I posted my review of Guardians of the Galaxy #7 to Reddit, and later I saw this reply.
"I just want the 2008 guardians back. These don't even try to act like the same people."
This is what poured forth from my fingertips in form a reply.
"But they're not the same people. They survived through hellacious ordeals, huge, galaxy spanning cataclysms. When we first found Peter at the beginning on Annihilation, he was tortured and broken and hated himself and very idea of being called Star-Lord again.
Drax has been denied his life's goal over and over again, only to obtain it by dooming everyone. Then when Thanos comes back, he's not even the one who gets to kill him again. He's died and came back himself more than once. He's wandered, lost and confused and without purpose.
Gamora is ten kinds of messed up (from Thanos being a relation), and that's before losing her lover to the Cancerverse.
Rocket and Groot are a "raccoon and a tree." Fighting battles that are a million times bigger than they are, losing friends, never truly having a home...
And that's only UP TO the Cancerverse. That's not everything that came after for these people.
How do you expect people with such chaotic lives to ever stay the same?
Peter SHOULD act completely different. He's retaken the name that he felt he'd tarnished forever, became a leader, after being a loner for decades.
They've found a family in each other, a home, even if it is just a group of people, just as lost as the next. How do you expect them to stay the same, with the lives they lead?"
And so I pose the question to my fellow Galaxians here. How can we expect them to stay the same, story arc after story arc, and remain the same people, through all the chaos and turmoil they go through? How much of their character is reasonable, realistic, and rational to expect them to retain year after year? I keep seeing people talk about how "these aren't the same Guardians!" but if they were, if they remained unchanging... would the story be as good? Would you believe that they could come out the other end of these ordeals and remain unaffected? Love or hate who they come out as on the other end, it's irrelevant; I'm asking, can you expect them to remain unchanging?
Drax has been denied his life's goal over and over again, only to obtain it by dooming everyone. Then when Thanos comes back, he's not even the one who gets to kill him again. He's died and came back himself more than once. He's wandered, lost and confused and without purpose.
Gamora is ten kinds of messed up (from Thanos being a relation), and that's before losing her lover to the Cancerverse.
Rocket and Groot are a "raccoon and a tree." Fighting battles that are a million times bigger than they are, losing friends, never truly having a home...
And that's only UP TO the Cancerverse. That's not everything that came after for these people.
How do you expect people with such chaotic lives to ever stay the same?
Peter SHOULD act completely different. He's retaken the name that he felt he'd tarnished forever, became a leader, after being a loner for decades.
They've found a family in each other, a home, even if it is just a group of people, just as lost as the next. How do you expect them to stay the same, with the lives they lead?"
And so I pose the question to my fellow Galaxians here. How can we expect them to stay the same, story arc after story arc, and remain the same people, through all the chaos and turmoil they go through? How much of their character is reasonable, realistic, and rational to expect them to retain year after year? I keep seeing people talk about how "these aren't the same Guardians!" but if they were, if they remained unchanging... would the story be as good? Would you believe that they could come out the other end of these ordeals and remain unaffected? Love or hate who they come out as on the other end, it's irrelevant; I'm asking, can you expect them to remain unchanging?