Salutations, my space-spanning stalwarts! One of Ol' Grooves favorite cosmic heroes is Peter Jason Quill, aka Star-Lord. I've not talked a lot about him here in Groove City yet, mainly because he's been covered pretty well and pretty recently on Grantbridge Street and Bronze Age of Blogs. Needless to say, that Star-Lord has always been one of the coolest and most unique Marvel space-men ever. Created as an almost psychotic anti-hero in Marvel Preview #4 by Steve Englehart with Steve Gan, revamped as a swashbuckling science fantasy hero by Chris Claremont, John Byrne, and Terry Austin in Marvel Preview #11, perfected as a hard science fiction adventurer by Claremont with Carmine Infantino and Bob Wiacek (Marvel Preview #'s 13-15) and then Doug Moench with artists Bill Sienkiewicz and Bob McLeod (Marvel Preview #18), Tom Sutton (Marvel Spotlight Vol. 2, #'s 6-7, ; Marvel Premiere #61) and the stars of today's post, the truly amazing team of Gene Colan and Tom Palmer. Star-Lord, as you'll see from today's example, is a far cry from Marvel's usual Groovy Age fare. For the majority of his Groovy Age appearances, he wasn't part of the Marvel Universe proper and was featured solely in Marvel's more adult-oriented magazine line, allowing for more of a straight science fiction feel. As a teen-aged reader, that meant a lot. The magazine line felt like "the next level", a step up from the standard color comics. For a while, we thought the "Marvel Color" mags were the future. After reading Marvel Super Special #10's (winter 1979) "World in a Bottle" , Star-Lord's first full-color adventure, I'm pretty sure you'll see why...
Thanx for the great post! One small glitch: There is a duplicate of page 39 where page 35 should be.
ReplyDeleteHey Groove!
ReplyDeletei couldn't help but notice how yellowed and aged your copy of Starlord was. It was a big selling point at the time -- how the higher grade of paper was not only meant to look good but was meant to last! Yet, my copy (which i've stored with care since buying it off the newstand) looks exactly like yours.
Oh well. I still remember how bright and new the comic looked when first read. It really seemed like the next step in comics.
This was the only cover I ever had killed before publication! It was my second cover ever for Marvel. I was 18 years old. Stan HATED my cover and had it reassigned to Earl. I only found out when the book hit the stands! lol Somehow they still gave me work!
ReplyDeleteHello Groove (responsible for my favorite place on the Internet right now!), could you please repost page 35? You have page 39 appearing twice instead.
ReplyDeleteAlso, it unfortunately looks like whatever Star-Lord(s) posted at Grantbridge Street is gone now, so maybe(?) you'd want to amend your post to mention that.
Thanks for everything!