Warzones!: Guardians of Knowhere

Comic Info

Guardians of Knowhere #2

Reprints Guardians of Knowhere #1-4 and New Avengers:  Illuminati #3 (July 2007-November 2015).  Above Battleworld, the head of a Celestial floats and in it an entire community lives.  The Guardians of Knowhere protect the people of Knowhere, but the actions of Gamora has attracted the attention of Angela of Doom’s Thor Corps.  When a force called Yotat attacks, the Guardians find themselves in a desperate battle with the Nova Corps and Angela to stop Yotat…but a bigger danger could be right around the corner.

Written by Brian Michael Bendis, Warzones!:  Guardians of Knowhere is a Marvel Comics spin-off title of the event series Secret Wars.  With art by Mike Deodato, the collection also includes New Avengers:  Illuminati #3 (July 2007) by Bendis and Brian Reed with art by Jim Cheung.

Secret Wars was one of those overblown limited series that lost readers because it expected so much out of them.  Like the original Secret Wars sequel Secret Wars II, there were so many tie-ins and titles that it wasn’t possible for most to read them all simply because they couldn’t afford them all.  Warzones!:  Guardians of Knowhere demonstrates what about Brian Michael Bendis’s writing turned me off most of his titles while at Marvel and why the format of “big event” series needs to be reworked.

Guardians of Knowhere #4

To start with, Guardians of Nowhere isn’t the worst title out there, but it is problematic and not very good.  The series has absolutely no flow.  The comic introduces what is presumed to be the villain in Yotat, but Yotat is dispersed in issue three.  A woman shows up and becomes the villain.  You assume she is Kree from her action, but it feels like she should have been the villain the entire time (or that they should have just stuck with Yotat).

Within the story, Angela is in confrontation with Gamora who has cosmic powers which has shown her a world where Doom isn’t the Supreme Being.  Other than a quick little rehash at the start of the book on what Secret Wars is, a lot of the stuff in the book is unexplained.  It doesn’t help a new reader, but an older reader also might not be able to follow the title if they weren’t up to speed on Secret Wars.

The general, Warzones!:  Guardians of Knowhere makes me wonder what happened to Brian Michael Bendis.  I loved his work on Alias, Daredevil, Ultimate Spider-Man, and Powers and it was some of the smarter writing going on when he popped up.  When he took over Avengers and began to orchestrate Marvel, he went downhill.  I would say that Guardians of Knowhere isn’t indicative of his work (and I’m not even going to start on the bonus issue of New Avengers: Illuminati which retcons aspects of the Beyonder), but his Marvel Avengers titles and spin-off might now outnumber his “good stuff”…which is too bad.