Andy LanningCritiques

The beginning of 'yet another superheroes must rally to save the universe' story. But it does a good job of turning a few conventions on their head, while holding onto most of them. I love the Earth-girl, Cammi: "She says out loud stuff most people just think." -- Nova

Looks like this sets up a few plots that will be in the movie. There certainly are lots of interesting characters doing lots of interesting things. I only understood about 60% of it.

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I think this would've been way better if I knew any of the characters other than Pete Wisdom and Captain Britain before reading it. I was also disappointed by the lack of

Wolverine story was meh, but the New Mutants were delightful. At one point Warlock becomes a front loader with a frying pan for... reasons?

I just don't have anything nice to say about the story or art. It's honestly a book you could and probably should avoid.

Nick Roche's alternative covers are nice.

I would probably enjoy these more if I could figure out what order to read them in. I still appreciated the humor and great artwork.

Cape may

First. 2nd and last story were good. The rest was just filler

Geoff Johns writes good stories and this is no exception. The artwork is sharp and the inking is very well done. A good story with good art.

Access a version of the below that includes illustrations on my blog.

This is sort of a Doctor Who spin-off: the Sleeze Brothers, shady P.I.s, were introduced in Follow That TARDIS!, a DWM strip collected in A Cold Day in Hell! At the time I read the original strip, I wrote, "The Sleeze Brothers went on to have their own comic series from Marvel. The Tardis wiki doesn't count it as part of the Doctor Who
universe, but who knows why. [...] You can get it pretty cheap on the secondary
market, but I am not sure I am motivated to do so..." And yet, I was! I am not sure if I could explain why, except that I found something charming and uniquely Marvel UK-ish about the whole thing. The pastiche-heavy future world of these strips struck me as being very much of a piece with Russell T Davies's "New Earth" setting, and thus something that fit into the Doctor Who universe in spirit, if not in continuity. (Though, having read them all now, they totally could be part of the Doctor Who universe.)

This contains six single-issue stories, plus an eight-page prologue establishing how the Sleeze Brothers—formerly minor criminals—became private investigators. If you read interviews about this series, it's often stated that despite the fact that though it seems like a Blues Brothers rip-off, it's really not; this is totally belied by this story, which opens just like the film, with El Ape Sleeze (or "El'ape" in some of the stories) meeting his brother Deadbeat after he's released from the penitentiary, following by a gratuitously destructive car chase. So who knows.

The six stories here are fine. None are works of genius, though by the end of the volume, I found there was a certain weird charm. Blues Brothers may have been a starting point, but it was never this weird. They get involved in gang wars, in attempts to use holotelevision to brainwash the city, in attempted presidential assassinations, in Clueesque murder mystery dinners, in behind-the-scenes shenanigans at award shows, in intergalactic peace conferences. Most of the time, they are almost gleefully unaware of the stories unfolding around them, not understanding why anything has actually happened

I wouldn't say I loved any of these stories, but there was only one I didn't like, the presidential assassination one, which seemed to have little panel time for the ostensible main characters, and was too much on the convoluted side. (I think the cases should be beyond their understanding, but not mine!) Most of the time, I was enjoying the inane details and strange pastiche that makes up their universe. I mean, it's not high art, but it's so completely itself that I couldn't help but be charmed by it.

As you watch the Sleeze Brothers going up against a two-headed pig police sergeant, crawling through sewers, ending up in an Alien pastiche, satirizing the sexual intrigues of the Kennedy administration, revealing the killer is a parasitic life-form living on his brother's back, encountering an army of ninja cats, it's clear that no one made this comic book to appeal to a preexisting trend or perceived gap in the market. No one here was out to make a quick buck, because this is not the comic that could make anyone one. This exists because John Carnell and Andy Lanning wanted it to exist, and because they loved it. And I think that comes through at its best moments.

Marvel UK: « Previous in sequence | Next in sequence »

Astonishing. First issues of the first volume of this arc made me quit reading the Legion after 25 years. Glad I finally finished both volumes as they’re better than expected.

Still not the optimistic & hopeful future I want with my LSH (at least not until the end) but a good story with intriguing takes on the characters

Alas, making a favorite character & morphing him into villainy, while well done & understandable, saddened me a lot.

3.5⭐️

While this does act as a bit of a prelude to the movie, overall, it falls flat. The art is serviceable, the storylines shockingly boring, considering what Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning have done in the past.

In fact, though it also showed how far comics have come in 45 years, the more interesting reads were the backup issues that introduced the individual members of the Guardians.

Put it this way: if you're looking for some great secret that deepens your understanding of the movie, these aren't the droids you're looking for. However, if you want some weird first appearances of each of the members (with the exception of Star Lord, a character who has had his origin rewritten way too many times), then this is a fun book.

So this didn't blow me away and I'm not a huge fan of the "doing great evil for a good cause" plot. It was really dark and I liked that. I was glad they didn't have a "and everything went back to the way it was before the event" kind of ending. I knew the Joker would show up eventually and when he did it was great.½

Excellent origin story for this GotG team. I say this team because I think it is a different team to the Bendis run. I don't know anymore, Marvel comic book histories have become so convoluted and confusing. Anyway, these days rather than try to fit a story into past events and storylines, I tend to take every new line with a clean slate. New writers and artists bring something different to each new run.
Enough about my comic book philosophy.
This was a cracking collection. The team differs from the Bendis run (although Groot is still in a pot) but I like the new additions. I'm curious to know who Major Victory is (but I want to be surprised so I'm not going to wiki it) and why he has Captain America's shield. The story has multiple threads which didn't become confused. There is some Secret Invasion crossover but I've only read the Deadpool lines in the Secret Invasion storyline and I didn't see any need to have read anymore to read the comics in this collection.
Overall a fun and funny read.