Longbox Legerdemain: "Marvel Presents: Guardians of the Galaxy"
By Matthew Sunrich
“Far
be it from me to shout down the Kahlil Gibran of the stars!”
Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy film is one
of the oddest success stories in cinematic history. Following a string of
blockbusters featuring A-list characters such as Captain America and Iron Man,
fairly well known even outside of comic-book fandom, Guardians was a
peculiar choice. Even among comic fans, Star-Lord and Rocket Raccoon were,
prior to the film’s release, obscure. Both made their first appearances in Marvel
Preview, one of Marvel’s black-and-white magazines of the Bronze Age, and
neither made a huge splash. Mostly forgotten by the mid-1980s, Peter Quill and
Rocket were resurrected in 2008, along with the even-more-obscure sentient plant
Groot, as members of a new incarnation of the Guardians team. (It’s worth
mentioning that the current version of Star-Lord has little in common with the
original character and that Rocket Raccoon was essentially a joke based on the
similarly-titled Beatles song.)
When I heard they were making Guardians into
a film, I had serious doubts, but, thankfully, I was proven wrong. It’s one of
the MCU’s strongest offerings, as well as arguably the best space fantasy to
hit the silver screen since the The Empire Strikes Back.
The original Guardians debuted in Marvel Super-Heroes #18 in 1969. Set in the year 3015, this series, which continues in various Marvel titles in the following years (including Marvel Two-in-One and Defenders), chronicles the adventures of a team primarily made up of the last survivors of each of Earth’s colonies on other planets. The genetically- engineered Charlie-27, from the Jupiter colony, is super-strong and super-intelligent. Martinex, from Pluto, is a scientist with skin of shimmering crystal. Yondu, a native of Centauri-IV, a planet very similar to Earth, is a blue-skinned archer with a spiritual bent. The final member of the core team, Vance Astro, is from Earth but was sent on a “thousand-year mission to the nearest star” in 1988 and is only able to survive as long as he wears the metal suit that protects his ancient form from the air that will turn it to dust.
Comic fans who remember the 1990s will recall that Guardians
was one of a new group of titles introduced by Marvel in the first part of the
decade (along with a revamped Ghost Rider, the blandly-named New
Warriors, and the painfully zeitgeisty Darkhawk). Only the most
savvy fans were aware that the Guardians had been around since the late Silver
Age, even though the team had undergone a few lineup changes. I get the
impression that the ‘90s series was only moderately successful, although it did
run for 62 issues and a couple of annuals. Like most comics of that era, it was
struck by the “Liefeld curse,” i.e., its artwork started to reflect the
crappiness of the young Turks at Image, Liefeld in particular. (I know
Liefeld-bashing is trendy, but the guy did some unbelievably horrible work
and did damage to the comic industry that took over a decade to fix. Looking
back, I still can’t believe it happened.)
I first encountered the Guardians in Marvel
Team-Up #86, which I picked up in a convenience store in 1979 (I was only
five at the time and not much of a reader, but it had Spider-Man on the cover,
which attracted my interest), and they certainly made an impression on me. The
team featured in this issue consists of only three members: Martinex, Starhawk,
and Nikki (more on the latter two shortly). Along with Spidey, they battle
villains Hammer and Anvil, who originally fought the Hulk in #182 of his own
title. (Interestingly enough, MTU #86 is one of the only Marvel books
penciled and inked by Bob McLeod, who is primarily known as an inker. It’s a
shame that he didn’t do more full art because his work on this issue is
breathtaking.)
The series I want to focus on, however, is the run
in Marvel Presents #s 3-12 (1975-77), as the Guardians are the stars
of the title, rather than guest stars. In this article, I will examine issues 3
and 4 (more will follow).
In the alternate future the Guardians inhabit
(Earth-691), Earth’s colonies were wiped out by a race of evil, alien
lizard-men known as the Badoon (what is the deal with lizard-men always being
such jerks?). As our story opens, we find that the insidious reptiles have
invaded Earth as well and have massacred all but fifty million of the planet’s
human inhabitants. The Guardians have come to Earth’s aid and, fighting
tirelessly against the extraterrestrial threat alongside the Terrans, manage to
overthrow and summarily execute the Badoon governor.
