How George Lucas Ruined Science Fiction Comic Books
For me the joy of science fiction is that it’s somewhat believable — and once upon a time before the comic book code there were some amazing comics that had science fiction themes. However with the code and the dawn of the silver age of comics superheroes dominated the medium. Superhero comics may have some elements of science fiction, but they’re always used as window dressing using dull plot devices like superpowers being caused by genetic mutations. However from time to time you’ll see a book that tries to reintroduce the genre, and Guardians of the Galaxy tries hard but doesn’t quite succeed at this task:
If you look at the pages from this book you’ll see the clear influence of Star Wars all over the place — we’ve got a space princess and some cute aliens. But this to me is the problem: With Star Wars the science fiction was also window dressing, in fact you could say that Star Wars was more of what you might call science fantasy or space opera than real science fiction. And Guardians of the Galaxy takes that approach:
So you’ve got telepaths and creatures popping out of stomachs ala Alien but the story is cloaked in a pseudo-mysticism with settings that remind you of Dungeons and Dragons more than anything else.
Yes occasionally you’ll get a cool spaceship shot, but these all seem lifted from ILM. And unlike a film or a good manga these spaceships are just used as background art — they never get reused or shown again:
So the result is that you get a comic book that uses the sets of science fiction film, but lacks the script to match. And then making matters worse you get characters who looks like superheroes barging into the scene to add to the clutter:
The result is that you get a bad copy of Star Wars. Now this wouldn’t be so bad if this was a licensed fan fiction comic book, but if you think about it there’s so much potential being wasted here. Imagine if you will if Marvel hired some actual science fiction writers and came up with something even half as interesting as Cowboy Bebop. But instead you get the feeling that Marvel just sees this book as a superhero story with sci fi artwork rather than a science fiction comic book. And while I blame Marvel in a sense they’re just trying to badly copy the success of Star Wars.
Guardians of the Galaxy #22 will hit the street on January 27th.