A review by unladylike
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3: Guardians Disassembled by Brian Michael Bendis, Kelly Sue DeConnick

2.0

This had the potential to be another really enjoyable volume of GotG (now with a sappy, mostly benign Venom!). Here's where I think Bendis went wrong: almost every page and every issue in this very thin arc (if it can even be called that) repeats the previous one. The SuperTeam disassembled individually thing has been done before, and has been done in much more interesting ways. Even the X-Men's second adventure with Claremont at the helm made good use of each character's uniqueness when they were abducted, mind-controlled, and forced to perform in a traveling circus. In this volume, we turn each page to see a different planet of baddies involved in a galactic conspiracy to dismantle the Guardians. Each scene plays out pretty much the exact same way: lone Guardian is captured and bombarded with verbal and physical abuse, while being told they're going to pay for various trumped-up charges. They each fight hard and talk lots of shit. We turn more pages to see this happen over and over with nothing new or interesting going on. Eventually someone breaks free and starts saving the others, which looks quick and easy.

Snooooozerrrrrr.

They had to bulk up this volume by padding it with old issues of Captain Marvel and Spider-Man, just because? Those were actually better than the main issues written by Bendis.

Lots of fun characters in the Guardians, but the generic and tedious plotting of the action in this section was ill-thought-out.