The original version. No talking raccoons, no walking trees - but there's still an Earthman making 20th century pop-culture references
Marvel Presents: Guardians of the Galaxy is a 1975 comic series from Marvel Comics, published within the Rotating Protagonist comic book Marvel Presents. The series was initially written by Steve Gerber, with art by Al Milgrom and Pablo Marcos and color art by Phil Rache.
Set a thousand years into the future of the shared Marvel Universe, the series stars the first version of the titular Guardians of the Galaxy - a band of freedom fighters founded to save Earth from the alien Badoon. The Guardians were initially introduced several years earlier, starring in a 1969 issue of a different Rotating Protagonist comic, Marvel Super Heroes. Their story continued in Marvel Two-in-One and The Defenders, in which time-travelling Marvel heroes helped them to liberate Earth from the Badoon.
Now it seems that their war is finally over - but most of the Guardians are the last of their kind, with no home to return to, and life on Earth doesn't appeal to them. Setting out for other worlds, they soon find new challenges and enemies awaiting them...
The series debuted in Marvel Presents #3 (replacing Bloodstone) on November 25, 1975 - and ended in #12 (May 24, 1977), when the series was cancelled.
The Marvel Presents Guardians of the Galaxy stories contain examples of the following tropes:
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: When the Guardians find Drydock, its controlling AI has gone a little mad after all the human crew died, and then several years being on its own. By the time the Guardians arrive, it decides to kill or surgically experiment on them. Charlie's forced to destroy it.
- And the Adventure Continues: The series ends with the Guardians finding Drydock, with the intent of using it to heal Starhawk from his injuries, as well as replace the destroyed Captain America. Their next appearance confirms they did do those things, and made Drydock their new home base, replacing the Captain America with the Freedom's Lady.
- Asshole Victim: In the first issue, Martinex fries the last Badoon commander, technically preventing him from ordering a cease-fire, but given everything the Badoon have done to mankind, nobody's exactly concerned.
- Bullying a Dragon: Charlie gets a job working reconstruction on Earth post-Badoon, but the foreman continuously insults him, until Charlie has enough.
- Characterization Marches On: In her first appearances, Aleta seems to be as aloof and mysterious as Starhawk, demonstrated by zapping her kids with a beam to make them go to sleep. Once she starts interacting with the other Guardians, this changes.
- Cool and Unusual Punishment: The fate of the Brotherhood of the Badoon is to be taken back to their homeworld by the Sisterhood (Badoon genders being otherwise completely separated). One passing human figures it's a Fate Worse than Death.
- Destruction Equals Off-Switch: Faced with the complicated array of controls for Drydock, Charlie figures if Martinex was there, he'd know what precisely to do to turn it off. Charlie, meanwhile, just smashes the computer banks.
- Destructo-Nookie: The Topographical Man is a cosmic predator in humanoid form, a sinister figure so large that his hands grasp stars light years apart. Whole civilisations live upon his body. Or, at least, they do until Vance Astro temporarily possesses him and participates in an "act of love" with the equally huge disembodied spirit of Nikki, which tears his body apart and destroys the nearby stars, ending in a huge explosion. It's not directly shown to be sex, but it's very heavily implied, not least by Nikki and Vance's interactions afterwards.
- Filler: Issue #8 reprints content from Silver Surfer #2, the debut of the Badoon, with a Framing Device to link it to the Guardians' adventures a millennium later.
- Flaming Hair: Nikki is a transhuman Mercurian, engineered to live on the Mercury colony. Her hair appears to be flames.
- Foreshadowing: While on the Topographical Man, Starhawk tells the other Guardians "I have been many people's sons". The reveal of his origins shows just what he means, and later retcons go on to make it even more true.
