Marvel preps Guardians of the Galaxy for the big screen

Rumors surrounding the next big thing from Marvel Entertainment continue to fly about like so much Kirby crackle. Readers may recall that Black Panther, Iron Fist and Dr. Strange have been mentioned, but apparently Guardians of the Galaxy is also in the cards. A creation for Marvel back in 1969 from Doom Patrol’s Arnold Drake and the dean of shadows, Gene Colan, the team is a rag tag crew of aliens from various planets gathered together to fight a common foe. Set in the far future of the Marvel Universe, the Guardians of the Galaxy was an oddball concept that took off with readers.

The colorful team of alien heroes; the stout Charlie 27, the crystalline Martinex, and archer extraordinaire Yondu Udonta were led by Vance Astrovick, an astronaut from the 21st Century forever imprisoned in his environment suit that prevented his body from decaying due to the ravages of time.

Appearing throughout the 1970’s in Avengers comics, the Guardians of the Galaxy enjoyed a moment in the spotlight during the 1990’s love affair with cosmic heroes such as Silver Surfer and Adam Warlock. When the dist settled, so did the appeal for space-faring heroes, but you can’t keep a good team down. Most recently, the writing team of Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning (AKA DNA) composed a magnificent series of cross-overs and event books that revived the cosmic superhero pantheon in ways no one ever thought possible. A cosmic threat from the negative zone shattered the Nova Corps governed with protecting various galactic empires, causing a new resistance to form in its wake. Think Star Wars mixed with the Avengers and the Dirty Dozen and you may begin to get the idea. The Guardians of the Galaxy were back and in a big way.

While the feature film version may (if it happens) focus on the original 1969 team, I doubt that the project would have even been optioned without the success of Abnett and Lanning’s work (the modern Guardians are presented below).

After Thor, Captain America and Iron Man gather in “The Avengers”, another superhero team from Marvel universe may follow in their footsteps to grace big screen. Sources recently said that Marvel is moving ahead with its plan to make a feature film version of “Guardians of the Galaxy”, gushing that it is currently in “active development.”
Before Twitch learned the latest update, Marvel studio chief Kevin Feige had uttered the possiblity of making this “Guardians of the Galaxy” film back in 2010. “I think ‘Black Panther’ and Wakanda has some amazing potential to be a feature film. ‘Dr. Strange’, as you’ve mentioned. There are some obscure titles, too, like ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’,” he said when discussing some titles which could be follow-ups to “The Avengers”.

“Guardians of the Galaxy” was originally created in 1969 and resurrected in 2008. It revolves around a group of alien beings in the 31st century who travel back in time to fight against an alien race which attempts to conquer Earth’s solar system.

Another potential Marvel film “Dr. Strange”, meanwhile, has been reported to have its script done by “Conan the Barbarian” writers, Thomas Dean Donnelly and Joshua Oppenheimer. The studio is allegedly looking for a director for the project.

Via AceShowbiz

‘Hello, hero. Are you for hire?’

After several cosmic Marvel event series, Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning have taken an unexpected turn toward street-level vigilante adventure with Heroes for Hire. Building on the vast legacy of Heroes for Hire begun with Luke Cage and Danny Rand as Power Man and Iron Fist, the new take on the concept is a mixture of Marvel Knights and Warren Ellis’ Global Frequency, using somewhat obscure third-tier characters with a gritty reputation as part of an interconnected operation directed by a coordinator from an undisclosed location.

Misty Knight plays the sultry operator and the first issue sees the Falcon, Black Widow, Moon Knight and Elektra working together to remove the threat of Atlantean drug trafficking from the streets without ever really knowing of the others’ involvement (aside from a brief moment in the opener). Fed key information by a mysterious source, Misty directs her agents on the fly, giving them just enough information to get their part of the operation accomplished but still maintaining a kind of ghostly anonymity.

It’s a kind of modern way to use several characters at once in a street hero book with unusual plot twists. Due to their previous work for both DC (on Legion) and Marvel (on everything from Nova to Guardians of the Galaxy), Abnett and Lanning are usually associated with science fiction, making this book an eyebrow raise from the start. Due to the slimming down of Marvel’s publishing catalog, there is a slot that is looking to be filled, left by the cancellation of numerous books. It has also left many characters somewhat homeless, such as Moon Knight, Black Widow, Ghost Rider, Iron Fist and the Punisher. Again, a similar experiment was helmed back in the day with Marvel Knights, a team book of street-level vigilantes who had lost their monthly books and made an uneasy ‘team’ of sorts.

Artist Brad Walker (Manhunter, Guardians of the Galaxy, Secret Six) plays his A game in this premiere issue, drafting several characters who are in some cases somewhat over-designed of late (Moon Knight). In addition to a large cast, Walker has to pilot the crew of unlikely loners through several locations, action sequences, etc and still maintain a solid pace and mood. It’s not an easy task, yet he pulls it off so well that I suspect this book to be a sell out before tomorrow afternoon.

