Writer Sam Humphries
Artist Javier Garron
Color Artist Antonio Fabela
Letterer VC’s Joe Caramagna
Cover by Dave Johnson
Out of Orbit, Chapter One
After wasting five issues and months, Sam Humphries gets back to writing who he writes best!
That isn’t fair, I’m sure Marvel told him that he had to spend five issues reexamining Peter Quill’s origins, even though no other All New All Different Marvel title spent five issues retelling anyone’s origins. Did Marvel want StarKat to be over? Did Bendis want it? If Bendis wanted them broken up, did he not want to deal with the heavy lifting of examining that plot in his Guardians title? Both Bendis and Humphries write a terrific Kitty Pryde so last long as both get to keep doing it, I’m okay with her being out of the relationship.
I really enjoyed Garron’s work on Secret Wars 2015’s Inferno miniseries, his Nightcrawler redesign (if that’s even the word for it, transformation might be better) and how delightfully evil Darkchylde was, he got to handle some twisted material. I”m glad he got this opportunity to do some lighter fare.
Issue opens with Pryde and Quill evoking Kitty’s classic “Xavier is a Jerk” phrase. We also begin a nine page sequence where we get both of these character’s point of view. It climaxes in an awfully fun way.
Quill is talking to Gamora, who has no sympathy for him. Pryde is talking to Rocket, who really need a buddy book! Garron does a great job of staging with these mirrored pages.
Humphries gets crazy amount of points for having Pryde be on the planet of the Kymellians, the horse race that gave Power Pack their powers.
Rocket mostly wants Pryde back as she has made game nights so much better. I want an issue of those, or at least, the ending scenes of those. I do like the tight continuity of Pryde’s complaints about the weird steam shower that they have to use on the Guardians’ ship. Grimm enjoys it.
She doesn’t want to live on the same ship as Quill but he has moved to his own ship, to avoid her.
Pryde implies that she was the one that was dumped, which surprises both Rocket and myself. I would always imagine that she just came to her senses.
Gamora is right, that Quill is the jerk in this situation.
Both Quill and Pryde evoke Taylor Swift’s “we’re never ever ever getting back together again.” Both of the other Guardians recommend the other talk to the other.
We get the highlight reel of StarKat. Quill proposing to Pryde during Black Vortex. Holographic Pryde breaking Quill out of prison during Legendary Star Lord 3 and one of their later dates (issue 6). They finished with Quill apologizing to Pryde, in snow -from Legendary Star Lord 4.
One of the Kymellians invites Pryde to the Twilight Festival but she’s exhausted. I do like her in her outfit there.
Kitty is watching James Stewart’s Oscar-winning performance in The Philadelphia Story – an amazing film! Humphries is continuing proving how big of a Katherine Hepburn fan Kitty is. She can’t sleep and decides to text Quill.
This begins a bit of a textng-athon.
This climaxes in the two of them coming together, which is a pretty sensational way of bringing the mirroring to an end. I like how both of them instantly regret doing this, which feels super real.
The two try to begin an awkward conversation, they finish an old joke –
A joke that I’ve never heard of before and had to look it up as I wasn’t sure if it was from a movie or not. Took me a second longer than I care to admit for me to get it.
Quill, proving he is the worst, really is upset that Pryde took the name “Star Lord” while he was King of Spartax. Of all of the childish shit to be upset over. I’m glad she didn’t change the moniker to something silly like “Star Lass” or some other knock off of a Legion of Superheroes name. I also don’t think she really needed to take the name either but in a very short time, she proved his superior – again.
Pryde is right that Quill abandoned his job, his team and her. He’s right that she is in fact the galaxy’s sweetheart. They both get calls and part ways.
Back on Quill’s ship, his computer Lydia, is giving him a hard time for being a colossus idiot. He gets a call to meet Tony Stark, a previous member of the Guardians – under Bendis’ tenure. Quill thinks Stark is super kewl, so they are both idiots. Stark needs Quill for a mission but not just Quill.
Tony needs two Star Lords! Pryde even looks better in that outfit than he does!
Neither one can believe the other is tagging along. How did Stark even convince her to go on this mission? Once they are gone, we see that he was really Raksor the Skrull.
http://comicbookdb.com/character_chron.php?ID=20564
Raksor has eight appearances to his credit. His first appearance was in Uncanny X-Men 137, Phoenix 1 is in my wishlist. He was part of a Fantastic Four (Annual 19) and Avengers (Annual 14) crossover. He naturally was in the Skrulls 1 one-shot in 2008, which I own and is a complete history handbook style book, so he first appeared in 1980, showed up in an issue that explains the background of the Dark Phoenix Saga and then appeared in a comic properly four years later for those two annuals. He took off for 23 years for that one shot retrospective and isn’t seen again in an official capacity until Humphries brought him back in Legendary Star Lord 5 & 6 in 2015, another seven years later but a full 30 years after his last in-story appearance. That’s some deep backlog searching and I’m all for it.
On a frog shaped space ship. The two Star Lords are bickering as this is clearly a fool’s errand. While investigating the ship, they end up fighting alternate outfits of themselves. We see classic X-uniform Kitty, Excalibur blue sweater Kitty, the classic roller skater outfit from Uncanny X-Men 149 and her green Ariel outfit.
I’ve seen these previous outfits of Quill’s before and I’m not impress.
Both Star Lords enjoy punching the Quill outfits, they have to be Skrulls, right?
Both Star Lords are knocked out and wake up strapped to chairs. Pryde lets us know that the chairs are comfy.
The Collector, who Howard the Duck recently took care of (and Kitty was part of that adventure, in a smaller role) is back hosting the galaxy’s hottest talk show – Kiss and Tell!
We’re for sure getting next issue, these are exciting times for this title!
Shadow and Flame with Magik 