Hello and welcome to Comic Drake where I talk about comic books and my name is Drake.
This might surprise you guys, but Star-Lord is a character that has been around for a
LOOOOOONG time, but lots of these old stories were retconned into taking place in another
universe so technically, that Star-Lord is not the one that we’re talking about today.
To make things even more complicated though, Star-Lord has had a bunch of different origins
which means that the one we’re going to talk about is just the most recent at the
time of this recording.
With all that crazy nonsense out of the way though, let’s dig into his history!
An alien named J’son crash landed in Colorado where he stumbled across one Meredith Quill.
As the emperor of the planet Spartax, J’son needed to get off planet as soon as possible
in order to lead his people in their galactic war.
During the time that J’son spent on Earth repairing his ship, he and Meredith fell in
love, but J’son had to eventually return to the battlefield, leaving Meredith pregnant
with their child.
This baby grew up to be Peter Quill and when he was ten years old, an alien race called
the Badoon came to Earth in order to destroy the Spartax imperial bloodline.
The Badoon killed Peter’s mother and when attempting to defend himself, Quill stumbled
across the Element Gun, a special alien pistol left by J’son that can only be used by his
bloodline.
The Badoon destroyed Peter’s home and left under the impression that they killed him.
For years, Quill bounced around foster homes in Colorado, swearing that he would avenge
his mother.
Though he was a bit sidetracked and apparently tried to become a ska singer.
As soon as he was able though, Peter got a job at NASA under the supervision of his mother’s
best friend, Lisa Chang, but the young Peter had dreams of being an astronaut and snuck
hundreds of hours inside of their flight simulator.
Quill’s arrogance and desire to be more constantly put him at odds with the NASA pilots,
prompting him to be let go when he got into a fist fight with one.
In revenge, Peter hijacked an alien Kree ship donated by the Avengers, unlocked the secret
of its warp drive, aaaaaand got stranded in deep space.
After floating for the days, Peter’s ship was taken by the Ravagers, a group of space
pirates led by the cunning Yondu.
Peter was able to outsmart them and single handedly steal their ship, but after a slip
up, Yondu escapes from his bonds and nearly kills Quill.
Without anywhere to go, Peter begs Yondu to let him join the Ravagers which the blue dude
actually accepts, allowing Peter to become…
the ship’s janitor…
Fun fact, the vacuum that Peter uses is called the Star-Lord which is also the royal title
that he holds in the Spartax empire as the son of J’son.
So there’s two different ways that he might have gotten the name that you know and love
him as today.
Anyway, when Quill mentions that NASA had reverse engineered the Kree ship and made
their own vessel with four warp drives, Yondu allowed Peter to work his way up the crew’s
ranks and go on several adventures.
Yondu even found a tracking crystal with the location of the Badoon ship that killed Peter’s
mother that he held over Quill’s head.
In exchange, Peter just had to betray his old NASA crew and help the Ravagers steal
the ship.
No big deal.
Quill initially went along with the plan, but a combination of guilt and Yondu letting
it slip that he still only saw eter as just the janitor, Peter betrayed the pirates and
even ejected Yondu’s entire fuel supply and gold stash into the vacuum of space.
After saving the day, Peter could have stuck around the NASA crew, but he decided to explore
the galaxy and have several adventures as Star-Lord.
Now, contrary to the movie’s portrayal of the character, Star-Lord is actually pretty
well known around the galaxy with many characters actually going out of their way to praise
his exploits.
Unfortunately though, we’re not really shown any of these, but at some point along the
way, Star-Lord underwent several cybernetic enhancements including a universal translator
implant, a Memchip which allows one hundred percent memory recall, and a cybernetic eye
for good measure.
The only one of Star-Lord’s escapades that we’re shown is in a flashback where he was
hunting down a former herald of Galactus, but in order to subdue him, Star-Lord had
to destroy a nearby mining colony as the life energy released upon death hurt the herald.
It’s comic book stuff.
Don’t think about it too hard.
Peter sacrificed thousands of lives, but in return, he saved millions.
However, Peter still saw himself as a mass-murderer and decided that the mantle of Star-Lord would
die and he even turned himself over to the Nova Corps, the space cops of the Marvel universe.
The Corps locked Quill away in an intergalactic prison, but his bravery and previous exploits
up getting him involuntarily drafted into the military of the alien Shi’ar empire
because why not?
This would ultimately not last though as a threat to the galaxy, the likes that no one
had ever seen before, arose in the form of the Annihilation Wave, an invading force led
by the villains Annihilus and Thanos.
Leading the resistance was Richard Rider, the last living Nova, and Peter came on as
his second in command.
Quill fought the Wave bravely, cementing himself as even more of a legend and having seen himself
redeemed for his past crimes, he was not opposed to being called Star-Lord.
Though he still prefered just Peter.
Quill made several connections during the war, one of which landed him a position as
a combat advisor to the Kree.
The crowning achievement of this new job was going to be a partnership that Quill brokered
with the Spaceknights.
They’re exactly what they sound like.
However, nobody could have predicted that the Spaceknights were being controlled by
a techno organic species called the Phalanx who were led by the villainous Ultron.
Because of this, Star-Lord unknowingly let them into the Kree’s defense network.
No one could have foreseen this, but Peter still needed to be punished for allowing the
Phalanx to essentially take over the entire empire.