The only real negative that I can raise is the back-up feature chronicling the incredibly rocky history that Heros for Hire has endured. If anything, it made me doubt getting invested in a new monthly book that has taken so many bad turns and bizarre plot developments (Cats mutated into people back into cats when they encounter unrequited love… plant people… etc). Right off the bat, Abnett and Lanning are mixing the traditional crime noir material with the usual trappings of the Marvel Universe and it works… but how far away can the cat people story be?

The initial Heroes for Hire was a kind of buddy movie meets comics, uniting the unlikely team-up of Luke Cage and Iron Fist. In the lesser-known iterations that followed, nearly every and any hero was drafted into service in an ever-growing group of unlikely third and in some case fourth-tier heroes. The last Heroes for Hire series was almost all ladies and made the comics press for its near-pornographic cover featuring tentacle attacks on the bound women of action. My point is that if you want to regard Heroes for Hire as a franchise in much the same vein as the X-Men or Avengers, it has a questionable history at best.

Using their current celebrity status, Abnett and Lanning chose an odd concept to champion, but in an interview with CBR.com the writing team sees no real difference here from what they accomplished with the oddball misfits of the Guardians of the Galaxy:

They’re some of Marvel’s coolest and most classic heroes – it’s a treat to be able to play with these toys! The other fun part is the eclectic nature of this book. This is a “team” that alters its composition as the mission demands, and often “hires” heroes who don’t realize what they’re part of. It’s very different and it will allow us to explore one of our favorite pastimes (which got such a good response on “Guardians of the Galaxy”) which is digging up and using great but minor characters you might have forgotten about, in unusual combinations.

In the first installment it all works very well. As a fan of Moon Knight and Falcon alone, this issue delivered the goods, making these fan favorite characters shine. Black Widow, a heroine who has seen more attention lately thanks to her big screen debut, comes off equally well and Elektra is her usual self. The heroes have retained their unique personalities and the plot is fast and intriguing enough to bring readers back for more.

The concept states that the team is filling a need in the aftermath of Shadowland, an event comic that I am very eager to forget having ever happened… and it only just ended. The streets are rife with crime and the Kingpin is building a new empire to replace his old one while Marvel Editorial takes Daredevil back to square one, a move that in the long run may be a bold decision but for right now makes me miss the days of Bendis and Brubaker.

The unexpected cliffhanger sets the stage for some surprising developments in the second issue as Misty’s shadowy informer is exposed, only to welcome more questions. What is the real purpose of the Heroes for Hire? Readers will have to stick with it to find out… I just hope it doesn’t involve alien plant creatures looking to get revenge on Iron Fist.

Thanos is reborn!

The recent rebirth of the Marvel cosmic comics started with Annihilation where readers were re-introduced to Nova (and this time that was a good thing). Annihilation: Conquest brought back Warlock and introduced a new Guardians of the Galaxy. The Inhumans, Shi’Ar and Kree empires declared intergalactic in the War of Kings which resulted in a rift in space. That rift leads to the Realm of Kings currently still hitting the shelves.

Writers Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning recently talked to ComicBookResources.com about the next big cosmic event. It’s big trouble with a capital T, meaning Thanos.

Dan Abnett: Everything thing points to ” The Thanos Imperative: Ignition” one-shot, which is a singular event that will gather in threads from “Guardians,” “Nova,” “Inhumans,” “Imperial Guard” and the “Realm of Kings” one-shot, which seemed like a fun, self-contained thing at the time and now has greater and greater significance as we run into this event.

Andy Lanning: We’ve built upon all these cool little things that we’ve been dropping into the books over the past couple of years. “Nova,” “Guardians,” “War of Kings” and the “Realm of Kings” stuff have all had these little hanging threads that we’ve picked up and woven into this greater story. Of course, if you look behind the curtain, things weren’t so ingrained from the get go [Laughs]. There was a certain amount of throwing things out there because they were cool and intriguing and that’s part of the fun of doing something like this.

You’ve got this great stuff and if you get an idea or a direction, you really turn it up based on the direction the story ends up taking. So this is where it’s all kind of lead up to. In “Realm of Kings,” we’re dealing with the Cthulhu-verse – or Cancer-verse – a universe where life has run rampant. And now the inhabitants of that universe are coming into our universe, where death and entropy are the ruling aspects. There’s a collision course happening. We looked for the biggest advocate of death we could find, and that’s Thanos and that made it his story. Hence the title, “The Thanos Imperative.”

One of the best things about the cosmic crossovers has been that they are secluded from the Civil War, Secret Invasion, Dark Reign and other events that have taken over the monthly Marvel Universe. I like all of those events, but some readers feel put off by them. I have been enjoying the work that Abnett and Lanning have been doing on their many series this far and cannot recommend their star-faring comics enough.