The Story Behind the Creation of Guardians of the Galaxy (and the Sad Aftermath)

[Music] foreign Ed up the worst criminals in the Galaxy including infotron who is that this guy [Music] all the way from the DC Universe Gorilla Grodd and king shark Thanos an Intergalactic Dancing Machine oh hi you got me in prison out in outer space but uh Hey speaking of the Galaxy let's talk about Guardians of the Galaxy [Music] hello welcome to Comic tropes I'm your host Chris and today we're going to talk about the Guardians of the Galaxy in 2014 Marvel Studios released Guardians of the Galaxy a Sci-Fi space adventure it was easily Marvel's biggest gamble so far as characters like Hulk and Captain America had much more name recognition but writer director James Gunn delivered a hit with critics and audiences but this show is about comics and I want to talk about the comics that the Guardians of the Galaxy movie Drew inspiration from it included writers like Keith Giffin Dan Abnet Andy Lanning some important editors as well and yet despite a lot of a claim for these titles Marvel actually took these writers off of the Guardians of the Galaxy book shortly before the movie came out and ultimately handed it over to Superstar writer Brian Michael Bendis today I want to talk about what the original writers and editors added to Guardians of the Galaxy how they built it up what made it so special social and why Marvel decided to change course eventually but before I go too far I do want to thank this video's sponsor Dynamite comics you probably know Dynamite from their titles like red Sonia Vampirella the boys and many more but now you can make your reading experience a dynamite disney day this week Dynamite is publishing both Darkwing Duck and gargoyles yes Dynamite is now creating new stories for these characters gargoyles comes from writer Greg Wiseman the original Creator and issue two will be coming out alongside Darkwing Duck issue one this January the 25th Dynamite encourages you to use the comic book shop locator Link in the description below to pick these up from your local store but if you don't have a local comic store near you you can always visit dynamite.com to get yet their books a huge thank you to Dynamite and without any further Ado let's talk about Guardians of the Galaxy the Guardians of the Galaxy is the name of two different teams of space-faring heroes in Marvel Comics the first version of the team was created in January of 1969 debuting in issue 18 of Marvel Superheroes it was created by editor Roy Thomas writer Arnold Drake and artist Gene Cohen the book featured human astronaut Vance Astro teaming up with the last survivors of Pluto Jupiter and Alpha Centauri in the 31st century and battling the aliens known as the badoon who had wiped out many cultures in the Galaxy the team didn't show up in comics for another five years after that until writer Steve Gerber told a handful of stories with them including some time travel stories where they met the Marvel superheroes of the present day the Guardians finally got their their own title in 1990 with the first couple of years worth of stories written and illustrated by Jim Valentino until he left to co-found Image Comics in 1992. while Marvel had Cosmic characters like the Guardians and Silver Surfer a large part of the cosmic Universe was built out by writer Jim Starlin in the 1970s he created the evil Galactic space god Thanos in the pages of Iron Man a powerful being obsessed with death Starlin also created Drax the Destroyer to counter Thanos an innocent human Thanos killed who was revived by thanos's people with powers to oppose him Starlin Illustrated issue 25 of Captain Marvel about an alien Cree who comes to fight for the people of Earth and Starlin took over plotting that book as well in issue 26. Starlin took over writing and drawing the title warlock about an artificially engineered perfect man and turned it into a philosophical book full of surreal Space Adventures and Cosmic enui as well as building out Thanos in each of these space set books Starlin returned to Marvel in the early 90s writing Silver Surfer a cosmic Crusader for justice whose title covered similar existential themes to warlock that title built up Thanos and paved the road for a six issue event that Starlin wrote called Infinity Gauntlet where all the Marvel heroes team up to fight the Mad Titan after a few sequels to Infinity Gauntlet that honestly had diminishing returns Marvel stopped pushing its Cosmic titles until the early 2000s with the help of writer Keith Giffin now Giffin had a lot of experience writing good Sci-Fi stories in superhero comics including things like Legion of Superheroes for DC Comics he would be the perfect writer to bring up characters like Nova and Star-Lord who and so in the early 2000s Marvel began in Earnest to build up their Cosmic characters in 2003 Jim Starlin launched a series about Thanos he left the title by issue six an assistant editor Andy Schmidt reached out to Keith Giffin because of his experience writing