- Framing Device: Marvel Presents #8 is an interesting example of filler. The intended story was running late, and they couldn't reprint the Guardians' first appearance from Marvel Super-Heroes #18, as Astonishing Tales #29 had already reprinted it. Marvel Presents instead reprinted Silver Surfer #2 (featuring the debut of the Badoon, the Guardians' main antagonists), framed as a Guardians story by Roger Stern (in his first writing gig for Marvel) where the Guardians recover a Badoon "Mento-Corder", which projects the Badoon's encounter with the Silver Surfer into their minds.
- Future Imperfect: Vance occasionally makes references to old Earth pop-culture, which flies right over everyone else's heads. As does his quip about football.
- Gruesome Grandparent: Ogord, Stakar and Aleta's father, has his grandkids abducted, brainwashed and turned into living weapons to try and kill their parents. When it looks like he might be horrified at what his actions have done, it's immediately subverted. He's only upset because it means he can't conquer the universe.
- Insignificant Little Blue Planet: The opening narration for the first issue is pretty dismissive about how unimportant on a universal scale Earth is, just one planet in one corner of a galaxy when there's billions of the things going around... "unless you happen to live there."
- Jerkass: Major Victory can be pretty assholish to his comrades, Yondu and Starhawk in particular getting quite a lot of it, but he has a tendency to lash out at everyone sooner or later.
- Killed Off for Real: Stakar and Aleta's children die towards the end of the series. As of 2023, they haven't been resurrected.
- Know When to Fold 'Em: After the Guardians decide to take their leave of the Reavers, one young Reaver questions letting them go. His commander points out the Guardians have already smashed their way into the Reaver base and fought their way through them. If they suddenly want to leave without a fuss, he for one isn't going to stop them.
- Last of His Kind: Most of the Guardians were established as the last of their kind by previous stories. Nikki, their new recruit, is no exception - she's the last surviving Mercurian.
- Leave No Survivors: The remaining Badoon surrender at the start of the first issue, but some of Earth's liberators intend to kill them all anyway. Starhawk intervenes to save the prisoners.Resistance fighter: Lead 'em to the square. We'll kill 'em one by one...! Maim 'em, I say! An eye here, an arm there... like they did to us!
- Mood-Swinger: Vance has a tendency to go from emotional extremes, though given what the last thousand years have been like for him, hardly surprising.
- Not Blood Siblings: Stakar and Aleta are a married couple with three kids. They're also adopted siblings.
- Now What?: The team was founded to defeat the Badoon. And with the help of the Defenders, and the Sisterhood of the Badoon, they'd done just that. So what now? The Guardians decide to take off into space to actually guard the galaxy(s).
- Rapid Aging: The fate of Starhawk's children. Brainwashed by their grandfather into attacking Stakar, it turns out use of their powers causes their age to accelerate. The team tries freeing them, but the shock of what was done to them causes them to start aging further, and they die of old age, before crumbling into dust.
- Second Episode Introduction: Nikki, the last surviving Mercurian, meets and joins the team in the second issue.
- Sharing a Body: Starhawk and Aleta, from their first appearance. They were adopted siblings who encountered a device that made them share the same physical space, so only one of them could manifest at a time. They made the most of it by getting married.
- Shout-Out: In the second issue, the books in Vance Astro's cabin include Stan Lee's Origins of Marvel Comics and Son of Origins.
- Sixth Ranger: Starhawk officially joins the team in the first issue, and Nikki follows after, rounding out what'll be the roster for the Guardians for the next two decades.
- Soulless Bedroom: Starhawk's room on the Captain America consists of a bed, which Starhawk might not necessarily need, and a desk with nothing in it.
- Strapped to an Operating Table: Happens to Nikki and Vance in the final issue thanks to the Drydock Artificial Intelligence, which plans to kill them, dissect them and clone them.
- Textplosion: The fate of the Badoon captured on Earth is outlined on a single page. However, rather than speech bubbles and comic panels, it's a single image accompanied by a column of text.
- Victory Is Boring: Major Victory's problem with a post-Badoon Earth. After all, he's stuck in his containment suit, so he doesn't need to eat or drink, and he can't have sex, so that's most human interaction out the window right there.
