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Guardians of the Galaxy
New for Patrons: Guide to Gamora
Even with plenty of drag and indie comics to focus on this month, I still found the time to squeeze in another new Marvel guide for all Patrons of CK. This guide follows a character who started off both dangerous and incredibly complex when she was introduced by Jim Starlin in 1975, and that’s never changed – although she has changed considerably in her nearly 50 years of comics. It’s time for a Guide to Gamora!
If I was totally off-base about my ideas of about Star-Lord when I got to work on his guide, working on a Guide to Gamora confirmed my assumptions and just made me love the character even more.
In fact, I’d go so far as to say that out of all of the Guardians of the Galaxy, Gamora is both the one who is closest to her comic version in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. That’s despite the fact that she is missing a critical element of her first 30 years of comics in the MCU.
Star-Lord, Peter Quill – Definitive Collecting Guide and Reading Order
The definitive issue-by-issue comic book collecting guide and reading order for Marvel’s Star-Lord, Peter Quill, in omnibus, hardcover, trade paperback, and digital. Part of Crushing Krisis’s Crushing Comics. Last updated November 2024 with titles scheduled for release through February 2025.
Star-Lord is a Marvel character who has multiple versions and multiple origins, and what can sometimes seem like multiple personalities thanks to a tug-of-war between his comic stories and his happy-go-lucky Marvel Cinematic Universe persona.
Star-Lord was originally a pulp sci-fi character whose feature ran across a handful of Marvel magazines and anthology titles in the 1970s, as penned by his creator Steve Englehart (as well as Chris Claremont).
None of the worlds or characters he interacted with closely corresponded with Marvel’s version of space at that time. And, a close reading of his comics show that his taking on his heroic name occurred in our future (but his past) in 1990. That seemed to confirm he was not meant to coexist with the Marvel Universe of the 1970s. That character was completely forgotten throughout the 80s and 90s, and was relaunched with a different character taking on the title in a 1996 mini-series.
That pair of Star-Lords are now known as The Star-Lords of Earth-791. How did they wind up excommunicated from Marvel’s mainstream continuity? That’s down to his film success and Brian Bendis,
In March 2005, Keith Giffen & Ron Lim introduced an old, grizzled, partly-cybernetic man named Peter Quill into their Thanos ongoing series. Quill had an unnamed off-panel history with Thanos and was imprisoned for life after a galactic defense gone wrong resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. That explained why he refused to acknowledge anyone else calling him Star-Lord.
Peter Quill was freed from his sentence by Gladiator of the Imperial Guard and next turned up as the second-in-command to Richard Rider as the last Nova in the 2007 Annihilation event. This was the same cynical, cybernetic Peter Quill. He was promoted to a title star in a mini-series that lead into the next cosmic event, Annihilation Conquest. Quill’s cybernetic implants were removed and he assembled a team readers and film fans will recognize as an early iteration of Guardians of the Galaxy. The team’s roster and name would be formalized coming out of the event and leading into the Guardians ongoing series in 2008.
As Peter resumed the title of Star-Lord, authors Dan Abnett & Andy Lanning slightly softened his personality and youthened him, but he was still the battle-scarred veteran of the Annihilation events. Abnett & Lanning ended their run on the character with his disappearance at the end of The Thanos Imperative.
Throughout all of those stories, the unspoken implication was that our present-day Marvel-616 Peter Quill was in fact the same as Englehart’s future version, meaning that he (or, perhaps, his father) had traveled back in time from those original 1970s stories.
That slate was wiped clean by Brian Bendis in 2012. Bendis brought Quill back as the leader of the Guardians with no explanation in his Avengers Assemble series, a tie-in the impending Avengers film as well as a stealth reboot of a Guardians team that would perfectly match their impending film incarnation. Bendis continued that continuity-wipe with the point-one issue of the new Guardians ongoing, in which he completely revised Peter Quill’s origins to be based definitively on the Marvel-616 Earth (in a story that would be somewhat echoed in the Marvel Cinematic Universe).
Although all of the Annihilation stories were still in continuity, Bendis’s version of Peter Quill was younger and funnier – though he still wasn’t quite the silly, somewhat-bumbling version we’d meet in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
As the MCU version of Star-Lord became a hit with the public, Bendis leaned into exploring his parentage and his connection to the planet Spartax while solo runs by Sam Humphries and Chip Zdarsky detailed his romance with Kitty Pryde and his solo adventures. Further Guardians books by Gerry Duggan and Donny Cates hewed closely to the Bendis template of the character.
It was Al Ewing in his 2020-21 Guardians of the Galaxy run who truly transformed Peter Quill’s character to align his present-day version and his comic origins, as well as exploring his devotion to Richard Rider and Gamora. Finally, by the end of Ewing’s run, it felt as though we had a Star-Lord who made sense as the combat-hardened Annihilation veteran as well as the happy-go-lucky Bendis-era Guardians. [Read more…] about Star-Lord, Peter Quill – Definitive Collecting Guide and Reading Order
New for Patrons: Guide to Star-Lord, Peter Quill
It might be my Indie Comics Month here on Crushing Krisis, but it’s also a month to focus on a certain group of Marvel galactic heroes as we approach their third (and final?) entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe! Today I have a guide for all Patrons of CK that focuses on the leader of this ragtag band of galactic guardians and his odd trio of origins in the Marvel Universe – a Guide to Star-Lord, Peter Quill.
Guide to Star-Lord, Peter Quill
Often in these launch posts I admit to you that I was a little unclear on the origins of a character or that I learned a lot about them in my full read of their material.
