Well, this would assumedly explain why there was never a third Annihilators series.
Revealed exclusively over at CBR, it would seem that Thanos isn’t the only character popping in to say hello Marvel’s “Avengers Assemble” by Bendis and Bagley — the Guardians are coming back too. (Of course, this would certainly give extra credence to the rumored Guardians of the Galaxy film, now wouldn’t it?)
For those that don’t know, the Guardians of the Galaxy broke up the band after Star Lord and Nova were trapped in the Cancerverse with Thanos, presumed dead. Yet, with a new Nova showing up in “AvX” and Thanos clearly showing up in this title, apparently Star Lord gets a reprieve in Marvel’s attempt to work with the cosmic universe. As Tom Brevoort explains, “There’s going to be a concerted effort to making a bigger splash with characters like the Guardians, Thanos and Nova than we’ve done in the past. That’s an area of the Marvel Universe that we’re going to have to put some emphasis behind.”
He even goes further than that to explain why cosmic hasn’t really “worked” in the past, and why Bendis is the man to make it work:
“There are guys who tend to love cosmic, whether it’s for the military sci-fi aspect of it or the trippy, mind-bending expansiveness of the ’70s cosmic material or whatever. There are some people who really, really dig that. But to a lot of the rank and file fans, there’s no context to it…you need something there to key into and connect to. My expectation is that’s what Brian will do when he plays with these cosmic elements, and really, that’s the reason he hasn’t done more with this stuff in the past. It’s just a more difficult nut to crack. He’s played with a lot of different areas of the Marvel U in ‘Avengers’ up to this point, but he’s never done a big, space-oriented story until now. And even then, that story starts on earth with these 12 regular humans who are imbued with the power of the Zodiac by Thanos, and the hows and whyfors of that will be explained over the coming issues.”
Gee, you don’t think that has anything to do with all we’ve been saying about Bendis going cosmic for his next book, do you?