COURTESY OF DISNEY | 
SEAN MCCABE
A reincarnated real estate agent and a raccoon adventurer in a far-off star system don't sound like superhero royalty. And to many moviegoers, the characters in August's Marvel-epic-of-the-month Guardians of the Galaxy will be an interstellar enigma, a bunch of randoms who have nothing to do with recognizable heroes like Iron Man and Spider-Man. But Marvel Comics has been exploring outer space for more than 50 years—longer than the Avengers or X-Men have been around. In fact, while relatively new, the Guardians—from Drax (the onetime realtor) to Rocket (the raccoon)—are maybe the purest standard-bearers of the Marvel Cinema juggernaut. (Well, except Juggernaut.)
The seeds for Guardians were fertilized way back in 1962's Fantastic Four #2: Marvel artist Jack Kirby put pencil to paper and gave life to the Skrulls, an ugly shape-shifting alien race that would go on to menace everyone from Ant-Man to Quicksilver. Almost immediately, Marvel's cosmic arm became its most imaginative: Over the next decade, Kirby and Stan Lee brought forth Galactus (who ate planets), the Silver Surfer (who scouted for said planets), and Ego (who was a planet). Years before paperback phenomenon Chariots of the Gods? sold millions of copies, Kirby busted out the Kree, his own ancient astronauts on Earth—who also happened to be the sworn enemies of the Skrulls. While Kubrick blew minds with 2001: A Space Odyssey, Kirby and Lee sent their heroes to a parallel universe called the Negative Zone, on their way to battle the evil Annihilus and his Cosmic Control Rod.
The current Guardians of the Galaxy lineup first appeared in 2008, a new mix of old characters. COURTESY OF MARVEL
And it only got heavier. After Kirby left Marvel in 1970, younger creators like Jim Starlin found these odd celestial realms to be a land of opportunity—the perfect milieu to express bold ideas and pose big (and possibly LSD-influenced) questions. Once he graduated from drawing high-profile, low-risk characters like Iron Man, Starlin had room to operate as an auteur in the cosmic comic realm. From his id flowed drunken trolls and monomaniacal moon dwellers; as he renovated earlier concepts for his own purposes, Captain Marvel and Warlock became trippy vehicles for apostate monologues and general space-angst. Meanwhile, Steve Gerber resuscitated the forgotten Guardians of the Galaxy, at the time a colorful band of 31st-century interplanetary swashbucklers that had originally appeared in a 1969 anthology issue.
This extended Marvel cosmology had its die-hard fans, but even in the wake of Star Wars, alien protagonists didn't have the right stuff to join the Hulk or Spider-Man as mainstays of filmed entertainment. (Even with Paul McCartney's interest in providing a soundtrack, a Silver Surfer movie costarring Olivia Newton-John fell apart in 1980.) And despite mild success in the comics—in the early 1990s, Starlin herded several of his creations together with more recognizable superhero faces for the Infinity Gauntlet miniseries—Marvel's corporate shenanigans prevented a sustained renaissance in print. So, simply put, the cosmic side of the Marvel Universe never got a seat at the table when the moviemaking (and merchandising) began in earnest.
But how better to expand the roster than with space travel? The Guardians of the Galaxy are a natural for the multiplex, thanks to a trippy backstory. In the mid-2000s, Marvel dusted off two moody Starlin creations (Drax the Destroyer and Gamora) and two pulpy goofs (Rocket Raccoon and the treelike Groot) and threw them together with a human jerk (Star-Lord) for various lightspeed-paced stories. When they joined forces in 2008 to become the new Guardians of the Galaxy, the rougher edges had to be smoothed—but in this, the writers and artists were part of a long Marvel tradition of taking an abandoned landscape and making it their own. Of course, while the cosmic gentrification didn't hurt, it's really the comic books' tone—which owes more to high-adventure serials than to the cris de coeur of the heaviest Kirby and Starlin—that made Marvel Studios realize that an eclectic list of sci-fi C-listers could do big business on the big screen. It just might be the most thrilling Marvel movie yet. And if not? We'll always have Ego.
