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Quasar #32Issue(s): Quasar #32 Review/plot: ![]() Quasar learns from them that the Kree are at war with the Shi'ar, and then the Shi'ar Imperial Guard attack. ![]() I've never been great about tracking the Imperial Guard, and i'm not very knowledgeable about the Legion of Super Heroes, but we (seemingly) have some new ones here. The pink monster with the big mouth is, i think, a Matter Eater Lad analogue, and i assume this is Bouncing Boy. ![]() Most of these characters are actually illusions, though. ![]() Quasar is blinded but still manages to fight by creating a suit of quantum armor for himself. Starfox uses his powers on Manta. ![]() I don't really love Starfox saying "Bliss out". It sounds like something fans or writers and editors might say when talking about Starfox's powers, but it's too weird and casual a way too speak. I do like this as my out of context panel for the issue: ![]() Minerva locates Magic, the Imperial Guard that is creating the illusion, and knocks her out. She then knocks out Starfox and goes back into Captain Marvel's tomb with Captain Atlas. It turns out they were after Mar-vell's Nega-Bands. ![]() Back on Earth, Rick Jones says that he wants to go back to the Pantheon and the Hulk, but instead Captain America assigns Wonder Man as his bodyguard. ![]() However, when Captain Atlas puts on the Nega-Bands and clanks them together, he and Rick switch places. But that's the story for the next chapter of this story, in Wonder Man's book. I have to say that the idea that the bands will swap Rick for the bearer of the Nega-Bands when neither of them are in the Negative Zone strikes me as incorrect, but i guess i should trust Mark Gruenwald on that. Back in the Kree galaxy, the guy that was the chief architect of the Pursuer project, famous for turning a cockroach into a Ronan The Accuser level threat in Inhumans #11 and Inhumans #12, gets annoyed with the "two idiots" currently in charge of the Kree empire, and he applies the Pursuer technique to himself. ![]() I'd rather have the cockroach again, personally. Subplots are mostly pushed aside by the crossover, but we do see that Angler is stalking Kayla Ballantine. ![]() It's more or less confirmed in the letter page that this book was in danger of being canceled, but positive reaction to the Cosmos In Collision arc (and Ghost Rider guest appearance?) boosted sales and saved the title. Comparing the average sales to the issue closest to filing date in the numbers below suggests that boost might have been temporary (there's also an Infinity Gauntlet tie-in to consider, though). But between Operation: Galactic Storm and Infinity Wars, this book has more crossover issues than not this year, so sales will continue to be (artificially?) boosted. Statement of Ownership Total Paid Circulation: Average of Past 12 months = 87,915. Single issue closest to filing date = 59,935. Quality Rating: C+ Chronological Placement Considerations: This is part three of Operation: Galactic Storm. It continues in Wonder Man #7. References:
Crossover: Operation Galactic Storm Continuity Insert? N My Reprint: N/A Inbound References (3): showCharacters Appearing: Angler, Antibody, Captain America, Captain Atlas, Doctor Minerva, Epoch, Hawkeye, Impulse (Imperial Guard), Iron Man, Kayla Ballantine, Kenjiro Tanaka, Korath the Pursuer, Magic, Manta, Mikhail Kutuzov, Peggy Carter, Peter Corbeau, Quasar, Rick Jones, Starfox, Talia Kruma, Wonder Man CommentsI only picked up bits and pieces of Galactic storm but it was clear there was some major continuity plotting there. Quite an impressive bit. Posted by: kveto | January 27, 2016 4:41 PM I got these Quasar issues for Galactic Storm and I seem to recall my copies had the issue number misprinted as single digits. Don't know if they were all like that or if I had a reprint with an error on it. Posted by: Red Comet | January 27, 2016 6:08 PM This is brought up in a later lettercol. They weren't misprinted. Quasar was direct market only, so to make the books available on newsstands with the rest of the event, they published the issues with those numbers, basically a temporary mass market run. Posted by: fnord12 | January 27, 2016 6:17 PM honestly, I like Greg's art but again Quasar looks like Daryll Hannah or something. A hero can be "sensitive" without looking like a female model dude lol Posted by: Brimstone: Wrestler, Celebrity, Actor, Comics CEO | January 27, 2016 7:34 PM @Brimstone: See, I consider that a bonus. I enjoyed QUASAR because, to me anyway, it was well-written and I enjoyed what the plots were about. That Wendell was a yummy piece of rather "bishonen" eye candy was icing on the cake to me. Posted by: Thanos6 | January 27, 2016 8:35 PM I've been waiting for this for a while. I had stopped collecting most comics by the time Operation: Galactic Storm