Guardians of the Galaxy 59 was cover dated April 1994 and was on sale February 1994, sharing the spinner racks with Amazing Spider-Man #400, Flash #100, Impulse #1, Preacher #1, Visitor #1 and Web of Spider-Man #123.
Orphan in the storm was written by Michael Gallagher, with art by Kevin West and Steve Montano and opens with Starhawk finding the Keeper near death and about to be eaten alive by a pack of Saturnian Hound-hawks. Starhawk zaps one of them to distract the pact, only to attract a larger group in a feeding frenzy, some feed on the wounded Hawk-hound and the rest chase Starhawk, who flies off, shortly followed by the Keeper’s reformed surfboard.
Starhawk flies off at lightspeed and lands with the Keeper on a nearby uninhabited planetoid, then uses his light to heal him. The Keeper awakens and tells Starhawk of the events that occurred since Guardians of the Galaxy #25.
Basically Galactus got sick of eating the planets without people and wanted to eat planets with people, when the Keeper (probably having had this conversation several times already) was a bit snotty in reply and Galactus just attacked him, viscously wounding him and leaving him where Starhawk found him. Starhawk tells him to rest and heal and then help Starhawk with his problem and then go after a rogue Galactus, before looking at the Quantum Bands on the Keeper’s wrists and wondering if maybe he could use them himself.
As soon as he touches them, the cosmic entity Eon appears and admonishes Starhawk for his greed. He reduces him in age, until Starhawk reverses this.
Supposedly impressed by Starhawk’s resolve, Eon grantes custody of the Quantum Bands to Starhawk, which is fitting, since they also belonged to Wendell Vaughn (Quasar of Earth) who just happens to be Starhawk’s true father.
Notes:
None of this story makes any sense.
The Keeper is lying somewhere in space and I will concede that Starhawk will be able to find the Keeper, but the Hawk-Hounds (Last seen in #26) just happening to be there in some random solar system?
Both the Keeper and Galactus seem quite out of character, arguing like a married couple or a parent and teenager before getting into a fight, I found this a little difficult to go along with.
The Keeper being able to help Starhawk research his past is a stretch, the Quantum Bands being able to help him falls under the grasping at straws catergory.
Starhawk seems unaware that the Quantum Bands cannot be forcibly removed from their wielder, so he would have to cut the Keeper’s hands off just to get at them.
The fact that Quasar is Starhawk’s father does remind us that Starhawk is over a thousand years old and could have ties to the modern era of heroes.
Back Up Feature:
The Fire Down Below was written by Michael Gallagher and pencilled by Jeff Moore with Steve Montano on inks and shows us Nikki on her sabbatical from the Icarus on a remote planet. She is cornered by three alien creatures who are like the song goes, up to no good. They grab her and she fights back using her hair to burn them. Doesn’t really go well since they’re lava miners and so she tries to blind them with a solar flash. While their eyes recover, a new player enters, Captain Charlie-27. Charlie wastes no time in expressing himself, the aliens recognises him as a Jovian before trying to escape. One of them finds himself face to face with Nikki’s pistol when he tries and she asks him how so far from our solar system, 12 years after the species was known to be wiped out, how he can recognise a jovian at all.
It turns out that there may be an enslaved colony of Jovians and Charlie-27 wants to check it out, he tells Vance who tells him that he shouldn’t do it alone, but as we see in his bedroom, he isn’t. Their G-stars are left outside the room, so another adventure can begin.
Notes:
This was a nice little story with Nikki and Charlie-27 getting a bit of spotlight.
Charlie’s one liners and he general bad-assery is very entertaining.
I don’t know how much of this Jovian mystery is resolved if any of it, but this story does serve to put Nikki and Charlie back together. If nothing else, these two deserve a happy ending.
NEXT TIME: More searching for answers by Starhawk and Yellowjacket too.
Standing Guard 