Star-Lord — The Return of Peter Quill
By: Mike Luoma
Tags: Comics, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Marvel, Star Lord, Books

Star-Lord — The Return of Peter Quill

Star-Lord Joins the Marvel Universe — Only to Face ANNIHILATION

Interior Detail, Annihilation #1, Art by Andrea DiVito, Color by Laura Villari. Credit: Marvel Comics.

A Continuing Look at the Comic Book History of Marvel’s Star-Lord, adapted from Star-Lord and the Guardians of the Galaxy: An Unofficial Comic Book History (Glow-in-the-Dark Radio, 2018), now available in paperback and as an eBook. This excerpt features insights from former Marvel editor Andy Schmidt.

Part One of this series gave us creator Steve Englehart’s insights on Star-Lord’s beginnings. In Part Two we saw how Chris Claremont helped turn Star-Lord into a more traditional hero. Part Three covered the adventurous Doug Moench years. In Part Four, Timothy Zahn and Rafael Marin explained why, for a time in the nineties, Star-Lord was no longer Peter Quill.

But then — in the second issue of Keith Giffen’s run on the 2004 Thanos series, issue number eight of twelve, Giffen re-introduced Star-Lord to the Marvel Universe, bringing in Peter Quill and landing him face to face with Thanos! The modern Marvel Cosmic Era had begun. And in Marvel’s Cosmic Comic Book event Annihilation that followed, Peter Quill emerged as a new fan favorite — in a storyline that could serve as a basis for Marvel Studios Phase Five.

It had been twenty-two years since Peter Quill had appeared in a new story. Eight years since the Star-Lord series with Sinjin Quarrel as Star-Lord, written by Timothy Zahn. Four years since the use of Jason as Star-Lord in Inhumans by Rafael Marin, Carlos Pacheco, Ladronn and Jorge Lucas.

Now, Quill was back.

However.

The character insisted he was no longer Star-Lord!

Curiously enough, Keith Giffen’s placement of Star-Lord in the Marvel Universe fits within the “Star-Lord Timeline” (detailed in Part Four) which makes Quill about 42 years old in 2004. He does appears to be about that age in the Thanos series.

Marin and Pacheco respected past Star-Lord stories by setting theirs earlier. Giffen, perhaps, showed respect by situating Star-Lord later in his life, after those past adventures.

Why bring Quill back? “That was all Keith,” series Assistant Editor Andy Schmidt said. “If you’ve ever met Keith, you’ll understand this, the guy is an idea factory. He just churns out a new idea — often big ones — on every page. One of his ideas was to use Star-Lord but not in costume and to get fans talking about where he’d been and what had happened to him. I just didn’t say no,” Schmidt said.

Peter Quill’s appearance in the Thanos series marked the beginning of a new era in Marvel Cosmic storytelling. Series Editor Tom Brevoort, Schmidt, and Giffen laid the foundations here for storylines that would soon lead to a major resurgence in interest in the sci-fi side of Marvel.

How did Giffen come to write Marvel Cosmic?

“We needed someone to come on board quickly on the Thanos book and I had wanted to work with Keith ever since reading his “Five Years Later…” series on Legion Of Super-Heroes,” Schmidt said.

“I brought that up with Tom Brevoort and he let me reach out to Keith. Luckily, he agreed to take over the series and even more luckily, the two of us got along really well.”

Cover, Thanos #12 (2004) Pencils by Ron Lim, Inks by Al Milgrom, Colors by Studio F. Credit: Marvel Comics.

Thanos finds Quill as a prisoner in the life-sentence cosmic prison known as the Kyln, built on the “Crunch”, the edge of the expanding universe. Giffen’s Quill is initially met as a man who says The Star-Lord is dead by his hand. Quill now has implants, cybernetic enhancements which have altered his appearance as their Borg-like extensions cover part of his head, right eye and face, and arms. These were all evidently added in the Kyln while he was a prisoner.

Thanos finds Quill conspiring with Shi’ar Imperial Guardsman Gladiator and others who want to try to kill or contain The Maker. The Beyonder, now The Maker, had been kept in the Kyln but broke free, and eliminated the controlling nannites in the bloodstream of all the prisoners of the Kyln with her will. The prison is now in chaos.

Gladiator tells Quill the Shi’ar didn’t know what she was when they turned her over to the Kyln, and admits to Quill that he’s not guilty of any crime. He’s been purposely sent into the Kyln to see if he can permanently contain or kill the Beyonder while she’s in mortal form.

