Getting Ready for "Guardians..."

I've been re-reading Marvel's Cosmic events from the past decade doing research for a new installment - part four - of my in-depth look at the character Star-Lord for Comic Related. Went as far back as 2003's THANOS series, then up on through Annihilation and Annihilation: Conquest. Some great storytelling in those books, both in the writing and the art! Many different styles of art, too, from near photo-realism at times from Mike Perkins to fun, more impressionistic stuff from Timothy Green II... lots of cool cover art as well.

Those two events also set the stage for the Guardians of the Galaxy comic book series. The new team was created during Conquest, and the first issue appeared a month after the event ended. Star-Lord is one of the main characters in Conquest and in Guardians of the Galaxy. He's also one of the lead characters of the Guardians of the Galaxy movie - coming out this summer!

The new column with part four will probably be out later this week. In the meantime, find out more about Star-Lord, from his origin with Steve Englehart and early days with Chris Claremont and John Byrne, up through later years when Doug Moench wrote the character, on through Timothy Zahn's turn at writing Star-Lord in the 90s, in the first three installments of my character biography:

Part One: http://comicrelated.com/news/17021/star-lord-part-1
Part Two: http://comicrelated.com/news/17937/star-lord-part-2
Part Three: http://comicrelated.com/news/18390/star-lord-part-3

I've also written a series of columns on the original team known as the Guardians of the Galaxy - although they are NOT the folks the upcoming film is based on, that's a newer team - at least one member of this original team does show up in the new movie. This first Guardians of the Galaxy team dates back to 1968, though it was during the 1970s when Steve Gerber wrote them in The Defenders and beyond, and in the 1990s in Jim Valentino's hands, when the team truly became loved. Get the story on all those years in an earlier series of columns:

Part One: http://comicrelated.com/news/16790/guardians-of-the-galaxy
Part Two: http://comicrelated.com/news/16855/guardians-of-the-galaxy
Part Three: http://comicrelated.com/news/16856/guardians-of-the-galaxy

I began writing my Cosmic Crackle column for Comic Related when Thanos showed up at the end of The Avengers movie. That blew my mind! Had to share what I knew about his history. Here's that first column, on Thanos: http://comicrelated.com/news/16094/the-mad-titan

To top it all off, you can listen to me and the guys talk about Marvel Cosmic on the latest Zone 4 podcast, while you're reading. We cover some Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. stuff and other comic news first, then dive on in... http://comicrelated.com/news/24628/zone-4-260