Hello and welcome to Comic Drake where I talk about comic books and my name is Drake.
Drax is one of my personal favorite members of the Guardians of the Galaxy, but did you
know that he’s SEVERELY different in the comics?
I mean heck, the dude’s not even an alien!
He’s a human!
Okay so let me explain...
Arthur Douglas was an ordinary dude driving with his wife and daughter one night.
However, he was in the wrong place at the wrong time as the Mad Titan, Thanos, was on
a reconnaissance mission on Earth and blew up Arthur’s car in case he was noticed.
Thankfully, Thanos’ father, Mentor, was watching from space and managed to intercept
Arthur’s soul as it was on its way into the afterlife, placing it inside of a body
specifically bioengineered to take on his corrupt son.
With this new body and after a memory wipe, Arthur became Drax the Destroyer, a destructive
being with super strength, flight, and even the ability to fire cosmic beams whose sole
purpose in life is to destroy Thanos.
If that wasn’t enough though, Mentor also saved Drax’s daughter, Heather, and raised
her to eventually become the telepathic badass, Moondragon.
These memories were later restored by Thanos in an attempt to throw Drax off guard, but
little did he know that instead of clouding the Destroyer’s mind, regaining his memories
only strengthened Drax’s resolve and made him even MORE intent on killing Thanos.
Sadly though, Drax proved to not be a very popular character so he was killed off.
This happened when Moondragon was consumed by power and accidentally killed her father.
After subduing Moondragon, The Avengers gave Drax a bad ass Viking-like send off by putting
him on a spaceship set to self destruct.
This IS comics though which means that Drax of course came back to life, being resurrected
simply because Thanos did as well.
Drax was incredibly different this time around though.
He was significantly larger and still suffered brain damage from when he was killed by Moondragon.
Because of this, fans jokingly referred to Drax as “Space Hulk” which the writers
absolutely ran with, writing Drax more like a brute and even having him confused FOR the
Hulk from time to time.
Really though, Drax was mostly delegated to being a big strong guy and comedic relief,
something we now see in the movies and his the modern interpretation in the comics.
You know, after his angsty super serious phase of the mid 2000s that like… every comic
book character was going through at the time.
Upon resurrection, Drax traveled with the Silver Surfer in search of Thanos, but the
Mad Titan had obtained all of the powerful Infinity Gems and trapped the duo inside of
the Soul Gem until they were freed by a the cosmic being known as Adam Warlock.
Alongside several other heroes, Drax helped take down Thanos and was recruited by Adam
Warlock who was tasked with guarding the Infinity Gems after Thanos went crazy with them.
As a member of this new “Infinity Watch”, Drax was left in charge of the Power Gem.
However, while most of Infinity Watch wore their gems on their foreheads, Drax thought
it was a jelly bean... and ate it.
Because it was indestructible and therefore indigestible, the Power Gem would be safe
in Drax’s gut and he could even tap into its power to increase his own already immense
strength.
Drax would serve with the Infinity Watch until they disbanded due to a combination of in-fighting
and the fact that the Infinity Gems straight up vanished.
With this, Drax popped up around the Marvel universe every now and then like when he accidentally
got stuck in the Microverse, but stuck around there with a team of heroes called the Microns.
He was pulled out of the Microverse by Adam Warlock to fight the “Champion of the Universe”,
but Drax lost and later helped his former Infinity Watch teammate, Gamora train She-Hulk
to take the Champion on.
About a year later, Drax was locked up in an alien prison which blew up, causing Drax
to crash land on Earth with some other dangerous criminals.
One of these baddies managed to kill Drax, but a short while later, he was reborn…
again, but this time, Drax became the sleeker, tattooed look that we know today.
It’s never explained why though.
Because comics.
However, it wasn’t just Drax’s physical appearance that changed.
In fact, he lost a lot of his physical strength, the ability to fly, and shoot cosmic beams.
It’s for this reason that he now favors twin blades.
This new incarnation of Drax became a dangerous assassin, and easily one of the most deadly
killers in the entire galaxy.
Drax was also the first one recruited to take on the Annihilation Wave, a powerful force
of cosmic invaders led by the villains Annihilus and Thanos.
Led by the last living Nova, Richard Rider, and his right hand man, Peter Quill A.K.A.
Star-Lord, Drax was technically the beginning of the organizing the opposing force, the
United Front.
Drax was a one man army, tearing through the Annihilation Wave like a tornado and he even
managed to single handedly kill Thanos AND rescue Galactus from the Wave’s clutches.
Unfortunately though, a new threat to the galaxy emerged almost immediately after the
Wave’s destruction.
This time, a powerful techno-organic species called the Phalanx invaded led by the villainous
Ultron.
Drax was even assimilated into the Phalanx’s ranks, but was later freed by Nova.
Drax proved useful during the final assault on Ultron and afterwards was invited to join
Star-Lord’s new team, a group dedicated to stopping large scale threats called the
Guardians of the Galaxy.
Drax was sort of a loner, but still proved to be reliable muscle for the team, that is
until he overheard how Star-Lord had his fellow Guardian, Mantis, sort of brainwash the team
into forming in the first place.
Drax left the Guardians and shared this information with the crew which significantly fractured
membership.
Joining Drax on his departure was his fellow Guardian, Quasar, who was also his daughter’s
girlfriend.
The two of them journeyed to successfully rescue Moondragon from the cosmic entity known
as Eternity.
They later re-joined the Guardians and also introduced Moondragon into the fold.
That is until Drax was sucked into a parallel dimension called the Cancerverse with Star-Lord,
Nova, and Thanos when Peter used the powerful Cosmic Cube in an attempt to defeat the Mad
Titan once and for all.
For some reason though, Drax reverted to his old Destroyer form in the Cancerverse and
fought alongside his fellow trapped people against both Thanos and an evil version of
The Avengers called The Revengers.
Nova sacrificed himself in order to return Star-Lord and Drax to their universe and it
turns out that the world thought they were dead and the Guardians of the Galaxy broke
up because of it.
Upon their return, Star-Lord and Drax reformed the Guardians where Drax plays a bit of a
background role, mostly acting as muscle while the story revolves around Star-Lord, but hey,
at least Drax was once Venom for a couple of pages.
I mean that’s cool, right?
I think it’s very fascinating that Marvel was able to take an obscure character like
Drax and turn him into a major player in entire multimedia juggernaut that they are today.
It’s really cool that he went from this really super weird cosmic caped hero who could
fly around shooting laser beams and now he’s a dual wielding assassin who doesn’t understand
puns or idioms or anything.
It’s really cool, but anyway, I want to take this time to give a huge shoutout to
my buddy, Jay, over at Fancy Teeth.
He is a really awesome, little bit lesser known creator out there on YouTube.
We actually did a collaboration together on Spider-Gwen and I think it’s a really good
video.
One thing I like to say on the channel is that I will work with anybody regardless of
their subscriber size as long as the video is good and I think that we can actually make
something good because of it.
I don’t care if you have two subscribers or two hundred thousand subscribers or even
two million.
If I think it’s going to be a good project and I think it’s going to be fun to work
on, I’ll work on it with them.
So I feel like that alone should really speak for Jay’s quality.
It’s not about subscriber size, I mean I think we’ve proven that here on Comic Drake,
but if you like what I do, I think you’ll absolutely love what we do over there and
plus, I’m there.
So if you like me then I’m there, it just makes sense.
Me + Me = Good.
I don’t know how to end this video so I’m done now.