Cammi and the rebirth of Drax

With the Guardians of the Galaxy movie coming out on Friday, I figured I could shamelessly increase my hits.  So for a few articles, let’s explore some of these weirdos and their wacky space adventures — that’s the theme of the movie, right?

We start with Drax the Destroyer.  Marvel history can be confusing (50 years of continuity will do that) so let me explain him as briefly and simply as I can.  Born a normal Earth man named Arthur Douglas, Drax’s car gets blown up by the cosmic supervillain Thanos.  His daughter Heather (now the superhero Moondragon) gets kidnapped as well.  The Titan god Chronos puts Douglas’ spirit inside a super cool new Drax body complete with all the usual superpowers. Now, Drax lives to kill Thanos again and again (because the dude keeps coming back to life).  We pick up in Drax the Destroyer #2-4, written by Keith Giffen and drawn by Mitch Breitweiser, as a young girl named Cammi watches Drax — currently a brain-trauma’d prisoner — fight off the other prisoners who crash landed on Earth.

So that fight may have been strange without any context.  Sorry.  But Drax is dead.  Weep your tears, my friends, because as strong as Drax is, he can’t take a Skrull arm through the skull.  Though now a question is brought up that we don’t think about often.  What does one do with an alien corpse?  Does it eventually decompose?  Can we recycle it?  Our protagonist Cammi has an idea.

Cammi gets a souvenir!  I’d like to announce that the young girl is a gifted astro-biologist prodigy, specializing in revitalize the blasted bodies of fallen extra-terrestials.  She’s not. Cammi has emotional issues and she wants a free alien corpse.  That’s pretty much the gist of it.  As far as presents go, it sure beats a Gameboy.

A smoking corpse means a repairing corpse.  Let’s not worry about the how in this scenario. I don’t know how he comes back to life, and honestly, it’s not really explained.  But what we do get is a smarter, sleeker, tattoo’d Drax with no more energy blasts or flight or crazy amounts of super strength.  He makes up for it in sex appeal.

It’s not Drax’s fault that he’s naked in front of a fifth grader.  She waited for him to pop out of his corpse egg — he didn’t hide in a bush with an open trench coat or anything.  When someone comes back from the dead, I assume they want some questions answered first.  Drax does that.  Then he gets pants.  In summary: first, all queries need to be completed to Drax’s satisfaction.  Second, cover up his penis.

That grumpy, violent, hardened Drax we know and love?  He’ll be around shortly, showing his face more prominently in Friday’s article.  In today’s comic, with Paibok holding Cammi’s town hostage, it’ll be up to a (fashionable) Drax to save the day.  While he can’t blast Paibok in the face with laser hands anymore, he can always rely on the old fashioned methods.  Meet modern Drax, the Drax you’ll be seeing in the movie and the outfit he still wears today.

Shirts are only for those without cool tribal shoulder tattoos.  This relationship between one of the galaxy’s biggest tough guys and a stubborn Earth child isn’t unique.  Menacing, scary superheroes have had child sidekicks since the beginning of comics (Hercules and Amadeus Cho, for example), but Cammi is unique as to her role as Drax’s tag-a-long buddy.  As in she contributes nothing.  She can’t fight, she has no superpowers, and she’s unabashedly rude.  I adore her.  She’ll become capable in time, but it won’t be anytime soon.  For now, here’s some violence to satisfy the quota:

Next time, Drax and Cammi in space!  Also, a galaxy-enveloping war that threatens to wipe out all civilization as the two join the combined planetary powers in their struggle against Annihilus and Thanos’ bug army.  But mostly Drax and Cammi’s growing friendship.