Drax #1 Review

His movie made millions, he was played by a professional wrestler, and now a different professional wrestler is writing his solo title.  Not bad for a guy who has been kicking around the Marvel Universe for 40 years, huh?  Your Major Spoilers review of Drax #1 awaits!

DRAX #1
Writer: CM Punk & Cullen Bunn
Artist: Scott Hepburn
Colorist: Matt Milla
Letterer: VC’s Clayton Cowles
Editor: Jon Moisan & Jake Thomas
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Cover Price: $3.99

Previously in Drax: While driving through the desert with his family, Arthur Douglas witnessed an honest-to-Mentor spaceship in the desert, piloted by Thanos himself.  Thinking he had been discovered, Thanos destroyed the vehicle, leaving those within presumed dead.  His daughter secretly survived to become the haughty telepath known as Moondragon, while Arthur himself was resurrected to serve as Thanos executioner, rebuilt into the powerful being known as Drax The Destroyer!

That was, however, at least one universe ago…

“I GUESS I’LL GO KILL THANOS…”

We open this issue with the all-new all-different Guardians of The Galaxy (Kitty Pryde, Groot, Rocket Raccoon, Drax, The Thing and Venom) in combat against super-gross alien monster-things who plan to detonate a bomb for unknown (but clearly nefarious) means.  The team deals with the aliens rather brutally (Drax crushes the leader’s skull with his boot), and the Guardians quickly disperse to do their own thing: Groot and Rocket to disarm the bomb, Thing and Venom to get a beer, Kitty Pryde off on her own, leaving a disconsolate Drax with no focus for his rage.  With no GoTG mission, he falls back on his secondary conditioning, and sets off to find and murder the mad Titan Thanos, as he was created to do so many years ago.  Rocket Raccoon loans him a ship, he sets off, he crashes, he ends up in a space-bar and quickly gets accosted by the former Herald of Galactus known as Terrax, leaving us in the precarious position of ending his first solo issue bisected down the middle….

STUPID TERRAX!

As first issues go, this one is a bit odd.  The new status quo of the Guardians seems to be to only congregate when there’s something to fight (and the whereabouts of Peter Quill are unexamined in these pages), which feels a little bit odd.  Combine that with the fact that his comrades CLEARLY want nothing to do with Drax in their off-duty hours (The Thing’s refusal is particularly cold-blooded to my ear), and this issue feels less like Drax in solo missions than it does Drax abandoned by the people he works with, which leaves me as a reader feeling a bit sorry for our green-skinned murder machine.  The art is interesting, with overtones of Humberto Ramos-style exaggeration of anatomy, but with strong facial expressions and solid storytelling prowess throughout the issue.  As befits a spacefaring story, Scott Hepburn does really good technology, and his renderings of the “Space Sucker,” Rocket’s barely functional loaner craft are entertainingly weird, but still interesting…

THE BOTTOM LINE: A SOLID FIRST ISSUE

All in all, there’s some nice character comedy to be had in these pages, and the fact that the story makes it clear that Drax doesn’t really want to be alone, nor does he have any idea what to do (other than “Kill THANOSTHANOSTHANOSTHANOS”) if he is alone is amusing.  With next issue’s tease of all-out combat against Terrax, I’m intrigued, but this issue feels a little bit aimless, though perhaps intentionally so.  The question of ‘Why is this happening?” does occur to me as a reader, but overall Drax #1 pulls off a win even with some meandering, giving us unique art throughout, and earning 3 out of 5 stars overall.  I’m not sure how long they can keep up this sort of story fresh, but the issue should definitely appeal to fans of the movie version of the Drax character, and his lack of metaphor or pretense…