Black and White Wednesday: "First House: Earth!" by Englehart and Gan

Y'know, Groove-ophiles, sometimes yers trooly has to wonder where his head is. I've done several posts about Star-Lord and how much I loved that character/feature. I've posted a few of his later tales and about his greatest moment at the hands of Christ Claremont/John Byrne/Terry Austin, but I have yet to share his debut with ya! How nutso can ya get? Well, today is the day Ol' Groove makes up for that outrageous oversight!

Star-Lord, created by one of my all-time heroes, Steve Englehart (based on the name created by then-editor Marv Wolfman), was intended to be the headliner of his own b&w sci-fi mag. I know this 'cause it was mentioned in the Bullpen Bulletins at the time, and Star-Lord even showed up on the list of subscriptions in Marvel's ads during early 1975. Stan and the higher-ups decided to nix that idea (Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction was on its last legs, after all, and Star Wars still was a couple of years away), so the origin story, with art by Steve Gan (with assists by Bob McLeod), would eventually make its debut in their b&w try-out mag Marvel Preview #4 (October 1975).  Now, I'm not gonna try to expound on how Stainless Steve created seemingly psychotic Peter Jason Quill and his star-spanning alter-ego; he does a fine job of  that on his own in the mag's intro, so I'm including that with the story itself. I just wanna tell you that Englehart's Star-Lord changed the way Young Groove would look at comics from that point on. It shed light on what guys like Steranko and Eisner had been saying for a while: comics could be SO MUCH MORE than super-heroes. See for yourself...

Cover art by Gray Morrow