Star-Lord: The Saga of Peter Quill is a fun trade paperback collection that helps you enjoy the character again. All of these issues I have collected in some other trades or back issues, but reading them together and in the order presented connects those stories and adds more profound value to the overall tapestry that is Star-Lord’s comic-book origins. This trade collection will sync Brian Michael Bendis’ Guardians of the Galaxy with Sam Humphries’ Star-Lord: Year One, which grows Peter Quill. Also included are Keith Giffen’s Thanos Samaritan and Annihilation: Conquest stories that helped bring Star-Lord from an unknown hero trapped in publication limbo to big screen legend. Instead of back-issue hunting, pick up this trade and blast off!
The trade starts with 2013’s Guardians of the Galaxy 0.1 from the Marvel Now initiative. This issue would be the start of Bendis’ run on a Guardians title, with art by Steven McNiven, inks by John Dell, and colors by Justin Ponsor. The group comes together very nicely and, at the time, had a mighty task of making the Guardians a group of heroes that comic readers would be excited to see in a movie. Bendis crafts a good story that modernizes the first two appearances of Star-Lord, helping to make Peter Quill a hero you want to root for. I like that Bendis makes Peter Quill a person who sticks up for the little guy from an early age, and in this version, Peter’s father, J’Son, is a better dad than the one we got in the movies.
The second story is Sam Humphries’ Year One, which ran in Star-Lord Vol. 1 #1-5, with art by Javier Garron and colors by Antonio Fabela and Frank D’Armata. These stories, released in 2015 and from the reading order in the trade, work together nicely, making me wonder if Humphries used Bendis’ origin as a launch point for that series. The Peter Quill you’ll meet here is a reckless youth getting himself into trouble, which meshes very nicely with the movie version of the character. In these stories, we get a younger Quill learning to be a space pirate from Yondu, modified to match the movie version. Humphries shows us a Peter Quill driven by vengeance growing into a man who cares for his crew. These stories make him a hero with a different drive than another angry orphan.
The third chapter in this trade is a collection of the Samaritan story that ran in Thanos Vol. 1 #7-12 back in 2004. These issues are by writer Keith Griffin and artist Rom Lim, with Al Milgrom on inks and Christie Scheele on colors. This story arc is the real genesis of Star-Lord making his way into modern comics; here, we discover that Peter Quill has given up being Star-Lord and is in the Kyln space jail.
I’m stunned that they included this story, as this is a Thanos story with Peter as a backup character. I’m glad they did, though; it is a wildly different side of Peter than we have seen before. He is stern and angry, littered with cybernetics all across his body. In this, Thanos, Peter, and other prisoners work together to stop a Beyonder, but in that process, the Fallen One, Galactus’ first herald, has escaped. You get clued in on Peter’s connection to the character and why Peter is at such a low point in his life. Here is where Griffin and company took a tossed-away character and brought him into the Marvel Universe.
The final story is 2007’s Annihilation: Conquest – Star-Lord, written by Keith Giffen and artist Timothy Green II with inker Victor Olazaba and colors by Nathan Fairbairn. Here is where we get a Peter Quill whose convinced he is not a hero, but rises to do the right thing. Keith Giffen creates such a wonderful rugged character for Peter Quill here that this is my favorite version, as he has that gallows humor but finds a way out of the mess. This story arc is the high note to end this trade as it will remind you why we like this character as it shows him being the underdog; I mean, who can’t help but root for that character? We get so many significant firsts here, the best being the friendship between Rocket Raccoon and Groot. Now, if you have time and access, I recommend you read the Marvel event Annihilation before this story; you’ll get more of this version of Quill in action with Nova.
Overall, Star-Lord: The Saga of Peter Quill is a great trade paperback that gives the stories within a greater connection, so major kudos to collection editor Daniel Kirchhoffer and the rest of the crew for bringing this together. I read most of these comics as they came out and found the multiple origins to be rather cumbersome to the overall saga of the character. Still, this collection excites me about how they string together. It is a beautiful companion piece to the Star-Lord: Guardian of the Galaxy trade released in 2014. With those two, you see the character’s evolution in mindset and publication. The trade is also a great value as most issues, even if you get the trade collections, will be very pricey on the secondary market. Perfect reading material or gift to give before we see the fate of the Guardians in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 in theaters.
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