X-amining Imperial Guard #1-3

"Imperious Wrecks" / "Up From The Depths" / "A Mad God Awakens"

January - March 1997

In a Nutshell

An Earthbound Imperial Guard get embroiled in the machinations of the Kree Supreme Intelligence. 

Writer: Brian Augustyn
Pencils: Chuck Wojtkiewicz
Inks: Ray Snyder
Letterer: J. Babcock, Phil Felix (issue #2), Janice Chiang (issue #3)
Colorist: Brad Vancata 
Editor: Terry Kavanagh

Editor-in-Chief: Bob Harras

Plot

Issue #1: In the wake of Onslaught's attack and the death of many of Earth's heroes, Lilandra has sent eight members of the Imperial Guard to Earth to observe and aid the planet. Though the Guardsman rankle at being kept away from the Shi'ar Empire while it's fighting its own war, they obey their orders. For the most part, they keep a low profile, until a mysterious new group called the Underground Militia begins speaking out against Earth's remaining superheroes. Gladiator decides its within the Guard's mandate to oppose the group, but when they move against them, the militia and their mysterious leader Primus deploy mysterious weapons, and easily overpower the Imperial Guard. 

Though all their powers are dampened by strange radiation, new Kree guardsman Commando suddenly manifest superstrength and manages to free his teammates from the Underground Militia. Mentally guided by a strange voice, he reveals that the militia are pink Kree posing as humans, working to bring vengeance to Kree enemies, starting with Earth. Meanwhile, frequent superhero sidekick Rick Jones is similarly haunted by a strange voice, one which tells him he will become the first human to unlock his potential before being transformed into a being of green energy. 

Issue #3: The Imperial Guard and Rick Jones both converge on the headquarters of the Underground Militia, where Primus is working to to launch a Nega-Reactor to destroy the planet. Working together, they manage to contain the explosion, with Rick absorbing the energy it releases, after which the Imperial Guard throw the device into space. Just then, all the energy Rick has absorbed leaves his body, manifesting as the Kree Supreme Intelligence, who has orchestrated these events to be reborn on Earth, in order to await the further evolution of the Kree who survived the Nega Bomb explosion that ended the recent Kree-Shi'ar war. Commando tries to stop the Supreme Intelligence, but it teleports away, leaving Rick Jones a regular human once more. Commando, now fully accepted by his Shi'ar teammates, rejoins the group and they continue their mission on Earth. 

Firsts and Other Notables

The conceit of this miniseries places a contingent of the Imperial Guard on Earth on orders from Lilandra; the group is composed of Gladiator, Mentor, Earthquake, Electron, Flashfire, Nightside and Oracle. They are joined by a new member, Commando, making his debut in Imperial Guard #1.  

Reflecting the state of the major galactic powers at the time, Commando is a Kree, who were conquered by the Shi'ar during the events of the Avengers' crossover, "Operation: Galactic Storm", back in 1991. In keeping with the Imperial Guards' whole "the Legion of Superheroes, but at Marvel" schtick, Commando's real name — M'Nell — suggests he is meant to be an analog to Mon-El, the Legion's occasional Superman stand-in. 

The villains of this series are the Underground Militia, a seemingly-generic group of anti-superhero militants who turn out to be pink Kree passing for human after being exiled prior to the defeat of the Kree empire in "Galactic Storm" (Kree come in two varieties, blue and pink, with the "blues" traditionally looking down on the "pinks"). 

All of which turns out to be part of an overly-complicated plot involving the Kree Supreme Intelligence resurrecting himself following his death at the hands of the Avengers in Avengers #347 (the climax of "Galactic Storm") as punishment for his role in deploying a nega bomb against his own people (in an effort to jump-start their dead-ended evolution). 

The Supreme Intelligence's plot involves the use of professional superhero sidekick Rick Jones (who had notable stints hanging out with the Hulk, Captain America/the Avengers, Captain Marvel, and Rom), which connects back to Rick's involvement with the Kree-Skrull War storyline in the Avengers back in the 70s and the "untapped potential of humanity" triggered in Rick by the Supreme Intelligence in that story. 

All three issues of the series feature wraparound covers.

Issue #2 is dedicated to writer/editor Mark Gruenwald, presumably in acknowledgement of his then-recent death.  

