Best of this Week: Guardians of the Galaxy #6 (Legacy #156) – Donny Cates, Geoff Shaw, David Curiel and Cory Petit

Talk about an explosive end to the first arc, huh?

Battered and bruised from their fight with Hela and the Black Order, Quill and the rest of the Guardians are pissed off and ready for round two. With Lockjaw’s help, they teleport to Knowhere, taking the fight directly to villains.

Geoff Shaw takes this story to its absolute peak with his amazing art. Propelled by a psychic dragon construct created by Moondragon, Beta Ray Bill sends his Stormbreaker hammer into Hela, taking her out of the fight. The sight is awesome, but unfortunately the only teamwork really seen here. The dragon looks ferocious and rightfully takes Hela out, or else the fight would have been very one sided again.

Shots are far and mostly wide, showcasing the various means of attack as the Guardians tear through Thanos’ alien creatures, mostly with Gladiator shooting everything in sight with his laser eyes. Shaw makes things look grand in scale, even when things are focused on one character such as Phyla-Vell after taking Proxima Midnight out of the fight with rays from her hands.

Things get even more tense as Peter confronts Cosmic Ghost Rider, who betrayed the Guardians in the last issue because of Hela’s control of the dead. He falls apart as Hela’s control over him fades and it’s actually pretty sad, mostly thanks to Petit’s lettering making The Riders apology even more melancholic.

Quill catches up to Gamora, who went to stop Thanos from being resurrected, and tries to convince her against killing her Uncle Eros, aka Starfox. Starfox had been the main antagonist of this Guardians book, thinking that Thanos would use Gamora’s body to house his consciousness when it turned out to be his Brother, the only other Titan left. Gamora rationalizes that if it had indeed been her that Thanos took over and she were in Peter’s shoes, she would have killed the possessed body in an instant, stabbing Eros through the heart and preventing Thanos from being resurrected.

That one panel was absolutely beautiful, if a bit marred by the lettering covering the exit wound. Eros snaps out of his trance and looks like he’s gasping in pain. Gamora is resolute in her decision, much like she was when she killed Thanos in the beginning of Infinity Wars (2018). She apologizes to her Uncle who muses that the plot was miserably predictable. It’s heart wrenching, especially knowing how light hearted and heroic Eros was before all of this started, seeing him fall as low as he did, almost killing Gamora before the gambit was discovered.

Suddenly, Thanos’ body erupts awake, though his mind not fully intact due to the transfer not being completed. Hela returns and in her anger, fires a black hole missile at Gamora, but it gets deflected back at the Incomplete Thanos, causing him to become the center of the black hole. The Guardians escape as Hela and presumably everyone else gets sucked into the black hole.

Setting up the Death of Rocket arc at the end, I really enjoyed this issue. Not only was it action packed, it also subverted my expectations about its outcome. I absolutely thought that Thanos would come back in full force in the final pages of the story and while he may in the future, it was great to see that it won’t be a YEAR after he was killed in the first place. I had some initial bad feelings about this team of Guardians, but they meld together very well. The power of Beta Ray Bill, Phyla-Vell and Moondragon combined with the skill of Star Lord, Groot and Gamora makes for an absolutely interesting and banterful team. Also because I’m a huge Phyla-Dragon fan and I can’t wait to see more of them. High recommend!