Cosmic stories given put Thanos in an Intergalactic prison called the Kiln and introduced a character who hadn't been seen in Marvel books since the 19 1870s Star-Lord although this was not technically the same Star-Lord the original version was a Sci-Fi character in the book Marvel Premiere issue 4. a black and white comic by Steve engelhardt and Steve Gann it was a simple sci-fi story of a young man whose mother is killed by aliens and then he is abducted to the Stars where he has a greater Destiny given's use of Star-Lord was the character's first appearance in the main Marvel 616 universe and the character had cybernetic implants implying he'd had a rough history yet to be explored Thanos was canceled after issue 12. and editor Schmidt next launched a four issue series based on Jim starlin's character Drax the Destroyer although this would be a very different take on the superhero Schmidt spoke about Drax saying quote I really dislike the previous incarnation of Drax he was essentially a dumb Hulk in outer space but once I looked at the character's history at his origin story in particular what I found was this incredible origin story that didn't to my mind add up to the character who was on the page here was a character who had been created to do one thing kill Thanos arguably the smartest and most powerful villain in the Marvel Universe and they gave him the mind of a very young child that made no sense to me Giffin came up with a pitch to re-envision Drax as Rambo in space his old body becomes a husk that a leaner smarter tougher Drax emerges from one with unique tattoos and a penchant for fighting with knives Thanos and Drax it was decided by Giffin and Schmidt that they would launch a six issue event series called Annihilation it would feature the villain anilas and his wave of insectoid armies and it was also decided that the main hero would be Nova given would write the annihilation story but they wanted to have a tie-in Nova series and for that Schmidt turned to the English writing Duo of Dan Abnet and Andy Lanning also known as DNA they had a lot of experience writing both sci-fi stories as well as stories with large casts when Drax ended the sales weren't great but fan response was strong in the final issue Marvel announced he would be returning in their event which they called annihilation Schmidt's plan was for there to be a prologue setting up the plot followed by four mini-series focusing on important characters for the event including Ronin super scroll Nova and Silver Surfer the goal was to build up the event gradually and make readers care about the main characters while Silver's Surfer was fairly well known Nova hadn't been used much since his run with the new Warriors in the 90s and both super skrull and Ronan were mainly known as Fantastic Four villains and enemies of one another's respective alien races but all of them were going to have to work together in the six issue Annihilation comic against denialis Giffin and Schmidt posed it as a World War II story with the heroes facing huge armies of enemies at the time Marvel was giving almost all of its efforts with both talent and marketing to their event Civil War Annihilation flew under the radar relative to that but was very well received in fact it did so well that the writers of Nova Abnet and Lanning were asked to write a follow-up event Annihilation Conquest which would lead into some sort of ongoing title at the time editors were thinking probably Quasar the daughter of the original Captain Marvel after Annihilation did well editor Schmidt was assigned to the X-Men books and new editor Bill Roseman stepped in he reasoned that since the first event was something like Saving Private Ryan the second event should be more of an occupation story where the heroes are rebels fighting back is an Insurgency against an enemy that's already won the enemy was the villainous Avengers robot Ultron in control of a techno-organic army Annihilation Conquest ultimately becomes the beginning of the Guardians of the Galaxy as we recognize them today they would center around Peter Quill AKA Star-Lord writer Andy Lanning said quote I have to give Keith huge props for The Works he did with Peter Quill during the annihilation storyline he went from a seldom used Fringe character to a full-on cosmic war hero we picked him up during conquest and ran with what Keith had established making Peter a cynical World weary war vet who keeps heroically saving the universe despite himself Roseman decided to give Star-Lord a more defined look with this cybernetic implants removed artist Marco georgevich was hired to redesign Star-Lord and gave him the iconic helmet and gas mask look explaining that when he heard the name Star-Lord he thought of a British Lord and World War one use of gas masks in the trenches Roseman further decided Star-Lord would assemble a ragtag gang of Misfits for his dirty dozen-esque team fighting back against Ultron the stakes are high in this war story and Writer's Abnet and Lanning take advantage of the fact that