This magazine-sized publication presented the debut of Star-Lord. And he started as an essay…
Did Steve Englehart and Steve Gan have any idea that a character they created to tell a story of parental neglect and loss of identity in a pulpy black-and-white magazine would become a major film star?
I doubt it.
Steve Englehart loved words. But a lot of what he writes about as the character concept doesn’t end up making it into the actual comic book stories.
And for those of you who think of this guy as Star-Lord…
Prepare to be disappointed.
That’s how dude looked in his early appearances.
But have an open mind, because this is a REALLY GOOD comic.
He’s born when the planets realign in a new line…
And his dad is a violent asshole. He takes baby Quill out to the woods, grabs an axe, but before he can kill the infant, he has a heart attack.
That is one hardcore origin. From there, his mom raises him, but she becomes sick and Peter Quill becomes a bit of a shut-in and a fan of Star Trek season three. It says that in the comic:
Season three.
As if this kid’s life wasn’t tragic enough, Star Trek was cancelled after season three.
Then aliens come, kill his mom…
…and he gets sent to an orphanage, hell-bent on a mission of vengeance to kill the aliens who killed his mother. He studies hard and becomes an astronaut. But he’s such an asshole to his fellow NASA people that he doesn’t get selected for the Mars mission.
You have to love that irony. When he was “on,” Englehart was one of the best comic writers of all time. But by the 1990s, Earth has “Earth Stations,” and Quill gets to go to one.
The station is contacted by a “Starlord” (no hyphen) who says that he will return to select one of them to inherit his position as Starlord. Quill volunteers, of course, but he isn’t picked. Which literally drives him crazy. Like, homicidal crazy. He kills his competition and then meets God.
He’s called The Master of the Son, and he’s kind of the keeper of the Starlord mythology.
And then becomes Starlord, and gets his revenge.
What a terrific story! And how great is Steve Gan’s art?
We also got a neat pin-up:
That’s it for the character for a year.