(To the tune of the Mystery Science Theater 3000 main theme!) From 1997, Imperial Guard #1, "Imperious Wrecks!" Written by Brian Augustyn, pencils by Chuck Wojtkiewicz, inks by Ray Snyder.
I would've guessed this was from a couple years earlier; but nope, 1997, post-Onslaught. With many of earth's mightiest heroes missing--in fact, the Avengers show up here, down to Black Widow, Hercules, and Quicksilver--the Shi'ar Empress Lilandra has sent a good chunk of the Imperial Guard to um, guard earth. They're not super happy about it. There's a bit of retroactive blaming, that Lilandra supposedly released Professor X's dark side back in the day, in Uncanny X-Men #106. But with the Shi'ar Throneworld facing war, Gladiator is anguished that he has to obey orders and defend earth instead; and takes off for Uncanny X-Men #341 to get the X-Men to sub in and defend the Shi'ar. I don't know how that turned out, but that was a Joe Madureira issue: I was thinking Wojtkiewicz's style was pretty cartoony for this era of Marvel, but it may have only been slightly more than his.
Most of the Guard was still thinly-veiled Legion of Super-Heroes analogs, in particular Nightside (Shadow Lass) and Flashfire (Lightning Lad) since they aren't given much else personality here. Maybe I'm confusing Flashfire and Electron though: Flashfire was a redhead with major sideburns, while Electron was the most Shi'ar looking of the team. Mentor is an even more irritated Brainiac 5, generally annoyed no one listens to him constantly griping. Commando was new, a Kree conscript: this was after Operation: Galactic Storm, where the Supreme Intelligence destroyed most of the Kree empire in an attempt to restart their evolution. He still had a little shrine to the Supremor, which does seem a bit off, but the Kree were always given to obedience.
This was under the banner of the X-books, but the last issue would guest-star Rick Jones. As I write this, I'm going quarter-book hunting today, so we'll see if the rest of the series turns up!
Yeah I was legit surprised when this came out, the fact that the Imperial Guard even got their own mini was a hell of an idea. Bad art though. Chuck's worse here then he was on JL not even two-three years earlier.
ReplyDeleteThe Joe Mad Shiar issues were pretty good actually. Then Bishop and Deathbird hooked up....I think. Turns out the Phalanx were back and taking over Shiar outposts ALIENS-style. At least that was the vibe they were going for with the whole Phalanx invasion angle. Then they got to come back to Earth and I don't think that little favor was ever mentioned again.