I don't want to start a new thread for this, when we have this perfectly good one, so I'm just bringing it back to life (I wonder why the DC thread is so much more active, I guess people just aren't reading Marvel Comics very much around here).
Anyway, I just finished reading the main part of the 2000s Marvel cosmic Saga, from Jim Starlin's 2000s Thanos mini through Annihilation, Nova, Guardians of the Galaxy (Volume 2), Annihilation: Conquest, War of Kings, Realm of Kings and The Thanos Imperative. This whole era of cosmic Marvel is amazing. Events that actually mattered and were well written, long ignored characters brought back into the spot light, and a literal cosmic scale of storytelling that Marvel has never recaptured. Its so good I think its actually made me slightly less fond of the MCU GotG, just because I like the comic versions of the characters so much more after really getting familiar with them (especially Starlord and Gamora).
Annihilation is the crown jewel in the Marvel Cosmic stuff, an event so great and well told that its instantly a top 3 event story of all time for me, and its neck and neck with Blackest Night for the #2 spot (Crisis on Infinite Earths will always be #1 for me, though). Its amazing how they did all this without messing with the Earth based stuff, honestly having more Earth based heroes involved would probably have hurt the story. You can really feel the scale of the war against the Annihilation Wave while reading the story, and it definitely took Annihilus from a character I considered a D-List Fantastic Four villain to a huge threat.
Nova and the first modern Guardians of the Galaxy solo series with both rock solid. They existed a lot of the time to tie into the other cosmic stuff, but it was done well and really raised the character's profiles in my eyes. Annihilation Conquest wasn't quite as good as the first event, but it was still great and the whole "Borg type assimilation by the Phalanx but the victims keep their personalities" thing was a very interesting story decision that lead to some great moments.
War of Kings/Realm of Kings were pretty decent, but I like the Nova/Guardians/Kree cosmic stuff better then the Shi'Ar/X-Men Cosmic stuff, so it wasn't quite as good for me. I also thought that the Inhumans weren't written all that well at times, I don't think that Medusa is generally as much of an asshole as she is in these stories for example , but it wasn't a huge problem, the stories were still decent.
The Thanos Imperative was ok. They mixed all the branches of cosmic stuff together, and we got one hell of a battle (seeing Galactus and other cosmic beings just silently enter the battle to save the universe was amazing), but I don't think that the Cancerverse is as interesting as the writers think it is, and I'm annoyed that Nova and Starlord went away for awhile and came back changed in a bad way (I'm pretty sure Starlord started copying the MCU version once he returned, and I'm not sure when Richard Rider came back). Plus knowing they introduced that terrible kiddie Nova after this event (I don't care who he's based on, he sucks) is annoying.
So, I'm almost done with this era of cosmic stuff. Just need to read a few mid to late 2000s Silver Surfer minis and the Annihilators mini and thats basically it (I read Bendis's mediocre mid 2010s GotG stuff as it came out, and Marvel Cosmic in general barely exists anymore, and tends to just be lukewarm MCU copycat GotG type stuff when its not terrible crap like Hickman's Infinity). I do want to go and read some DC stuff, but I think I'll eventually get into the older Marvel space stuff, like the original Infinity Saga, eventually.