As such, his cybernetic implants removed, but the universal translator was almost immediately
reinstalled so he could you know… actually talk to the aliens.
Because the Phalanx can infect technology though, the Kree sent Quill on a suicide mission
along with a strike force consisting of nothing but primitive weaponry.
Among this team were the colossal tree, Groot, the tactician, Rocket Raccoon, the prophet,
Mantis, the warrior, Bug, the extremely powerful Captain Universe, and the berserker, Deathcry.
This team proved incredibly useful during the Phalanx invasion which prompted Star-Lord
to take most of its members after the fact and form a brand new team dedicated to handling
large scale threats called the Guardians of the Galaxy.
Though, the galaxy was kind of in a vulnerable and fragile state after two back to back wars
so Peter assembled the Guardians as fast as he could, having Mantis lightly brainwash
them into saying yes in the first place.
When this news got out, the team significantly fractured, but eventually came back together,
just in time for Star-Lord and Nova to take out Thanos with a Cosmic Cube and seemingly
die in the process.
In reality though, Star-Lord, Nova, and their teammate Drax as well as Thanos actually were
transported to the Cancerverse, a world where death isn’t even a concept.
Nova used the powers of his Nova Force and the Cosmic Cube to rescue Star-Lord and Drax
from the Cancerverse, but also accidentally freed Thanos as well.
Good job, dude.
But during the time that they were away, the Guardians disbanded so the first thing they
did upon getting back to the main universe was get the band back together and they even
brought along Iron Man for good measure.
It’s also worth noting though that this version of the Guardians was a less formal
organization, essentially becoming a traveling group of thieves/mercenaries, the profits
of which, Star-Lord donates to a bunch of space orphanages.
It’s also around this time that Star-Lord met Kitty Pryde who was playing den mother
for a group of time displaced X-Men when the Shi'ar empire decided to kidnap the young
Jean Grey for crimes that her older self committed.
After helping save Jean, Kitty and Peter started a long distance space relationship.
Neat!
But speaking of relationships, Peter and his dad never really got along, mostly because
J’son wants Peter to shape up and take his rightful place as Star-Lord of the Spartax
empire, but the guy’s kind of a prick.
In fact, the dude took Peter prisoner who managed to escape and randomly found his movie
costume which before this point was never seen in the comics.
Okay so quick side rant...
In one of the most bizarre acts of corporate synergy, Star-Lord changes outfits for no
explained reason AND his Element Gun, the most iconic thing about his character up until
this point magically changed designs.
Sometime later though, he even finds a SECOND Element Gun without any explanation as to
how that’s even possible because up until this point, the Element Gun was initially
a special one of a kind weapon.
But angry fan rant aside, Peter escapes his father’s custody, but not before revealing
to the world what a Grade A jerk he is which causes massive civil upheaval and unrest.
This ultimately culminates after the Guardians team up with the X-Men to deal with a powerful
artifact called the Black Vortex and afterwards, Peter finally proposed to Kitty Pryde and
he’s elected as president/king of Spartax against his will since the royal council of
Spartax hoped to manipulate him like a puppet.
Are you confused yet?
It’s okay, comic books.
Anyway, Peter went along, but became so wrapped up in his presidential duties that he unintentionally
neglected Kitty and the other Guardians of the Galaxy.
In fact, he even missed her birthday dinner!
That is just something you can not do when you’re in a relationship!
It didn’t help that when Kitty decided to become the new Star-Lord, Peter literally
had her thrown out with the garbage.
Needless to say…
they broke up.
Star-Lord ended up rejoining the Guardians though after some powerful beings attacked
Spartax and Peter’s council ended up holding him accountable for it for no real good reason.
Let’s be real though, Quill is much more at home with his crew on the Guardians.
They ended up going to Earth in order to help out their ally, Captain Marvel, in the second
superhuman civil war and they lost their ship in the process.
Now stranded on Earth, the team went their separate ways, but Star-Lord got arrested
and was tasked with doing community service and paying a hefty fine and in order to raise
the necessary cash, Peter picked up work as a bartender at a super villain bar owned by
Black Cat.
With all those crazy adventures out of the way though, the Guardians ended up getting
a new ship and got back together…
again… and at the time of this recording, they’re off on some All-New adventures.
While it can be frustrating for many old school comic book fans to see just how much Star-Lord
has changed over the years, there’s really no doubt that this new modern interpretation
of Star-Lord from the movies and the modern era of comics is probably the best version
of the character that we have gotten in a long time and is probably one of the entire
reasons why the Guardians of the Galaxy have gone from a very obscure Marvel franchise
to one of the most important players in not only the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but the
Marvel comic book universe as a whole.
It’s fantastic and great and wonderful.
Of course, these videos would not be possible without the support of my amazing fans over
on Patreon.
You can see some of their names down there in the description below.
It’s hard to remember everybody off the top of my head.
It’s a great problem.
Huge shoutout to Yosh Flores, Edgar Avalos, Bonnie Davies, Ashley Donson, Billy Lewis,
and Tim Wyllis you guys are awesome and I would not be able to do this without your
support.
Thank you guys very much!
But hey, if you want to learn more about the Guardians of the Galaxy then you might want
to watch our playlist on all of our Guardians videos.
I think that we put a lot of time, effort, and research into them and maybe you’ll
learn something new even if you’re a hardcore comic book fan.