Guardians of the Galaxy 57 was cover dated February 1995 and was on sale December 1994, sharing the spinner racks with Angela #1, Babylon 5 #1, Cyberforce Origins #1, Gargoyles #1, Indiana Jones and the Iron Phoenix #1 and X-Men: Alpha
Evils draw men together was written by Michael Gallagher, pencilled by Kevin West and inked by Steve Montano and opens with Ripjak trying to blame the Guardians for the carnage seen in the last page of the last issue.
The Guardians don’t want to listen and there is a brief battle before Yondu tries to make peace. Because of his empathic spiritual powers (I’m sorry What?) he can sense the truth in Ripjak’s words, but he wants to know what happened after all the martians died.
After years of research, Ripjak determined that the plague was synthetic and searched the galaxy to try and find more instances of this plague. More and more worlds had fallen to this malady and the ethics of Mars dictated that they shouldn’t be allowed to suffer like this, when there was no hope of a cure. This is why he has been destroying whole worlds, to spare them the pain of their final days. This isn’t serial murder as much as it is euthanasia. He points out that there has been a name attached to this recently and Vance interjects with Bubonicus.
Bubonicus was the creature battled by the Galactic Guardians back in issue 35 and afterwards a report was produced by Martinex, which it looks like only Vance read, but as Talon points out, no one else knows about. Ripjak demands this information and after some more mutinous growling from Talon, they take him aboard.
In the far reaches of the Galaxy, Starhawk finds a brooding Hollywood on an uninhabited planetoid. After hearing a tone from Starhawk he found similar to Mainframe, Hollywood attacks Starhawk. After a brief fight, Hollywood listens to Starhawk, who still seeks his family history and directs him to Norrin Rad, the former Silver Surfer. Starhawk leaves, but in gratitude tells Hollywood that Doom has returned to Earth.
In a tense conversation on Icarus, Ripjak learns more about Bubonicus and asks for more of the Guardians’ aid. As this is considered, Icarus is breached by the arrival of a new player, the High Evolutionary.
Notes:
The High Evolutionary was a marvel universe supporting character first introduced in The Mighty Thor #133 and had a long history of popping up here and there before his starring role in the 1988 crossover Evolutionary War.
Since Stockade, Charlie-27 has had a tee-shirt under his vest, which does make more sense.
Yellowjacket has this whole attitude about Ripjak being a martian, despite the War of the Worlds not being part of her history.
More fracturing of the team as the wheels start to come off the Guardians of the Galaxy.
This is the real beginning of Starhawk’s story, which will run to the end of the series, but the who is Starhawk’s parents mystery being related to the Silver Surfer is a hell of a stretch.
A decent enough issue, but its not just the team that looks to be coming apart.
NEXT TIME: The hunt for Bubonicus.
Standing Guard 