The enigma in the story is Starhawk. First appearing
in Defenders #27, he has a strange way about him, referring to himself
as “One Who Knows” and being able to back the appellation up by revealing
things to characters, such as Defenders team member Valkyrie, that he could not
have known through regular means. He can also fly through space with neither a
conventional spacesuit nor obvious means of propulsion (a fact remarked upon by
Doctor Strange). The other Guardians know very little about him and his motives
are unclear, which is just the way he wants it, but they agree to let him join
them in their fight against the Badoon.
Starhawk has been absent for most of the battle, and
when we finally connect with him, we find that he is hatching his own plan.
Whereas the Terrans want to kill the defeated lizard-men, Starhawk has another
idea. He is aware that, due to a “screw-up in Badoon evolution,” the males and
females of the race are bitter enemies (this must make reproduction a problem)
and summons a starship filled with females to come and claim the males.
Initially, both the Terrans and the Guardians
mistakenly believe that Starhawk has betrayed them by leading another
contingent of Badoons into their midst, but his intent soon becomes clear, and
Starhawk quells the potential riot by temporarily blinding the bloodthirsty
Terrans with an energy blast. This, too, seems like an extreme measure, but the
team comes around to his way of thinking when he explains that the
newly-liberated Terrans must understand that violence is not the answer.
Months later, each of the Guardians’ attempts to
find a place in Earth society and is met with difficulty. Charlie-27 takes a
job as a construction worker but finds his supervisor’s condescending treatment
unacceptable. Martinex endeavors to resume his scientific studies but
encounters prejudice. Vance yearns for the touch of a female and suffers almost
unbearable anguish, knowing that his imprisoned body can never again know love.
Yondu, as the last member of his race, is filled with survivor’s guilt and,
moreover, is unable to connect with Earth on a spiritual level, circumstances
that lead him to contemplate suicide. (Pretty dark stuff for a Code-approved
book, eh?) Starhawk, aware of their turmoil, teleports all four onto their
ship, the Captain America, and proposes a mission which will take them
to the center of the galaxy.
After a short stop-off at Centauri-IV, so that Yondu
can commune with his gods to ask for good fortune on their mission, the Guardians
resume their journey, only to encounter an ostensibly hostile spacecraft. It’s
a small vessel, so they use the tractor beam to bring it aboard. A young woman
with fiery hair (literally) emerges and, believing her captors to be Badoon,
points a gun at Vance. Once they have managed to convince her that they are not
enemies, she tells them that her name is Nikki and that she escaped the Badoon
invasion of Earth’s mining colony on Mercury. Taking the family spacecraft
after her parents’ murder, she flees into space, surviving on food she finds on
a derelict cargo vessel, and spends her time scavenging for viands on
uninhabited planets and educating herself via the ship’s library.
After listening to her tale, Starhawk realizes that
the worlds she visited had supported life at one time but that some alien force
had devoured it. He describes the force as being akin to a vampire, sustaining
itself on exploding galaxies, and being “infinitely old, incalculably powerful,
and insatiably hungry.” It doesn’t take them long to find the creature, and
Starhawk volunteers to confront it alone. Charlie-27 activates the teleport
mechanism, and the enigmatic hero materializes in the vacuum of space, equipped
with only a “biocorder” that will send back readings about the creature for
analysis.
Yondu describes the creature as “Karanada, the
Emptiness that Devours” and says that his people foresaw its coming eons ago.
Starhawk, despite his best efforts, begins to succumb to the profound,
nauseating cold emanating from the thing and is drawn into its gaping maw. It
then turns its attention on the Captain America. They try to get out of
range, but the Karanada blasts the ship with its inscrutable “anti-energy.” The
vessel’s systems failing, the crew prepares to abandon ship.
The bulk of the Guardians’ exploits, including these
two issues, were penned by Steve Gerber, one of Marvel’s most prolific and
imaginative writers of the Bronze Age, and they comprise some of the best
comics ever produced. The complex narrative unfolds at a near-perfect pace, and
the superb characterizations are achieved in a remarkably brief space.
Illustrated by Al Milgrom, every panel seems on the verge of bursting. It’s
impossible to not get sucked into the intensely-immersive story.
This series is a prime example of why the Bronze Age
captivates me so.
The team’s earliest adventures have been collected
in Guardians of the Galaxy: Earth Shall Overcome, a hardcover in Marvel’s
“Premiere Edition” line. The Marvel Presents issues can be found in
another volume in the same series titled Guardians of the Galaxy: The Power
of Starhawk. Both retail for $25.
Labels: comics, Guardians of the Galaxy, Marvel Comics, Matt Sunrich, reviews
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