As the cosmic side of the Heroes Reborn reality is dramatically altered, the Guardians of the Galaxy have a new mission against the Squadron Supreme.
WARNING: The following contains major spoilers for Heroes Reborn #4, by Jason Aaron, James Stokoe Ed McGuinness, Mark Morales, Matthew Wilson and VC’s Cory Petit, on sale now.
While the Squadron Supreme of America reigns in the altered Marvel Universe of Heroes Reborn, they are far from beloved figures in the cosmos as they crush any opposition with swift, bloody action. And as the Squadron Supreme expands their jurisdiction from Earth, their list of enemies continues to grow, with two classic alien empires setting aside their differences to enlist a familiar set of heroes to bring down one of the Squadron’s most powerful members,
As revealed in Heroes Reborn #4, Rocket Raccoon and Groot of the Guardians of the Galaxy, hired to kill the cosmic superhero Doctor Spectrum.
While the Squadron Supreme is still primarily focused with their peacekeeping and world-shaping efforts on Earth, several of their members have broadened their activities accordingly. Hyperion singlehandedly killed Galactus and boasted about talking down the Brood, imprisoning the Brood Queen along with other opponents in the Negative Zone. Doctor Spectrum’s interstellar antics are so bad, including apparently blinding the Watcher Uatu to prevent him from foreseeing what is coming next, that Uatu summons a coalition of alien races to pool together their resources against him. Seeing an unchecked Spectrum as a mutually devastating threat, the Kree and Skrull Empires agree to pause their longstanding hostilities to hire Rocket Raccoon and Groot to kill Spectrum.
Doctor Spectrum has always been a thinly veiled analogue to DC’s Green Lantern just as the Squadron Supreme, as a whole, has been an analogue to the Justice League. Colonel Joseph Ledger was an astronaut that discovered a strange alien artifact while on a spacewalk known as the Power Prism. Originally a Skrull warrior named Krimonn, the Skrull was transformed into a living prism as punishment after a failed bid to overthrow the emperor and sent into deep space. Wielding the Power Prism, Ledger created the superhero moniker Doctor Spectrum, with the device giving him command over light, including the ability to create hard light constructs, making him one of the Squadron Supreme’s most powerful members.
In the Heroes Reborn reality, the only members of the Guardians of the Galaxy — at least revealed so far — are Rocket and Groot, maintaining their tight friendship even with all the wholesale changes to the Marvel Universe. Without their usual Guardians or the Starjammers to back them up, Rocket and Groot are both considerably more the worse for the wear than their main Marvel Universe counterparts. Rocket is missing an eye and his right arm, sporting an eyepatch and a cybernetic limb, and Groot isn’t the towering tree but merged with Rocket’s gun while maintaining his sentience. Despite the overwhelming odds, Rocket and Groot agree to the task of taking down Spectrum for the right price.
For all the changes that have come to the Marvel Universe in Heroes Reborn, Rocket and Groot have largely stayed the same, albeit more grizzled and without their usual companions even as they continue to take dangerous bounties across the cosmos. And while all the disparate figures across the universe with the common goal of killing Doctor Spectrum, Rocket Raccoon and Groot quickly discover this unified support is far from enough to even the odds as the cosmic member of the Squadron Supreme sets his undivided attention on both of them with gruesome results for the wayward Guardians of the Galaxy.
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