. Yay?
- Future Slang: The series is filled with it. A lot of it makes the transition through to the team's appearance in Guardians of Infinity.
- Gender Bender: Starhawk changes gender depending on the iteration, while still being fully-aware of being a different gender. He/she mentions that as confusing as it may be for everyone else, it's even weirder for him/her.
- "Groundhog Day" Loop: The first issue deals with a small one, where the team dies at the hands of the Badoon, implied to have been going on for some time.
- Hand Cannon: Geena gets one from Yondu that's several degrees more powerful than the larger gun she already had, and won't knock her on her behind to boot.
- History Repeats: There's a human named Rider, who's a Nova centurion, the last even, stuck with the Worldmind for company, once more.
- Laser-Guided Amnesia: The team have forgotten all about Nikki thanks to time falling apart at the seams.
- Last of His Kind: Rael Rider is the last Nova Corps member alive.
- Legacy Character:
- The first issue introduces the 31st century Star-Lord, Peter Quill's descendant.
- Issue #3 introduces a descendant of Richard Rider who is also a member of the Nova Corps.
- Let's You and Him Fight: Just narrowly averted by the team when they run into the Bendis-era modern day team. Afterwards, they talk about how this is what usually happens when superhero teams meet.
- The Man Behind the Man: The Badoon are being controlled by someone. It turns out to be the Stark.
- My Own Grampa: A throwaway line has the Star Lord of the 31st century discover that he's Peter Quill's ancestor, not his descendant.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Rather than launching his tech into space like in the original series, Stark creating A-Sentience, designed to become active when the Avengers died. After a thousand years, their programming's gone a bit wrong, and their solution tends to involve murdering the Guardians.
- The Guardians manage to talk the A-Sentience down momentarily, and are just about to suggest working together when Nikki bursts in shooting. A-Sentience resets to their default plan.
- Oh, Crap!: In the first issue, the fact that Starhawk doesn't know what's going on serves as a big one for all concerned.
- Planet Eater: Galactus is still around, although he's "sleeping" as he waits for reality to collapse completely and the next version to begin.
- Put on a Bus:
- The series just has Vance, Charlie, Marty and Starhawk around, with no sign of the other Guardians. Nikki reappears in issue 4, but that's about it for the rest of them.
- Aleta gets a mention by Nikki in issue 4, when she mistakes Starhawk for her (Justifiable, since they have been known to dress similarly, and Stakar at that point was female, though Stakar's hair is brown, while Aleta is blond).
- Rewrite: Despite apparently being set in the same universe as the original series, with the same characters, there are a few differences, like the Stark not being a matriarchal warrior society, and instead Tony Stark's tech gone wrong, or the team-members missing for whatever reason, or Galactus "sleeping" when previous depictions of the 30th century showed he was still very much around. Justified, since a recurring theme of the series is that time is falling apart.
- The Singularity: A-Sentience is a hive-mind of Stark Tech.
- Time Crash: The series centers around one. Reality keeps shifting, usually in ways that make the Guardians' lives worse, making allies vanish or forget they ever existed. As Galactus reveals, there's no saving the Guardian's home time because there's no time to save. Reality's dead and gone, and the Guardians are just clinging to the fragments.
- Timey-Wimey Ball: The series has another one, where Gladiator mentions having met Vance several hundred years ago, before figuring out it must be a Vance from the future.
