Marvel’s Lost Potential: The Original Guardians of the Galaxy

Anyone around here remember the REAL Guardians of the Galaxy? The team that debuted in, yes, 1969?? That’s right, the original squad of Vance Astro (last survivor of the 20th century), Martinex (the last survivor of Pluto), Charlie-27 (last surviving Jovian), and Yondu (last survivor of Earth’s only interstellar colony around Alpha Centauri) was assembled in print the very year man first set foot on the moon — in Marvel Super-Heroes #18.

According to a hard-copy source on Wikipedia, writer Arnold Drake and Stan “The Man” Lee took an idea by Roy Thomas — about “super-guerrillas fighting against Russians and Red Chinese who had taken over and divided the USA” — and turned it into one taking place in our solar system a thousand years hence.

The Brotherhood of Badoon, whose first appearance came a year before in Silver Surfer #2 (and took place in the-then present; it partially reprinted in a GoG story — Marvel Presents #8 — about how the Surfer encountered a Badoon scouting mission), has taken over the Sol System (our solar system, natch) and wiped out virtually all humans on Earth — only about 50 million remain. Inhabitants of other planets such as Jupiter, Mercury, and Pluto — genetically engineered to withstand conditions there — also have been eradicated.

Major Vance Astro and Yondu are already captives of the reptilian Badoon on Earth (above), while Charlie-27 escapes them on Jupiter by fleeing to Pluto, where he then meets Martinex. The latter eventually teleport to Earth and then join up with Vance and Yondu … and then agree to stay together as a guerrilla force against the alien reptiles. The team disappeared from Marvel’s pages for about half a decade until writer Steve Gerber made use of time travel to bring 20th century Marvel heroes to assist in the campaign against, as Ben Grimm calls them, “the Baboons.” (See Marvel Two-in-One #4-5, Giant-Size Defenders #5, and Defenders #26-29.) 

(Side note: If you like hard sci-fi, Defenders #26 is for you: It details human history from the mid-70s to the early 3000s. Of course, it’s now considered an alternate timeline.)

The Guardians finally got their own series in Marvel Presents (#3) following the defeat of the Badoon in Defenders #29. The opener is exceptional (even Al Milgrom‘s art is palatable thanks to inker Pablo Marcos), with scribe Steve Gerber including a remarkable extended dialogue via new member Starhawk about how now-liberated humanity must not allow its fear and hatred (of the Badoon) to travel to the stars with them.

Interestingly, in Marvel Presents #4, Gerber offers a brief “catch-up” for readers on what has transpired in the Guardians’ history thus far. We read that with the (re)discovery of faster-than-light travel technology in the early 2900s, the first human interstellar vessel was destroyed upon entering the “anti-matter” Proxima Centauri system, our closest stellar neighbor. But since Proxima Centauri is part of a trinary system (see: “Three Body Problem”), about 40 years later another FTL ship from Earth made a successful landing on a planet around Alpha Centauri, where they found Yondu’s people. (Anyone else notice the similarities to Yondu’s race and the Na-vi from Avatar? Both Native American analogues with mystical connections to their planet, the Centauri system … hmm …)

Unfortunately, the series quickly take a turn for the mediocre. The addition of the Mercurian Nikki does little to make the team more interesting, and trippy stories like #5’s “Planet of the Absurd” and #6’s “The Topographical Man,” are more akin to lesser-known Gene Roddenberry yarns like “Planet Earth” than “Star Trek” episodes like “The Doomsday Machine” and “The Best of Both Worlds.” In fact, the best of the original run is the aforementioned #8 of which half is a reprint of Silver Surfer #2, and this ish highlights another weakness of the team’s stories: How is Vance Astro so ridiculously quick tempered? How does an astronaut chosen among the very best to be the first man to the stars resort to immediate violence at the slightest offense? In #3 he zaps a drunken blue-collar worker at a bar, threatens Starhawk in #4, and at the end of #8 goes nuts with anger at humanity for treating the Silver Surfer so poorly a millennium ago (don’t believe me? See virtually any issue of the Surfer’s original run).

The Guardians’ run ended with issue #12 (just a couple issues after Roger Stern took over scripting chores), but they were featured most prominently, arguably, in the pages of the then-current Avengers against the threat of Korvac, aka Michael. In fact, it was the fact that Michael made it so Starhawk could not perceive him in any way that turned Earth’s Mightiest on to what was up (Avengers #176).

In 1990, writer and artist Jim Valentino revived the team with what, according to Back Issue, was “an action-oriented ‘fun’ feel.” The new series, which lasted 62 issues (not all of which were done by Valentino as he went on to cofound Image Comics), had a harder sci-fi feel — which I wanted! — but unfortunately Jim’s dialogue was too adolescent, his figures only marginally better than Milgrom’s, and his backgrounds almost non-existent. Nevertheless, he did concoct a very cool storyline via the race called known as The Stark which debuted in his first issue.

As you’d surmise, The Stark has definite connections to Iron Man. Although the Guardians’ timeline had divulged from the Marvel Universe proper some (publication) years before, it still contained the War of the Worlds-style attack staged from Mars in the early 21st century. In order to prevent the attacking aliens from getting their paws on his technology, Tony Stark launched his Iron Man suits and tech into space, and centuries later it landed upon an inhabited, but primitive, world. As with stories of a similar nature (including the origin story of Marvel’s own Watcher in Tales of Suspense #53), these primitives eventually mastered Stark’s tech but weren’t socially ready for it. In time they trashed their own planet ecologically, but worse, used Stark’s tech to threaten other planets. The saga of The Stark, ironically, seemingly came to an end in the pages of Iron Man (#280) when some of the more rational members of the race whisked Tony Stark from the past in the hopes he could save their world (and civilization).

The volume 2 Guardians also battled a revived Korvac (Michael) in the crossover “The Korvac Quest.” Yes, despite the brilliantly written (by Jim Shooter and David Michelinie) arc in The Avengers which culminates in #177 with Michael’s death, Guardians of the Galaxy Annual #1 reveals the omnipotent godlike being had sent before his demise a “cosmic gene packet” that would be “passed down through his ancestors.” 

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