What's the deal with the Guardians of the Galaxy?

I’m winging this one because I really don’t know much at all about the latest incarnation of the Guardians of the Galaxy. Cosmic Marvel was never my strong suit. I liked the movie and thought bringing in humor was a good idea because the movie would have been awful if it had been too serious. I’ll try to do this from memory.

The Guardians of the Galaxy I knew in the comics were from the 30^th century in a galaxy that had been conquered by the Badoon aliens. They had traveled back to the 20^th century to help the Avengers defeat Michael Korvac (see entry on the Collector). The team kind of hung around in the pages of the Avengers in the late ‘70s but never got their own title.

In the comics, the Guardians of the Galaxy were Starhawk, a being with cosmic awareness and immense power who could be male or female; Vance Astro, an American astronaut in the future who later joined the Avengers as his younger self; Martinex, a person made of crystal; Nikki, an alien whose head was on fire for some reason; and Charlie-27, a super-strong alien from Jupiter. Yondu, who was on the team in both the comics and movie, is a blue-skinned alien with a huge red Mohawk. He’s an archer. So you can see how vague I am on a lot of them without going to my Marvel Universe handbooks.

This is not the team you saw in the movie theater, which confused me at first, because the ads had shown a team I was not familiar with. Apparently there had been a revival of the Guardians of the Galaxy a few years ago and I believe the members of the current incarnation consist of those from the 21^st century, making the movie kind of a prequel to what the 30^th century team would be in the comics of the ‘70s (time travel makes for odd syntax). The members in the movie are largely the creations of Jim Starlin, who defined cosmic Marvel in the ‘70s.

I’m not familiar with Star-Lord. I do know the aforementioned Starhawk and there is also a Starfox (Eros, the brother of Thanos who can control people’s emotions and get them to love him, technically making him a sex offender), but the only thing I remember about Star-Lord is his origin story, which I vaguely remember involving the planets aligning. Gamora was one of Starlin’s creations, who was a companion of Adam Warlock and the dwarf Pip, who were all in pursuit of the Infinity Gems. She was never a major character but was in the weird cosmic Marvel corner of the ‘70s with other off-beat characters. The only thing I remember about Rocket Raccoon was some ads in the ‘80s that showed him getting his own comic. I don’t know anything about Groot but what you see in the movie.

I do know Drax the Destroyer. In the comic, he is not an alien but an American named Arthur Douglas who was abducted, I believe, to Titan, the home of the Eternals. He may have been killed and resurrected. I believe he is super-strong but dumb. His daughter, alluded to in the movie, is not actually dead. In the comic, she is Heather Douglas, the arrogant bald telepath who as Moondragon was a member of the Avengers and Defenders in the ‘70s and ‘80s respectively.

Ronan the Accuser is sort of a judge and executioner of the alien Kree race, who have been at war with the alien shape-changer Skrull aliens for decades of Marvel time. Nebula is the granddaughter (in the movie, the daughter) of Thanos. She once vexed the Avengers by stealing various extremely powerful weapons that caused the universe to blink out of existence momentarily, portrayed by blank panels. Later she and Thanos were rivals for retention of the all-powerful Infinity Gauntlet. Like her grandfather, Nebula is ambitious and power-hungry but can sometimes bite off more than she can chew.

By the way, as far as I know, Ronan and Nebula have no connection. He has blue skin because it’s an attribute of many of the Kree and she is just a blue woman. I thought all the colors might have been confusing for new viewers, who may have assumed these people were related.

Next week, I address why Marvel Comics characters manage to stay so youthful after fighting crime since the Kennedy administration. 

* Post-credits addendum: Why was Howard Duck in the post-credits sequence? Most people remember him from the infamous movie in the ‘80s but his comic actually had a pretty good reputation as smart and subversive. It was a sly nod to comics fans because Howard the Duck and the Guardians of the Galaxy characters were part of the same ‘70s neighborhood of weird super heroes.