A Work in Progress

In issue #1, the Imperial Guard briefly teams up with the remaining Avengers (Black Widow, Quicksilver and Hercules). I love the idea that Hercules recognizes the Imperial Guard from, of all things, having read the Avengers' files on them. Just Herc sitting down with a flagon of mead and some light research on a Saturday night. 

Not quite the same thing as the anti-mutant vibes constantly getting name-checked in the X-books, Black Widow notes a general coldness towards superheroes of all kinds post-Onslaught. 

One of Lilandra's motivations for sending the Guard to Earth is attributed to her guilt over helping Onslaught take shape, a reference to the "Dark Xavier"/Entity plot of X-Men #106, one of the few textual examples explicitly linking the Entity to Onslaught, and despite the fact that the issue is a fill-in and considered so inconsequential to the development of the "Phoenix Saga" that it was skipped over as part of the Classic X-Men reprints. 

The war that the Shi'ar are fighting that the Imperial Guard are angry they're being kept away from participating in is the Shi'ar's fight with the Phalanx, as depicted in Uncanny X-Men #342-344. 

Midway through issue #1, Gladiator decides that if the Imperial Guard is going to be stuck on Earth, he'll find some other way to help the empire, and flies off to fight Cannonball and setup the X-Men's space adventure, as seen in Uncanny X-Men #341 (which seems like a case of disobeying the spirit of Lilandra's orders while not the letter of them).  

The Grim 'n' Gritty 90s

Rick Jones worries he'd be played by "that Urkel guy" in a movie about his life. 

Austin's Analysis
Unlike some of 1997's other "we'll choke their rivers with our dead" miniseries, this Imperial Guard mini at least seems to have a specific POV and intent. Let's take the Imperial Guard and drop them on Earth in the wake of "Onslaught", play up their "mirror Legion of Super-Heroes" schtick a bit more than usual, and use it all as a vehicle to bring back the Supreme Intelligence following "Operation: Galactic Storm." That still only keeps this from being slightly less of a slog to get through than Sabretooth & Mystique (it helps, too, that like Domino, it's only three issues), but when it comes to these minis, we're grading on a curve. 

The two big issues with this one are one, that dropping the Imperial Guard on Earth doesn't really work, and two, that the Imperial Guard don't really work as protagonists in their own right. Playing up their similarities to the Legion in an effort to present them as something closer to superheroes than the space cops/bodyguards they usually are at least seems to acknowledge the first problem, but writer Brian Augustyn doesn't go far enough with it to make it work; the Guard never reach a point where they don't feel out of place in the book's setting (also, it should be noted, even most actual Legion stories are set in outer space/alien worlds/not contemporary Earth). 

Meanwhile, outside of maybe Gladiator (who at least has a couple solo outings to his name) and the way each Guardsperson is roughly analogous to a specific Legionnaire, the Imperial Guard don't really exists as individual characters in their own rights, with agency or motivations beyond "service to the ruler du jour", which makes it difficult for them to work in a leading role vs. a supporting one. Strip that service — regardless of the fact that they're on Earth by order of Lilandra — and the trappings of their roles as an arm of the Shi'ar government — away, and they lose pretty much all of what makes them them (the Starjammers, by comparison, can work much better on their own, because their schtick — space pirates — is much more general, even if they tend to get sucked into X-Men and Shi'ar-based stories for obvious reasons). 

The end result is a miniseries that almost works, but ultimately comes up short due to the gaping hole at the center of it that is its protagonists. Augustyn tries to use the newly-introduced Commando as a POV character (and again, crappy codename aside, the idea of putting one of the recently-conquered Kree on the Imperial Guard is a clever idea, in theory), but there's simply not enough room to make it work. Chuck Wojtkiewicz's art is cramped and overly-busy but suitably cartoony for a story trying to emulate classic Legion-style super heroics and featuring a giant green tentacle-haired head as the villain. And turning this random X-Men-tie-in miniseries into a vehicle for bringing back a signature cosmic villain and setting the stage for another possible re-ordering of the cosmic political order is exactly the sort of thing that makes reading serialized narratives like this fun. But none of that is enough to overcome the fact that the Imperial Guard operating as superheroes on Earth just doesn't work. 

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