This is a rare case where I can say I was TOTALLY AND COMPLETELY WRONG about my understanding about a character’s origins! In my defense, Peter Quill’s origins had just changed a year prior to the creation of my original Guide to Guardians of the Galaxy – and Marvel was still recollecting his original (no-longer-canonical) origins along with other Guardians materials!
First things first: The happy-go-lucky Star-Lord you all know (and many of you love) from the Marvel Cinematic Universe has very little to do with the Marvel Comics version of the character. Although Brian Bendis and subsequent authors have gradually introduced the goofball levity of the film version into comics, there’s no mistaking that the comic version of Peter Quill is considerably more experienced and downright grizzled than his film counterpart.
Actually, I’d say Star-Lord is the #1 example of Marvel Cinematic Universe continuity and characterization changing a character permanently in the comics! All of the other Guardians characters were already much closer to their film counterparts than Peter Quill as of the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie.
Once you can get past the shock (and, perhaps, betrayal) of this surprising revelation, let’s move on to exploring the two (or, maybe three?) comic origins of Peter Quill. [Read more…] about New for Patrons: Guide to Star-Lord, Peter Quill
Adam Warlock – Definitive Collecting Guide and Reading Order
Updated Sep 29, 2025! The definitive issue-by-issue comic book collecting guide and reading order for Marvel’s Adam Warlock (and his counterpart Magus) in omnibus, hardcover, trade paperback, and digital. Part of Crushing Krisis’s Crushing Comics. Last updated September 2025 with titles scheduled for release through June 2026.
Adam Warlock is Marvel’s cosmic savior and destroyer all rolled up into one. He’s also one of the keys to the formation of the modern Guardians of the Galaxy as we know them from the MCU.
You would never be able to guess that from his first appearance as a gross, throbbing cocoon incubating the lab-grown progeny of a group of intellectual supremacists. The cocoon opens to reveal a naive golden-skinned god with cosmic power, whose early instincts are to flee Earth (though he returns to find himself a mate).
On one of his early flights from Earth, Warlock encounters the man who he would come to think of as a father – The High Evolutionary. Evolutionary had just created his Counter-Earth with its sped up evolution creating a dark mirror of our own history. In an on-the-nose biblical allegory, one from High Evolutionary’s twisted creations, Man-Beast, had descended on the planet with plans to corrupt it. In response, he sent his newly adopted Space Jesus down to defeat Man-Beast – but not before imparting some important philosophy as well as pressing the Soul Gem into Warlock’s forehead.
That is the peculiar status quo of the first half of Warlock’s 1972 series. It is set entirely on Counter-Earth, away from Marvel’s familiar heroes and the potential sales boosts that come from their team-ups (although Hulk manages to drop by twice). Unsurprisingly, the title didn’t last long and was shuffled off into cancellation before it could finish its story, which was later completed in Incredible Hulk.
A year later, Jim Starlin brought Warlock back via Strange Tales, an anthology book on its death bed after the departure of its anchor Nick Fury into his own title. Starlin immediately broke Warlock out of his earthly confines to make him an intergalactic hero waging war on the Universal Church of Truth – inexplicably led by his own dark mirror, Magus.
Each of Starlin’s early issue is a powerful act of imagination and creation as he introduces Pip the Troll and Gamora in quick succession before bringing in his creation Thanos to launch Warlock back into his own series. Yet, once Starlin resolved his initial Church plot, the series meandered and was quickly cancelled for a second time. Starlin bid farewell to the trio of Warlock, Gamora, & Pip the Troll in a pair of Avengers and Marvel Two-in-One Annuals, after which they sat unused (and rarely-referenced) for nearly 15 years.
It was Starlin would would bring Warlock back to the limelight for Infinity Gauntlet, which served as the explosive reintroduction of Thanos to the Marvel Universe after a year of simmering plots in Silver Surfer. With the original Captain Marvel still dead, this solidified Warlock as Thanos’s signature opponent… and, sometimes, friend. Warlock regained his own title spinning out of the event, Warlock & The Infinity Watch, which is recognizable as a sort of proto-Guardians of the Galaxy thanks to includin Gamora & Drax amongst its members.
After the conclusion of Starlin’s Infinity Trilogy and the Infinity Watch series, Warlock once again lost his purpose at Marvel. He returned briefly in 1998, and Starlin used him to support Thanos again in 2002-2004, but there was a sense that Warlock’s character was too power and too unstable to use alongside any other Marvel heroes (though Dan Slott made a valiant effort in his She-Hulk).
That all changed in the wake of 2007’s Annihilation: Conquest. Hot of their second smash hit cosmic event in a row, writers Dan Abnett & Andy Lanning gathered together a squad of Marvel’s Bronze Age space heroes – including Warlock and Gamora – and dubbed them as the new Guardians of the Galaxy. Warlock was central to this team, and it was the first time he had been written at length by someone other than Starlin in over 30 years. Yet, once again he was shuffled off-stage as being too powerful and too mercurial for heroes to trust.
Warlock has made some occasional returns since 2010, including in a line of Thanos OGNs by Starlin and in the 2018 event Infinity Countdown & Infinity Wars. With renewed focus on the Infinity Stones thanks to the MCU Infinity Saga, event author Gerry Duggan brought back the Infinity Watch concept of Warlock as the shepherd of all six gems (though they may not want him). [Read more…] about Adam Warlock – Definitive Collecting Guide and Reading Order