Star-Lord is getting a new ongoing title this week. You might have seen our early review for LEGENDARY STAR-LORD #1 already. If not, you can find it HERE. Sam Humphries will be writing the new series with Paco Medina doing the art.
We wanted to talk to Sam to find out more about the book and how it fits into the other Marvel cosmic book. Sam will be the guest on this week's Invincibly Super Massive Comic Book Podcast of Stuff. In case you can't wait until the new episode drops and you want a sneak preview, we took some of the questions and answers during the conversation so you can check them out right now.
COMIC VINE: How long have you known you’d be writing this?
SAM HUMPHRIES: It’s tough to say. These things, they kind of move slowly and then they move really fast. They start out as causal conversations, between you and Marvel and then all of a sudden, “Okay, script next week.” We started talking about it late last year. Probably around the time it became public knowledge that UNCANNY X-FORCE and AVENGERS A.I. would wrap up around the same time because there was this project. And there’s three other projects happening that I’m doing at Marvel that haven’t even been announced yet. They kind of necessitated this hard reboot of my whole schedule.
Axel [Alonso] came to me with the idea of Star-Lord. I was immediately into it and he was immediately into me doing it. I talked with Bendis a lot about a bunch of cool ideas. At one point, I wrote three different pitches and everyone liked the same one. The thing all three pitches had in common was the treatment of Peter Quill and who Peter is as a character. That’s something that hasn’t changed. We went with the status quo that comes directly from who Peter is and how he struggles with his dual heritage.
CV: How is this going to fit in with the GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY title?
SH: It’s kind of the opposite. This is like Iron Man having a solo book and also being an Avenger. Peter is a part-time Guardian of the Galaxy. He is full-time Legendary Star-Lord. This is the book that is about Peter and about his life. What happens in GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY takes place in between pages of LEGENDARY STAR-LORD.
CV: It’s funny that you mention Iron Man because it’s acceptable for Iron Man to have his own book and be in the Hulk/Iron Man ORIGINAL SIN and be in the AVENGERS books, but when you take someone like Star-Lord, who we don’t see everywhere, people start questioning, “How can he be in two books at once?”
SH: Yeah, I end up getting a lot of questions about how is Peter going to get around if the Guardians only have one ship? To me, I was like, there’s probably over a billion spaceships in the Marvel Universe. It’s already fully established, in Bendis’ run, that the Guardians kind of come and go from their home ship. It’s kind of like The Real World, you know? They all live in the same house, but they go off and do their own thing sometimes. They could just get dropped off at a port planet and catch a ride somewhere else. Or they could get dropped off at their destination. Or they could have a friend pick them up. There’s all sorts of ways.
CV: Will GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY, LEGENDARY STAR-LORD, and ROCKET RACCOON have crossovers?
SH: You’re definitely going to see the influence of these books and characters on each other. As far as a crossover…the Marvel Comics cosmic end of the publishing is so strong right now. We’ve got a deep bench of great characters, books, and creators. There’s so many fantastic books going on right now or about to happen. They just announced Dan Abnett on GUARDIANS 3000 which is going to be a fantastic book. There’s a lot of potential there and there’s been a lot of interesting discussions started at the last Marvel retreat. I was able to come up with something pretty cool…what people should know now is seeds are being planted in the first issue of LEGENDARY STAR-LORD that are going to have big epic-scale consequences on the core of the Marvel Universe, on the not too distant future.
CV: So not just the galactic universe…?
SH: Not just the cosmic characters. It’s going to have an impact on the core of the Marvel Universe.
CV: Hmm. So it’s all in your hands?
SH: That’s right.
CV: Star-Lord originally had a weird and interesting past. He used to have some powers, is any of that still around?
SH: No. The way he’s been used recently, he doesn’t really have the Starlin-esque cosmic powers. He’s really more of a space cowboy. He has dual heritage. He’s half Spartax and half human. There’s some interesting things to play around with there that’s coming up. But the sun god stuff, we haven’t really continued with that.
CV: It’s interesting how in the 80s, Star-Lord wasn’t really around. It wasn’t until the THANOS series in 2004 when he appeared.
SH: Keith Giffen, Dan Abnett, and Andy Lanning really deserve full credit. Without them, Star-Lord would have probably forever remained in the dustbin of history. He would not be the leading man in a blockbuster movie opening a month from now.
CV: He now has the trench coat look but on some of the variants have his spacesuit look. Is that a nostalgia thing? Is it something we might see?
SH: I think they just gave the artists the option what outfit they wanted to draw. There’s probably not too much to read into that. He’ll be in the red leather jacket for the foreseeable future. Certainly if there’s a use for any of the old spacesuits, I think they’re really cool looking, we’ll pull them out of the closet. In fact, you see a kind of hat tip in GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY #14.
CV: The first issue has kind of a crazy twist at the end.
SH: There’s a couple crazy twists at the end, yeah. We’re doing a series of single issue stories for a couple reasons. One is because it’s fun. It’s also because space is a big place and there’s lots of cool things to see. Peter moves fast so I wanted this book to move fast and the readers to move as fast as Peter. I wanted them to be able to go out and explore the cosmos with him and see cool alien planets and awesome spaceships, amazing aliens, frightful adversaries, blasts from the past, treasures and jewels, gems and that kind of stuff. The single issue format has really helped to move one. The second issue is in a whole new location, new enemy, a whole new crisis. Every issue is Peter getting himself into trouble and trying to dig himself out of it. Paco’s been fantastic. Every issue he’s has to design all these new things. He always makes them look so cool.
We do have plot threads from issue to issue. His burgeoning romance with Kitty Pryde. We have a new player on the cosmic scene who has a hate-on for Peter. He puts a bounty on his head but not just any bounty. He put the worst bounty in the galaxy on his head—a blood bounty. That is sending all sorts of people after Peter. It’s going to cause him a lot of trouble. And, as I said, we’re building things right from the first issue that are going to have some huge consequences for the Marvel Universe, not too long from now. These are single issue stories but there is a larger game being played. You read them as little adventures, one by one. When we look back on them, you’ll see how things have been building since the beginning.
You can listen to the hour plus conversation with Sam tomorrow on the Invincibly Super Massive Comic Book Podcast of Stuff. Be sure to pick up LEGENDARY STAR-LORD #1 this week at your local comic shop when you pick up the rest of your comics.