Gladiator asks Quill, “So when do I get to hear your story?” to which Quill replies, “When pigs grow wings!” Ultimately, Thanos does Gladiator’s work for him, killing the Maker’s mind but leaving her body living, a living prison, for if Gladiator had killed her, her essence would have been set free — the opposite of his intention.

We get a little more background on Quill’s character in Thanos #11 when the first Herald of Galactus, The Fallen One, escapes from its cocoon containment in the Kyln. Turns out Star-Lord brought the Fallen One in. Quill plays more dissociative semantic games when pressed about it, continuing to talk about Star-Lord as if he were someone else — “Star-Lord brought it down.” Gladiator won’t have it. He needs Quill’s help to catch the Fallen One again. He informs Quill he’s been remanded to his custody and has been conscripted into the Shi’ar Imperial Guard! Gladiator lifts off from the Kyln with Quill in hand to go after the Fallen One, as the Fallen One goes after its former master — Galactus!

Peter Quill and Gladiator, Interior Detail, Thanos #12, Pencils by Ron Lim, Inks by Al Milgrom, Colors by Christie Scheele and Krista Ward, Letters by Dave Sharpe. Credit: Marvel Comics.

Peter Quill makes his first cover appearance in a long time on Thanos #12, along with Gladiator and the titular Titan (adding confusion, a misprint on the cover of the comic book labels this as “Samaritan: Part 4 of 6”, when it is actually part six). As Thanos and Galactus deal with the Fallen One, Gladiator reveals to Quill that he didn’t really spring him from the Kyln to go after the Fallen One — but rather Thanos. Maybe. Quill protests and reveals that he killed 350,000, “collateral damage” when he, as Star-Lord, was bringing the Fallen One down. That’s why he’s in the Kyln.

Gladiator brushes that off, telling Quill, “Your tenure as the Star-Lord legitimizes you.” When Quill asks, “To who?” he gets no answer. That’s the last we see of Quill in this series. The issue and the series wrap up with a battle between Thanos and the Fallen One. Thanos is victorious and mentally enslaves the Fallen One, turning him into his herald.

Peter Quill’s next appearance comes at Richard Rider’s side as NOVA fights the Annihilation Wave in the Annihilation maxi-series, a series that for many serves as the marker for the rebirth of Star-Lord — and the starting point of a resurgence in popularity for Marvel’s Cosmic characters.

Reading Giffen’s six issues in the Thanos series it’s clear that this is where editor Andy Schmidt and writer Giffen brought him back and began developing some of the ideas that would later play a part in Annihilation.

Schmidt and Giffen continued working together on that most significant Marvel Cosmic event in ages — Marvel’s Annihilation. The 2006 series was heralded by a Prologue issue, followed by four concurrently released four-issue miniseries, each focusing on a different character — released week-after-week — and then the event series itself in six monthly issues. The series brought some of Marvel’s “Cosmic” characters back on the scene in a big way, front and center, and Star-Lord played a significant role. It wasn’t necessarily planned that way.

Alternate Cover, Annihilation #1, Art by Bryan Hitch. Credit; Marvel Comics.

Star-Lord isn’t in Annihilation: Prologue or any of the four introductory mini-series. He shows up as the Annihilation miniseries itself begins. Annihilus and his invasion — the Annihilation Wave — have penetrated our universe from the Negative Zone at the Crunch — the location of the Kyln. They’ve destroyed the Kyln and are waging war across the cosmos.

NOVA — Richard Rider — is actually the star of Annihilation. “I was really focused on telling NOVA’S story and raising his profile,” Schmidt, the series editor for Annihilation, said. Star-Lord serves as a foil and “sidekick” to NOVA — Giffen writes the characters well, gives them great repartee as they fight the Annihilation Wave. The tone is set from Star-Lord’s first line, “You about ready to start paying attention now, Richie?”

“Again, mostly Keith,” Schmidt said, when asked why Peter Quill was best suited to be NOVA’s aide-de-camp. “Keith was really interested in Peter as a character. I had read and liked Star-Lord when I was younger, but Keith really turned him into something.”

NOVA, as narrator, tells us, “Mr. Sunshine’s my number two, goes by the name Peter Quill. Used to be called Star-Lord….he could be crazy…” and “Did I mention he used to be the Star-Lord? Guy was a living legend. Something… happened. He won’t talk about it, but it had to be brutal. Ask him about it and he’ll tell you, ‘The Star-Lord is dead.’ Period. No more, no less.” All Quill says is, “Last time I pushed my luck it went badly.”

