Back in 2008, Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning teamed up for a run on Guardians of the Galaxy. It was such an important and thoroughly entertaining series, in fact, that it effectively reshaped the team’s dynamic and modern status and inspired the subsequent film series.
Now, Abnett is back to tell the story of arguably the team’s most essential member, as he joins force’s with artist Damian Couceiro for the brand-new Groot. The four-issue run is set in the far past, and sees everyone’s favorite alien plant living an idyllic life — until an invading monster forces him to “accept his heroic destiny.” Along the way, he’ll fight many a foe, including Mar-Vell as you’ve never seen him before.
With Groot #1 out May 17 (and a final order cut off for today, Monday April 3), we caught up with Abnett to see what to expect from this series. That includes possible guest stars, the development of Mar-Vell, and just how vital Groot is to the rest of the Guardians of the Galaxy.
Check out the full interview below — plus, enjoy some exclusive preview pages for Groot #1!
Courtesy of Marvel Comics.
AIPT: Since you and Andy Lanning created what the Guardians of the Galaxy is in the MCU, I wanted to ask now you’re going back to Groot’s past and adding things, is there any chance what we find in this comic may be referenced in the third film?
Dan Abnett: I would sort of doubt that in as much as the third film is very much underway, and we are working on this now. I have always tried to tie into whatever continuity in the Marvel Universe about how these characters work and operate, and behave. It’s possible there will be a commonality. Working on Groot is a pleasure for me, obviously, because it is a proper return to at least one of the Guardian’s characters that I had so much fun with back in the 90s now.
I think essentially as the person who was responsible more than anybody else for deciding that he should only ever say I Am Groot, it was lovely to focus on him. Groot has obviously been around since the sixties as a monster originally. I think it was the decision that I made when working on Guardians to sort of put him in a double act with Rocket Raccoon that gave him some kind of agency as a character, as a superhero rather than just a monster. It was slightly more difficult because Marvel wanted to go back and do something set quite a long time in the past.
That detaches him from, particularly from Rocket, but it also detaches him from their support network of characters that we’re used to seeing around him. That was the big challenge. One of the things that I had to do was sort of separate Groot from Guardians continuity and characters because this is very much before that. I had to sort of work quite hard to try and find out a new framework in which to present him as a character in a way that worked and, and worked with the continuity that we knew.
Courtesy of Marvel Comics.
AIPT: Do you have someone checking on you, or did you have to do it all and kind of encyclopedically know everything?
DA: Generally speaking, I had to do my own heavy lifting in that regard. Obviously, I worked closely with Darren Shan, my editor, to make sure that he was happy with it, and he’s got a pretty good knowledge of where these things lie. One of the reasons I’ve been safe is, I think more than anything else is that Groot is actually a surprisingly ancient being, even though we think of him as, a youngster. So I think quite a long way back, and I actually, my opinion is that one of the most interesting and distinctive things about this miniseries is quite how far back in continuity we have gone.
AIPT: This is kind of interesting timing, with Jonathan Hickman’s G.O.D.S. announced this week. How tied in are you to the continuity of everything going on? Or were you allowed carte blanche to kind of do what you want in this corner?
DA: Freehand pretty much for this, provided it was in the spirit and character of what a Groot story should be. Also, to incorporate the other elements of Marvel continuity that, like the Kree, play a part in this story. I’m sort of breaking a rule that I swore I would never break, which is to look again at, at the original Mar-Vell. His death, as handled by Jim Stalin in the classic graphic novel was, was to my mind, one of the few permanent deaths that ever happened in comics and should never be undone.
Groot needs a sort of ally and a sounding board. A conventional hero to be in the story so that we can offset it against him. Things can work out very, very interestingly that way. I think that’s where some of the interesting sense of a continuity texture sort of canonical Marvel universe really comes across because we see Mar-vel when he was actually a private in the Kree Star Force, and we see the old classic uniforms, the old ships, all of these sorts of things. Hopefully that most Marvel universe-savvy readers will know what this is setting up and know where that is going and know what the destiny of these characters iscCause I think that’s a pleasure to get out of these stories.
Courtesy of Marvel Comics.
AIPT: Was there a laundry list of things you wanted to kind of introduce or develop and did you get the chance to put them all into the book?
