Fans of Guardians of the Galaxy know one thing for sure: Peter Quill is a pretty gnarly dude.
With a name like Star-Lord, it's pretty much a moral imperative to become a kick-butt space
adventurer.
But is there more to Quill than meets the eye?
Here's what comic fans know about Star-Lord that you don’t.
Star-Lord's nickname is ironic
Every hero needs a code-name, even if it's one you make up for yourself that nobody else
uses or has even heard of.
“Star-Lord.”
“Who?”
In the comics, though, the name is an ironic one, as Quill's dad is literally a star lord
named J'Son, ruler of Spartax.
He wants Quill to follow in his footsteps, but Quill nopes out of it, keeping the name
as a bit of a middle finger to dad.
Star-Lord has 3 different origin stories
There are two routes you can go with superhero origins.
Either you can have one origin that you retell ten billion times, like Batman and his perpetually
dying parents, or you can just have a whole bunch of different, conflicting origins to
keep things interesting.
That's the case with Star-Lord, who has had three different backstories.
Originally, he was an astronaut who ended up becoming a spacecop.
That was tweaked later, introducing the idea that he joined the galactic pirates known
as the Ravagers before becoming Star-Lord.
And then there's the movie version, which swipes elements from both while giving him
a totally different dad in the form of Kurt Russell.
At least none of Star-Lord's origin stories involve slow motion pearls.
He wasn't originally a Guardian of the Galaxy
When Star-Lord first appeared, he had nothing to do with the Guardians of the Galaxy.
In fact, that's the case for every single one of the film's characters with the exception
of Yondu.
He was one of the original Guardians of the Galaxy when they first debuted way back in
1969.
It wasn't until 2008 that Star-Lord ended up putting together a new team of Guardians
alongside Gamora, Rocket, Groot, and Drax.
“They call themselves The Guardians of the Galaxy.”
“What a bunch of a-holes.”
Gamora and Peter aren't an item
In the movies, there's a clear will they - won't they flirtation between Star-Lord and Gamora.
But in the comics, you know, not so much.
Gamora has historically been romantically linked to Thanos's archenemy Adam Warlock,
though she also had a thing with the man called Nova, Richard Ryder.
Since he doesn't seem to exist yet in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, that romance is
a long shot on the big screen, but it has a better chance of happening than Peter's
comic book romance with the X-Men's Kitty Pryde.
Since the movie rights to Kitty are tied up at a different movie studio, their love is
tragically doomed.
Hey kids, comics!
One of the great things about comics is that pretty much any random thing the writers can
possibly think of is bound to eventually happen.
So while the adventures of the movie Star-Lord have been pretty weird, the films are nothing
compared to the shenanigans he's gotten up to in the comics.
For instance, at one point he briefly became king of the planet Spartax, while at another
point, he was trapped in an alternate dimension called the Cancerverse where he was unable
to die.
And in a twist the movie version of Peter Quill would no doubt love, in one storyline
he became a professional lounge singer.
Rock on, Star-Lord!
Star-Lord dated his spaceship
Fans of the movie might be aware of the fact that director James Gunn named their ship
The Milano after childhood crush Alyssa Milano.
But in the comics, Star-Lord had a very different ship who was a key part of his adventures
- because the ship was sentient.
Known simply as Ship most of the time, Ship was actually the imprisoned consciousness
of a sentient star named Aurora.
At one point, Ship managed to gain physical form and totally made out with Star-Lord before
her body was destroyed and she just became a starship again.
That's… kind of creepy.
There was another Star-Lord
It might be hard to imagine anyone but Chris Pratt as Star-Lord, but during a brief stint
in the mid-'90s, a totally different character took up the name.
While Peter Quill was out of action, a psychic space cop named Sinjin Quarrel found Ship
and Star-Lord's gear and basically appropriated everything for himself.
Apparently when it comes to superhero codenames, finders keepers, losers weepers.
“Hey!
If it isn’t Star-Prince.”
“It’s Star-Lord.”
“Oh, sorry.
Lord.
I picked this guy up awhile back for petty theft.
He’s got a codename!”
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