“Peter wasn’t Star-Lord and was actively avoiding becoming Star-Lord again,” Schmidt recalled. “He had a dark sense of humor, the experience as a hero, but clearly he had seen some bad times, so that put him in a position to act as a sounding board, but even more than that, be someone who could talk to NOVA who hadn’t experienced war — not real war — and sort of help him understand that war is not the same thing as adventuring or super-heroing. So, basically, Peter just nicely fell into place there.”

He’s also helpful to NOVA in that he knows the cosmic players — tells him who Terrax, Paibok and the Mad Thinker’s giant robot are when they attack under Annihilus’ control. He knows Phyla-Vell when they meet up. “Phyla? Captain Marvel’s daughter?” he asks. “Guilty,” she tells him, “Didn’t you used to be The Star-Lord?” “Long time ago, darling,” he answers.

Despite his help, their United Front starts to lose the war. Annihilus uses his ally Thanos’ teleportation technology to move huge parts of the Annihilation Wave to strike the United Front without warning. And Thanos captures and enslaves Galactus — along with the Silver Surfer — harnessing the Power Cosmic for Annihilus’ use.

Even at the war’s bleakest, Peter Quill provides a sturdy second to Richard Rider. As NOVA figures out his next move, Quill lets him know he’s coming along, “Did you really think I’d let you run off and get yourself killed without my being there to tell you ‘I told you so’?”

Peter Quill (Star-Lord), Phyla-Vell and NOVA — Interior Detail, Annihilation, Art by Andrea DiVito, Color by LauraVillari. Credit: Marvel Comics.

Using their own, limited teleportation tech, NOVA brings Peter and Phyla along for one all-or-nothing, last-ditch effort. Despite Peter warning, “Sure… Kill the head looks good on paper…” NOVA decides to try to kill Annihilus one-on-one. This begins to look almost possible after Thanos is finally Destroyed by Drax, and Galactus is freed and begins to rampage against Annihilus. Phyla is then able to reclaim Quasar’s quantum bands from Annihilus, weakening him further still.

NOVA and Annihilus battle to a stand-still… until NOVA realizes there is a hole in Annihilus’ armored exoskeleton — his mouth. NOVA reaches in through the mouth and down Annihilus’ thorax — and then he pulls his insides out, killing him! The end. Well, for the moment, because it is comics, after all. We do see Annihilus reborn, at the very end.

The character of NOVA came out of Annihilation with increased popularity — and a new solo series. The buddy-cop bond between Quill and Rider, the way Giffen wrote Quill as a likable second or aide-de-camp to NOVA, with a biting, sarcastic sense of humor, made Star-Lord a talked-about fan favorite, too.

“What was clear to me and others, and I was pretty confidant Keith would be on board, was that (Star-Lord) would be in the hot-seat for whatever it was that we did after the first series ran its course,” Schmidt said. “We had a number of different ideas floating and we were circling in on what would eventually become Annihilation: Conquest — we didn’t know 100% what that was, but we knew Star-Lord would be a part of it.”

Marvel was originally tempted to start a new Guardians of the Galaxy series, according to Schmidt: “It was actually planned, or at least largely talked about, as a follow up to the first Annihilation series,” Schmidt said. “The original plan that Marvel had wanted, once they saw that it was a hit, was to roll out Guardians from the first series.” Schmidt discouraged them. A Guardians of the Galaxy series, “didn’t feel natural to me,” Schmidt said, “and I wasn’t sure we’d developed the characters enough — we’d made progress, but I wasn’t sure we had built the characters enough to stand on their own without an event to hold them together and boost sales… I felt pretty strongly that the characters weren’t really built and positioned to be a team book at that point. Drax had killed Thanos, NOVA had been away from Earth for over a year, and so on. There were loose ends that were drawing them all, literally, to different corners of the galaxy.”

The idea for a regular series shifted to Richard Rider. “We focused on NOVA, and Tom and I convinced the good folks at Marvel to launch NOVA as solo title with eyes towards a group book after we’d properly set them up — and if Annihilation continued to have legs after the second series. It did.”

Star-Lord did get his own miniseries as part of the sequel event Annihilation: Conquest. We’ll cover that — and the creation of the modern Guardians of the Galaxy — in our next installment.

Want the whole story now? Grab a copy of Star-Lord and the Guardians of the Galaxy: An Unofficial Comic Book History (Glow-in-the-Dark Radio Books, 2018) for more. These articles are lightly-edited and rewritten excerpts from the book.