DA: There are certain things that I particularly wanted to do, or at least to feature in the story. The very fact that he only ever says what he says and that a lot of people have difficulty understanding that. And yet some people apparently don’t understand that it’s something that I explored in Guardians back in the day. So I thought those are things that I wanted to play around with. We also know that back in the day, Planet X, which is where he comes from, was remote, distant, and unknown, that nobody knew very much about the tree people who lived there. To play into all those mysteries without kind of breaking that.
Some of the themes I really wanted to hit was Groot being very young, nobody really understood or had ever properly visited. They were just vaguely aware of it and also the communication barrier. At this stage, no one knows that they can talk to trees, and trees can talk back. I think there is quite deliberately, and I hope pleasantly, a very sort of a Star Trek vibe to the Kree. The idea is that they are a militaristic force, but they’ve got these amazingly sophisticated starships. A military hierarchy within the structure of the Star Force, the color-coded uniforms. They’re all technical experts. They’re all very dedicated professional people who are exploring and making things safe and all this kind of stuff. And they encounter this problem, which takes them to Planet X, and they almost sort of embark upon a sort of, you know, an away team. So there is that idea of almost a first contact happening.
Courtesy of Marvel Comics.
AIPT: Stories set in the far past make me wonder when this was taking place. Was Abraham Lincoln alive?
DA: <laugh>. Well, exactly. I love the idea that high-tech can mean different things. The art in this series is deliberately looking at the Kree as they were presented in the 1960s when. The old school uniforms, the old school tech, the old school starships, which then looked like the epitome of this, is what high tech looks like. To me, there’s also a kind of retro space opera feel to it because it’s slightly stylish. Even though it’s the future it’s also a vintage element of that far future.
AIPT: How important do you think Groot is to the Guardians of the Galaxy team, and how it works?
DA: I would say so in terms of the Guardians, as they are depicted in my run and that, therefore in the movies and stuff like that. He’s an integral member. When I was writing the team, there were all sorts of members who joined briefly. That core of Star-Lord, Gamora, Drax, Groot, and Rocket really was fundamental. He’s the most obviously alien, one of them. They’re all pretty alien, but he’s the most alien. He’s the most sort of detached from a normal sort of human interface in terms of a conversation. Unless you know him very well, as Rocket does, and can chat away with him. He’s weirdly kind of the moral center. He is often the most sort of resolute and heroic. He’s not as reckless or as a maverick, as Star-Lord.
Courtesy of Marvel Comics.
AIPT: He’s kind of zen, right?
DA: Yeah. He’s very zen. That locks him down. He’s kind of the bedrock holding them all together. I think it’s interesting in the movies, for instance, that Groot is one of the ones that Captain America responds to, almost instinctively, as being a kind of noble soul. He’s essential. He’s absolutely not decoration or a hangar on.
AIPT: When this was first announced in the press release, you hinted that there were unexpected Marvel characters, plural, popping up with four issues in this series can we expect four unexpected characters to pop up?
DA: Well, yeah, probably. It depends on how you count the unexpected characters and what you count as unexpected. But I would say at least three significant unexpected characters. Marv-el’s obviously one of them. The next two really appear in the second issue. They are characters, but they’re also sort of established Marvel universe concepts that have been around for a long time, like a Kree Warrior. we’re going, okay, this is cool to see this again, isn’t it? They will be instantly recognizable d, and you’ll go, “oh my God, that’s that.” But you won’t necessarily understand what version of that we’re getting. I looked at what might be available that was cool in that period and, “wouldn’t it be good to put these things together and set up those sort of flavors?”
Courtesy of Marvel Comics.
AIPT: Brian Michael Benes and Jeff Loveness are two writers that added to Groot’s early origins, one detail was he didn’t get along with his fellow saplings, and then also he only preferred maintenance mammals. Is this something you’ll be exploring in this book at all?
DA: To a certain degree. In this, we see him sort of getting on quite well with some of his fellow saplings, which I think is worthwhile. They are very, very young. That’s the point.
AIPT: Did this series scratch an itch that makes you wanna return to Guardians?
DA: Oh God, yeah. Yeah. Always <laugh>. I love writing science fiction when I’m writing novels. Marvel Cosmic is very, very dear to me. Having spent a long time writing Guardians and Nova and stuff like that. I love the possibilities. I love the sheer range of characters and concepts and alien races that they’ve got to play with there. There is a sense of it being a complete universe. It’s a wonderful playground to tell stories in.
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