we don't know if some of these obscure characters are going to make it all the way to the end of the story in fact characters including Moondragon Captain Universe and even Groot all died during this story Gamora was an assassin Jim Starlin had created in his Adam Warlock run very serious and a good foil against Peter Quill Drax was always intended to be part of the team and Abnet and Lanning also took advantage of mantis not being used anywhere else she was created by Steve engelhardt in his Avengers run but was last seen having adventures in space for muscle they grabbed some pretty obscure weirdos bug was a Marvel original character from their licensed micronauts comic Groot was a Jack Kirby monster from the 50s and Rocket Raccoon was a bill mantlow creation from his run on Hulk all of them were at best sea level supporting characters but together it formed a wildly original team Advent and Landing are great at character Dynamics with a large cast They especially did a good job pairing Rocket and Groot creating a natural feeling double Act of a sarcastic brilliant Scrapper and an aloof brute who could only say I am Groot Groot had originally been pretty verbose in his original appearance in Tales to astonish number 13 from 1960 and at first the writers considered making him chatty but Abnet said that in the scripting phase it felt like keeping groot's vocabulary small felt like his dialogue meant more than it sounded like it did Rocket and Groot were the comic relief amongst the teen that had very serious Fighters like Drax and Gamora those two were dangerous and joined the team on Redemption arcs coming out of the conquest event there was no more police force for the Galaxy because the Nova Corps had been destroyed leaving only Richard Ryder from Earth the cray and skrull civilizations were in upheaval Star-Lord decided to take it upon himself to form a team to protect the universe the Guardians of the Galaxy editor Bill Roseman said it was originally the plan to launch a quasar book out of Conquest but it wasn't working and people responded more to Star-Lord and his team writer Dan Abnet said the idea grew organically out of Conquest adding quote then becoming a team made sense like the best comic stories do and I think combining these forgotten characters into one unit where they could act off each other strengthen them all given felt he'd done what he wanted to with the characters Roseman hired DNA to write the new ongoing Guardians of the Galaxy title with art by Paul palettier who had drawn their Nova miniseries the writers had some good ideas moving forward one thing they wanted to do they put them in matching jumpsuits so that there was some visual Unity because honestly those are some pretty eclectic and diverse characters otherwise they also gave them a unique setting nowhere that is the empty head of a dead Celestial those are the space Gods you might have seen in the eternals movie if you're not familiar with the comics the writers had created that in their Nova run and it was just too good a location not to use they also decided to include some important characters from the annihilation event that they had written including Adam Warlock mantis Quasar on top of the five characters that we all know super well from the movies Guardians of the Galaxy ran for 25 issues between 2008 and 2010 somewhat quietly concluding its initial story arcs although the story itself was pretty explosive thank you foreign [Music] if we take a look at the critic and user review scores on comic book Roundup we can see that the title was well received from beginning to end so why did it end quite simply the sales were only average the book launched to 36 000 copies and by issue 25 was down to a bit over 25 000 copies it had a fan base but was not a huge hit but looking back at it writer's Abnet and Lanning were proud of the title Lanning said about his Run quote I think that's the Legacy that becomes your calling card because you've honed your storytelling and added quote we were very lucky to have that chance the opportunity to have the amount of time we had with those characters and playing in that little sandbox editor Tom breivort credits the strength of the Guardians of the Galaxy comic book run and Annihilation events with Marvel Studios opting to make it into a movie saying quote it's impossible to say for certain but I don't know that Marvel Studios would have been so quick to develop Guardians of the Galaxy as a film if not for the success of annihilation and all of the assorted follow-up projects that came out of it s popularity at the time was seen by screenwriter Nicole Perlman in 2010 Marvel Studios created a screenwriting program to get writers to adapt some of their lesser-known properties as options for the new studio to make into films Nicole selected Guardians telling website collider quote we got to choose from a list of a half a dozen properties that they had that were lesser Marvel properties there was no guarantee that these projects would ever get made and there