Top Of The Pile: Guardians Of The Galaxy #20

With my pull list undergoing a constant trimming process due to the dual pressures of quality control and financial restraint, it's getting to the state where every comic I read I consider worthy of the label "top of the pile".

Now, of course, that could mean I write a hasty review of every single title, but that's not what HeroPress is about. I see its role as being "suggesting" a couple of titles a month that I've enjoyed.

If you want in-depth, quality, comic-literate reviews of Marvel and DC's weekly output there are far better places to look - such as Has Boobs, Reads Comics; The Heretics Blog; and Paradox Comics Group, to name but three.

All that said, although I've pretty much given up on Marvel these days, I'm still really loving Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning's writing on Guardians Of The Galaxy.

Unlike the character of Jack Flag in this title I don't "hate cosmic stuff" - and the team of Abnett and Lanning are the masters of cosmic storylines in the Marvel Universe at present.

Their latest storyline, about the aftermath of the Kree-Shi'ar war, even has distinct Lovecraftian overtones with creatures from "outside reality" clawing their way into our dimensions through rips in the fragile space-time continuum - which is simply the icing on the cake!

And the final sequence in issue 20 is most definitely a guest appearance by an avatar of Cthulian god Nyarlathotep.