Friday, November 24, 2023

Wish I could find the button to turn the cloaking device off...

Sigh. It's getting close to the end of the year, so I should be doing more to prepare for the year-end, but I've had some injuries and some motivational trouble. I also have a ton of figures that I was super looking forward to, and have only used for background shots; but maybe today's book will help: from 1982, Star-Lord: the Special Edition, reprinting 1977's Marvel Preview #11, written by Chris Claremont, pencils by John Byrne and Michael Golden, inks by Terry Austin. (It's possible I didn't get to read this until it was reprinted again, in 1996's Star-Lord Megazine #1. I absolutely loved Marvel's Megazine reprints!)
Claremont and Byrne didn't create Star-Lord, but they reinvented Steve Englehart's character as less of a vengeance-driven obsessive and more of a swashbuckler. It's such a great one-shot it almost wraps the character: you don't really need more Star-Lord stories after this one! He and his companion, Ship, free a couple youngsters from slavery, then fight to stop an usurper and save the emperor of Sparta, who has a perhaps not-surprising connection to Star-Lord, if you've seen Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2. (No, not Ego!) Sparta and a few other aspects of this version have since been folded back into the current, largely MCU-insprired version; although I think it's a planet of jerks nowadays and not the benevolent empire we see in the Michael Golden penciled framing sequence.
One thing this version has the others do not: a Doctor Who reprint! From 1981's Doctor Who: A Marvel Monthly #52, "Spider God" Written by Steve Moore, art by Dave Gibbons. An eight-pager with the Fourth Doctor? Nothing wrong with that!
It's entirely possible that Star-Lord figure is going to turn up in a strip here again, since it was a figure I was pretty happy to get: I've bought who knows how many movie Star-Lords (four?) and never figured they would make this one. And it was a mild pain to finally get as well: my first order from Wal-Mart was cancelled, and I don't recall ever seeing it on shelves locally. You could maybe get it from Wal-Mart's site now, but the price has gotten a bit gougey.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Injuries? What happened?

I can definitely see Classic Starlord showing up to give Ch’Od the business for being an intergalactic arms dealer…only for Ch’Od to reverse uno the entire thing right back on him.

googum said...

Just back pain. I don't think I've ever hurt it doing something, it's always something stupid like getting an apple out of the fridge.

I do think he's going to show later; I had some idea for him.