9. Who The Hell Are Guardians Of The Galaxy?
Marvel ComicsLet's get down to brass tacks. The current incarnation of the Guardians Of The Galaxy, in the Marvel Comics, were formed in 2008. In the aftermath of the huge Annihilation: Conquest crossover - which saw a bunch of "cosmic" heroes defending the universe against a race of evil alien robot...things - Star-Lord, Rocket Raccoon, Quasar, Adam Warlock, Gamora, Drax the Destroyer, and Groot were teamed up by writers Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning to make mischief up amongst the stars. Whilst the most famous Marvel characters are more "down to Earth" (literally) the company has a history for space-based superpeople. Originally that was down to comics' roots in pulp and sci-fi novels, but it had a revival again in the seventies when Star Wars came out and everybody wanted a piece of the George Lucas pie. Weird image. Moving swiftly on... Abnett and Lanning threw the group together because they expected an interesting dynamic, and they got it: Star-Lord's a dashing hero that's somewhere between Luke Skywalker and Han Solo, Adam Warlock and Quasar are pretty serious business types with some crazy impressive powers, Drax a crazy-strong barbarian, Gamora a former villain, and...well, Rocket Raccoon ad Gamora are there own things. Most of these characters had been around since the seventies, but rarely if ever interacted, so it was kind of a risk to throw them all together. One that definitely paid off, though, since they've been steadily growing in popularity ever since. Their whole bag is being proactive in protecting the cosmos, rather than reacting to crises as they happen, which means there's been all manner of intergalactic action sequences and awesomeness in pursuit of that goal. Awesomeness is absolutely a word, shut up spell checker.