7. Why's There A Human With Them?
Marvel ComicsIn the original Guardians the appearance of Astro, a 20th century human, in the 31st century is explained by him being an astronaut who was in suspended animation for hundreds of years. In the current group, Peter Quill is a little more of an anomaly. For all intents and purposes Star-Lord is a regular dude, a human being with no particular superpowers or skin in a primary colour. So how the heck did he end up in space, let alone hanging out with a bunch of disparate alien types, whilst listening to a mixtape of seventies soft rock on an old Sony Walkman? Well, we're about to tell you. Keep your hair on. (Sorry Karen Gillan). Actually Star-Lord has had a few different, contradictory origin stories, but we're gonna go with the one that's currently "canon". This is meant to be a beginner's guide, and beginners don't need introducing to the awful comic book practice of retconning. The group's fearless leader, Peter Quill was the son of a human mother and alien father. Raised by just the mother, those nasty Badoon lot came down and kill her whilst searching for the father, only for Peter to gun them down with an alien weapon his absent daddy left years ago. With stars in his eyes, he became a NASA astronaut, and whilst on a space station was selected to become the interplanetary police officer Star-Lord by an ancient alien entity guy, equipped with a funky costume, his dad's gun, and a sentient ship called - imaginatively - "Ship". For most of the seventies he was a solo character, fighting space bad guys like Galactus before getting embroiled with the Annihilation thing and forming the Guardians off the back of that; all the better to do the cosmic cop thing.