6. Guardians Of The Galaxy, Volume 3
The master of comic book ensemble casts (he's basically the comic book equivalent of Joss Whedon), Brian Michael Bendis brings his trademark writing style to Marvel's space faring superhero team, The Guardians of the Galaxy. Unsurprisingly, to coincide with the upcoming release of James Gunn's movie adaptation, Marvel have made a significant effort to push this title and drum up interest in these relatively unknown characters. And it's safe to say Bendis has done that. Sporting deft dialogue and artwork that boasts the visual flair of a movie epic, Bendis' Guardians of the Galaxy is very much in keeping with the tone of the recently released trailer for the team's big screen outing. Bendis' space opera is situated in an expansive, awe inspiring world filled with bizarre aliens and fantastic star ships, but it's the comic exchanges between the rag tag group that's the title's biggest draw, Bendis creating an instantly likeable group of characters. The writer cleverly uses Iron Man (a character familiar to cinematic audiences) as a point of entry character to the world of the Guardians (who are largely unfamiliar to Marvel movie fans), Stark accompanying Star-Lord, Drax the Destroyer, Gamora, Groot and Rocket Raccoon on their first few missions. Admittedly, apart from the Guardians getting into random scraps with various space criminals (and the odd alien army), not a great deal has happened in Guardians of the Galaxy so far, but when one of the main characters is a bipedal, ray gun totting raccoon, does it need too?