Gamora: Guardians of the Galaxy #3

The cover of Guardians of the Galaxy #3 is all about the introduction of Starhawk to the series, but that's not what we're talking about today. Gamora doesn't even meet Starhawk in this issue because he appears back at the Guardians' home base while Gamora and the rest of the team are off fighting the Universal Church of Truth in a Dyson Sphere.

If you don't know what the Universal Church of Truth is, don't worry. They're an old bad guy organization from Warlock comics who've somehow figured out how to convert belief into usable energy that they then use to try to take over the universe or whatever.

If you saw that episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation with Scotty, you know that a Dyson Sphere is a colossal globe built around a star to harness the star's energy. People live on the inside of the sphere facing the sun.

This particular Dyson Sphere requires energy shields to protect the inhabitants from the sun's radiation, but it doesn't really matter anymore because the Church has converted all the people into a giant blob of toxic green ooze that the Guardians now have to fight as well. Star-Lord, leader of the Guardians, comes up with a plan to destroy the green ooze by lifting the energy shield, frying the blob, and then teleporting out before the team is also incinerated.

Unfortunately, the teleporters don't work and all that's keeping the team safe is Quasar's magic powers. But even those are fading fast. The group quickly decides that someone has to go out into the intense sunlight to lower the energy shield again.

I tell you this whole story, because it sets up how - for the first time in the series - we see Gamora take point in the action.




I love Drax's confidence in her there.

Gamora does close the shield and the team is saved. Eventually, they get the teleporters working again and go home where they debrief.



I think it's interesting that Gamora's ashamed of her injured body. It would be so easy to play her as angrily defiant; challenging anyone to dare make fun of her. But like in last issue, we see a vulnerable side to Gamora. We learn that she's vain about her appearance and when her vanity is threatened, she's not so tough anymore.

She gets more and more interesting as we go, no?

Gamora: Guardians of the Galaxy #2

Gamora doesn't get much spotlight in Guardians of the Galaxy #2, but she does have one good line that's worth sharing. The issue's about finding Vance Astro in block of frozen time. I don't know how frozen time works either, but Vance is stuck in some and the Guardians rescue him from it.

If you don't know, Vance is sort of a futuristic Captain America. He carries Cap's shield and everything. Of course the coincidence between rescuing him from frozen time and the Avengers' rescuing the real Cap from an iceberg at their team's formation isn't lost on the Guardians.



Like I said last time, Adam Warlock has always bothered me with his mystic mumbo jumbo, but Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning have somehow figured out how to keep that element of him intact while still making it cool.

"Sometimes it rhymes." Heh.

Gamora has a similar reaction.



I love that line. And I love how Paul Pelletier draws her in the panel. Gamora's usually slinging her sword around or glowering at people. I'm not going to say she looks vulnerable here, but by putting her hair in her face and having her look off panel at nothing, he makes her a lot less confident. Like she's a bit unsettled by her feelings. That's really tricky to do without softening or weakening her and Pelletier pulled it off nicely.

Gamora: Guardians of the Galaxy #1

Guardians of the Galaxy is easily one of my top five favorite Marvel comics right now. (Thinking quickly, I'll fill the other spots with Captain America, Incredible Hercules, X-Men: First Class, and Wolverine: First Class.) There's a lot to like about Guardians: the steampunk design of the team leader's costume, the talking raccoon, the grumpy little treeman, the ferocious battles, the witty banter, and oh yes, the cute alien precog in the Hawaiian skirt.



One of my favorite things about it though is Gamora, a former assassin.

I've seen Gamora a few times during my years reading Marvel books. She usually showed up around Adam Warlock though, and since I never liked him much, I'd dismissed her too by association. My problem with Adam Warlock - and the rest of Marvel's pre-Annihilation cosmic stuff, frankly - is the focus on the mystical. I mean, Marvel's never referred to Adam Warlock, Silver Surfer, Thanos, and all those guys' stories as "scifi" or even "outer space adventure." It's "cosmic," with the implication being that these are huge, grand sagas meant to explore metaphysical questions about the universe and humanity's role in it. Yawn.

With Annihilation, all that has finally changed and we're getting some great space opera with some really cool characters I've only marginally been aware of until now. Adam Warlock is one of them, and though he's still this spiritual kind of character, there's far less focus on his mysticism than there is on his shooting laser blasts out of his hands. And that's all for the better, says I.

Gamora used to date (or whatever the outer space kids are calling it these days) Adam Warlock. She's not anymore though, even though both of them are now Guardians. That's cool too, because the few times I'd seen her before, her role as assassin was far subsurvient to her role as "Adam's girlfriend." Now she gets to just be herself and I love what I see.

I don't know for sure, but I get the feeling that past writers haven't really been sure what to do with Gamora. Maybe they were torn between those two roles I just mentioned. Whatever the case though, in Guardians of the Galaxy #1, writers Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning introduce Gamora as a character who's lost her way.



It's a cool way to reboot her. I don't have to know the ins and outs of her history because she's starting fresh. But knowing that she's confused and conflicted right now makes me want to know how she got to that point, so I'm immediately connected and interested in her. Drax too, to a lesser extent, but he's got a lot less personality than Gamora. Witness, for example, Gamora's reaction when Nova approaches her about joining Starlord's new team.



Abnett and Lanning are great writers (I've been a fan of theirs since discovering them on Legion Lost), so it's no surprise that they inject some humor into Gamora.



And...



There's plenty of fighting and shooting and sword-slinging in the first issue, but it all involves the entire group and Gamora doesn't get the spotlight much. It's her sense of humor and screwed up way of seeing things that makes me like her so much. I'm very curious to read her early adventures and see how much of Abnett and Lanning's take is based on previous stuff and how much is them fixing her.

I'll be writing more later about the next issues of Guardians. They're up to I think #4 and Gamora does get the opportunity to show how tough she really is. So stay tuned.