Updated June 23, 2023 2.5K votes 1.0K voters 179.6K views
Over 1.0K Ranker voters have come together to rank this list of The Best Guardians Of The Galaxy Storylines In Comics
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The unbelievable success of Marvel’s most out-there film franchise, Guardians of the Galaxy, has sent countless new fans seeking out the very best Guardians of the Galaxy comics. However, these potential converts may be surprised to find out that the list of the modern Guardians of the Galaxy’s greatest adventures is actually quite short. That’s because the current version of the team has only been around for a decade or so, and before that the team name was used by a completely different group of heroes from the future. Even after Star-Lord formed the modern unit, it still took a number of years for the Guardians to really enter the Marvel mainstream.
Due to the relatively small amount of Guardians of the Galaxy story arcs out there, the team’s recent history has been crafted by only a handful of creators, which has helped to give their storylines a real consistency. Writing duo Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning are primarily responsible for defining the modern Guardians, while Brian Michael Bendis spent more than four years as the team’s primary author. These individuals, and a few others, have combined to produce the very best Guardians of the Galaxy comic books in modern history.
Marvel’s best cosmic crossover, Annihilation, pre-dates the formation of the modern Guardians of the Galaxy by a number of years. However, it also features prominent roles for characters like Star-Lord and Drax the Destroyer, and it helps lay the groundwork for the current team’s eventual origins. Annihilation centers around an invasion from the Negative Zone led by Annihilus, and it had major implications for the Nova Corps in particular.
Legacy is the origin point of the modern Guardians of the Galaxy. The title is a reference to the new Guardians taking over of the title from their futuristic predecessors, and the story features Star-Lord forming a new team in the wake of Annihilation: Conquest.
Peter Quill brings together Rocket, Groot, Gamora, Mantis, and more, and the arc establishes the Guardians’ main theme of co-existing as a troubled family.
The Thanos Imperative is not only considered one of the greatest Guardians of the Galaxy stories, but also one of the best Thanos tales ever written. A cosmic epic packed into a scant six issues, the story features an incursion from the neighboring “Cancerverse,” a nearby, bloated dimension where death had been defeated and life itself was perverted.
The Guardians go on a mission to bring Thanos into the Cancerverse as a means of reintroducing death, and things only get more dire from there.
This spinoff of the larger Annihilation: Conquest event put Star-Lord into a leadership role for the first time, paving the way for him to form the Guardians of the Galaxy. Star-Lord’s adventures in the fight against Ultron brought him into contact with all of the characters he eventually invited to join his team.
Realm of Kings marked the conclusion of Abnett and Lanning’s lengthy run on the title that defined the modern Guardians of the Galaxy, and it was epic in every sense of the word. This final tale features the Universal Church of Truth, a plot to resurrect Thanos, and some of the finest action sequences in the team’s history. The Guardians are at their most heroic in this grand finale.
Gamora has been around for a long time, but has rarely starred in her own solo title. This particular series was written by Nicole Perlman, one of the screenwriters for the Guardians of the Galaxy film. Memento Mori shared revelations about Gamora’s unfortunate upbringing, and also brings her face to face with the consequences of her actions as Thanos’s daughter.