were properties on that list that were much better known things that people had heard of but I saw Guardians of the Galaxy I took it promen would later write a short Gamora solo series the movie came out in 2014 and went on to earn 773 million dollars worldwide with the main characters and settings adapted from the Giffin Abnet and Landing runs sadly as well as Abnet and Lanning had seemed to work well together their last joint project was a Guardians prequel comic in April of 2014 to establish the movie version but they had separated as a writing duo in February of 2014 Dan Abnet wrote to website bleeding cool to explain quote Andy Lanning and I are no longer working together and indeed haven't worked together since early last year except to finish commitments the very long-standing relationship was no longer working and the split was for the best I am very much happier now working solo in 2013 Marvel launched a new initiative with different creative teams and updated takes on their characters with the upcoming Guardians of the Galaxy movie they relaunched the comic but this time they brought in Superstar writer Brian Michael Bendis at that time established with Marvel on their top books from Spider-Man to Avengers and X-Men the Guardians of the Galaxy has been a consistent Presence at Marvel Comics ever since keeping the cosmic side of Marvel in the spotlight but that initial two-year run and the two Annihilation events are still some of the most fun and experimental takes on Fringe characters that built up to something more than the sum of their parts it really is amazing how close the Guardians of the Galaxy Comics were to the development of that initial Movie Marvel definitely took a chance in terms of you know not that many people knew who Guardians of the Galaxy were I mean consider that the title had end ended in 2010 with 25 000 some readers that's not a huge audience for a movie so they were definitely taking some pretty obscure characters and doing something fun with it but if you want to see where all that came from a lot of those quirky characteristics the interesting settings the personal Dynamics they really do all come from that initial run that comic is fun it's probably my favorite yeah it's my favorite take on Guardians of the Galaxy the one by Abnet and Lanning as well as the events that they worked on with Keith Giffin and writers like Bill Roseman and Andy Schmidt those guys created something very cool at a time when everybody else was reading Civil War Annihilation and Guardians of the Galaxy were just killing it it's it's really really fun Comics I definitely recommend picking up those trade paperbacks and giving it a read I think you'll like it uh it's fun and what's cool about it is sometimes you can find these characters that nobody else is using or has any intention to use so nothing's going to conflict you know they didn't need to worry about anybody else saying wait I'm going to be using uh Rocket in My Avengers run in three months so they could take some pretty big chances I don't want to spoil it if you haven't read it but issue 25 of the Guardians of the Galaxy run by Abnet and Landing ends in just like this mind-blowing way I mean it leaves it open for them to move forward but it it kind of also ends fairly conclusively the story that they were telling which is just really nice when you're looking at periodical comics when you're looking at serialized stories that will probably keep going it's nice to still have a beginning a middle and an end I recommend it thank you very much for watching thank you to my patrons for supporting this and thank you very much to Dynamite comics again this week make it a dynamite disney day check out your local comic shop locator or check out the dynamite link I'll have all of that in the description below until then I'm working on another exciting episode for next week so keep your eyes on this channel don't watch any other YouTube don't watch any other streaming services only watch me or you can watch others but at least uh maybe click the like button alright thanks everyone and until I see you next time keep reading comics thanks for watching this video if you liked it please consider hitting like And subscribe if you'd like to support the show there are merchandise links beneath the YouTube video and you can always hit join on YouTube or visit comic tropes on patreon to get access to special perks Starlin took over writing and drawing the type and gave it a philosophical I've made it okay one more try bring up some somewhatics really can't talk today reached out to Keith Giffin because of its because of the invading outer space with his incredible Army of a bunch of crashing going in the back I think at the time Marvel was I almost got that out the enemy was the villainous Avengers and [Music] yeah foreign [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: ComicTropes

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Length: 24min 35sec (1475 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 22 2023