They Are Groot: Reviewing ‘Guardians Of The Galaxy’ #6

The Guardians of The Galaxy are dead. Long live the Guardians of the Galaxy. Oh wait, maybe they’re not quite dead. At least not yet.

Guardians Of The Galaxy #6 finally turns back the clock to discover the true origins of Grootfall, the worst day of the Guardian’s lives. It’s a flashback tale told in a unique way by Jackson Lanzing, Collin Kelly, Alex Lins, KJ Díaz, and Cory Petit.

Lins and Díaz are the guest artists on this issue, tapped to bring this more interactive flashback to life. Much like the usual work that Kev Walker and Matt Hollingsworth, have been doing on the title, this issue keeps the very rough and tumble feeling in each part of the artwork. Not only are these tough characters in a rough part of space, but it’s a dream/flashback sequence that is going to feel sharper and harder naturally.

Being in a sort of dream state allows Lins to really play up the fantastical elements, shifting around how things are framed and transitioning. Scenes can just shift both in location and focal characters because this isn’t a logical space. Many of the panels take on shapes like ship monitors or characters break the boundaries walking right into or out of moments being depicted.  There are literally no boundaries in quite a few places because that’s how memory dream sequences often work.

I want to frame that Drax page, where the panels and rubble are shaped like his name, and hang it on my wall. Hell, could look at many of the pages of this issue repeatedly every day.

Yet, the way that Lins strings it together follows a natural flow and still has a logic to it that makes sure the reader can follow along. I love the visual passing of narrative duties being a panel featuring characters picking a Groot flower. Just adds a little something visually neat rather than just shifting perspectives every couple of pages.

A lot of the colors that Diaz deploys are pulled back in a sort of toned-down way, like the previous issues. Where they differ is in the overall tone of those colors. Instead of a heavier darker feeling being dominant, that feeling is surrounded by a very light aspect. Panels take on full green or brown tones depicting their dreamy or otherworldly appearance. While the actual flashbacks are heavy on blue, white, and orange tones at times.

As things ramp up towards the dark fate of Groot, a dark heaviness takes over more, and things lose that light feeling. While we know that things turned out bad the choice to move from light to dark mirrors how stories often work. Taking us from a safe space into one that is less safe, right alongside the characters.

Emotions play a huge role in this story, as we are witnessing how every character thinks they are the ones who failed. We see those emotions so heavily in Lins’ work and hear them in what Petit brings to the page. Shifting fonts and bubbles to make sure it’s clear when volume/tone is changing in words, pulling at our heartstrings in another way.

Dropping the various colors and shapes to the bubbles helps with that, but also differentiates characters. These characters all have distinct voices and personalities that are displayed with these changes. Visually it breaks up to rather than just a sea of the same bubbles filling pages.

I love everything about how this story goes down. It would have been simple to give us an issue that jumped back and told the story of Groot’s ‘death’ in linear order. Instead, Kelly and Lanzing go a different route, which is what the Hivemind does. Our heroes are broken characters, and we see everything that happened through their broken eyes.

Does that mean that some of it might be unreliable? Probably but in the end that doesn’t matter. These characters are our connection to the story/world and what this moment meant to them matters more than whether they are impeccable narrators. Despite their feelings of not being heroes, they all took to hear the choices they made and what path that led them down. Every loss is something they feel personally, falling into the what-if style game that many of us have played at some point in our lives.

Guardians Of The Galaxy #6 is now available from Marvel Comics.