came out. So I didn't learn of its plot for a long time after it was published. When I did, I had some suspicions, but I ignored it until I learned even later that originally this was intended to be a plot for the Quasar title, and it only got expanded to a crossover until later. At that point I became convinced. Mark Gruenwald used my plot idea about the Kree I had sent in a letter to Quasar many months before. So yes, I am taking credit for the general plot of Galactic Storm - although of course all the details are those of the actual writers. Gruenwald had been complaining about the lack of letters to Quasar and asked for submissions. So for a few months I wrote letters to Quasar until I found other things to do. I wrote them around the time of the early parts of Cosmos in Collision. In one of those letters I gave a few suggestions for appropriate plots I thought would be interesting. I only remember three in specific. One was to introduce Project: Shockbuster which was detailed in OHOTMU #15 as the secret government investigation of extra-terrestrial alien activity on Earth. It was never actually introduced any comic (and as far as I know, it never has been). I thought a lot could be done with it. Another was to conclude the long abandoned Questprobe limited series. This was introduced later on in Quasar, and at that time I was pretty sure he did so because of my letter. Although I admit it is exactly the kind of archaeology Gruenwald would do on his own, but the timing was suspicious. The last plot was to do a plot about the Kree experiments to jumpstart their genetic evolution and examine the tension between the blue and white skinned Kree, and that the blue Kree might attempt genocide on the white skinned Kree. I never got the chance to approach Mark Gruenwald and ask him where he got the ideas for this. He died only a few years after this, and way before I discovered the details which caused me to believe he used my ideas. While I don't expect others to believe without proof, I am convinced of it myself. At the time, I didn't think anything of it. But many years later when I heard that Jim Shooter sent a letter and symbolically "bought" the black costume idea from a reader, I always regretted Shooter was not in charge when this was published. It would have been very cool if I had gotten some kind of acknowledgment I could keep as a memento. Posted by: Chris | January 29, 2016 12:56 AM @Chris: I take it that you are not aware of S.W.O.R.D. ? http://marvel.wikia.com/wiki/Sentient_World_Observation_and_Response_Department_(Earth-616) It sure sounds a lot like your Project: Shockbuster. Posted by: Luis Dantas | January 29, 2016 6:56 AM @Chris Interesting that you could still mail plots in as recently as the early 90s. These days companies like Marvel will return, reject, or destroy anything with plots in them so that they don't open themselves up to a lawsuit. Posted by: Red Comet | January 29, 2016 10:15 AM Well, it's not like I wrote them as a submission. It was just in a letter to the comic. I'm not sure how they could identify what would be in the letter before they opened it, and it wasn't the only thing the letter was about it. But I certainly did not get the letter returned. Posted by: Chris | January 29, 2016 10:11 PM @Chris: Why call an "alien immigration" project "Shockbuster"? Posted by: Nathan Adler | January 29, 2016 10:57 PM @Chris- you never know. Sometimes people's minds just think alike. A few months before Kings of Pain, I had an idea for the New Mutants to fight the New Warriors and another idea that the New Warriors should fight a resurrected Proteus. But I never put them in a letter or even mentioned them to a friend. So I was shocked when Kings of Pain came out- it was like Fabian was reading my mind. Posted by: Michael | January 30, 2016 12:29 PM Michael, that is true. Some plots are so basic, that you can't really claim them even if you think of them first. And it is entirely possible Gruenwald was already considering a plot about the Supreme Intelligence attempting genocide on the Kree to jumpstart their genetic evolution. However, given the specificity of it - and that the Chief Examiner from Questprobe shows up soon making two hits from my one letter - I'm more inclined to believe I had something to do with it. Of course, it can't be proved so if people think otherwise, they certainly have reason to do so. If I had known at the time that this was the plot of Galactic Storm (I had dropped most of my comics in 1992), I would have done my best to see Gruenwald at a comic convention to ask some passive-aggressive questions! As it was, I don't think I learned of this until the early 2000s by which time Gruenwald had been deceased for quite a while. Posted by: Chris | February 1, 2016 10:46 PM Comments are now closed. |
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