Guardians of the Galaxy #9 - "I shall make you a Star-Lord."

[laughing_tree]

A lot of what I do involves going right back to the first appearance of a character — not because I think that's the best they've ever been and deviating from it is blasphemy, but because I think there's usually a nugget of primal mojo that you can find there while the idea's fresh and not fully coalesced. With Immortal Hulk, vast swathes of my run are informed by the chaos of the first six issues, and especially by the unforgettable moment of Bruce Banner staring out of the panel waiting for night to fall, cementing it as a horror book. But to get back to Guardians: Star-Lord's first appearance is weird as all get-out, set in some alternate future and 100 percent not in continuity, so you'd have thought that technique wouldn't work this time — but when I looked back at it, it did have one of those little globules of primal magic in it that I'm going to be making a lot of use of over the first year. -- Al Ewing

Comments

[themajesticmoose]

I am so happy that in the comics Peter Quill is canonically bisexual now

Another reason to like the comics version more than the movie version

And another reason to love Al Ewing's writing on this book

[bruinsfan]

I'll be even happier if Chris Pratt is forced to portray it in the next MCU movie he appears in. Maybe he won't be able to maintain willful ignorance of his mega-church's bigotry if it's aimed in his direction by proxy.

[lordultimus]

Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure GotG 3 has finished filiming.

[cyberghostface]

They didn't even start.

[lordultimus]

Whoops, my bad.

[cyberghostface]

I think they had started pre-production but then whole tweet situation happened so it's going to be a while.

[themajesticmoose]

Part of me would find that hillarious, though honestly I think Chris Pratt is a terrible actor and I wasn't much of a fan of his take on Star Lord even before I found out the stuff about him belonging to a church of bigoted scumbags so I'd rather the character just be re-cast and we get a better actor playing him

[cyberghostface]

And if he were to do that with a smile and then officiate a gay wedding dressed as Star-Lord people would still assume he secretly hates gay people even though there's no evidence he feels that way.

[bruinsfan]

All we know regarding the subject is that he publicly denied that his church was anti-gay, which does not seem to match what ChurchClarity.org was able to find out about its policies and practices:

https://www.churchclarity.org/updates/church-clarity-profile-zoe-church-la

[beyondthefringe]

This is bonkers as heck.
But then again, Star-Lord as a character -was- rooted in some pretty far-out stuff, man. (Typical 70's Englehartian weirdness, naturally.)

The modern version as appearing in Annihilation, etc, was pretty far removed from the original iteration, and the deviation only increased after the movie came out. So to see this attempt to reconcile the assorted eras... well, Ewing's one of the few writers I trust to make it happen. It even clears up the whole mess around the concept of the element gun by reframing it as a totem or lens for something inherent within him, rather than a specific weapon.

And hey, Peter Quill: bisexual (pan?) and polyamorous... that's cool.

[themajesticmoose]

I should try and find his original appearance somewhere to read, as I'm curious about it with the way that Ewing is using it here to re-introduce this "Master of the Sun" stuff to his backstory and doing something new with the character

[donnblake]

Bisexual and poly... and unfortunately due to brood between one and twelve years before his next relationship. D:

[themajesticmoose]

Well it wasn't so much brooding as it took him that long to accept he couldn't get home again. He didn't want to start a new relationship here at first because he still thought there was a way he could get back to Gamora who he's in a relationship with right now

When he came to believe that there was no way to ever return home, then he opened himself up to the idea of a new relationship and moving on

[donnblake]

A fair distinction, and I suspect that if he runs into Gamora that period will be shortened, but I *do* hope that future writers (I trust Ewing) remember he's got a couple of sweeties back on... (do we get a name for that world?)

[lordultimus]

Part of me wonders if Ewing was able to implement sweeping changes like this because the GotG have only one movie left.

Just an idle thought. I do like this and want to see where it's going.

Mod Note, Page Count

[icon_uk]

As four pages of this were posted last month, please trim your post so that no more than 1/3 of the entire story is posted cumulatively on scans_daily.

The original post is here, for checking

https://scans-daily.dreamwidth.org/9055200.html