In one of today’s features for our Guardians of the Galaxy Month here at Multiversity to benefit to Bill Mantlo (which you can read more about here and here), we wanted to chat with the current writers in charge of the future wellbeing of the team. Today brings us the first of quite a few interviews we’ll be running over the month, and we begin by talking to Sam Humphries.
In stores now from Marvel Comics is the brand new “Legendary Star-Lord” #1, written by Humphries and illustrated by Paco Medina. It’s Humphries’ first solo book at Marvel, having written team books up until now, and it focuses on Peter Quill, part-time Guardian, part-time rogue and all-time rascal. And let me tell you, personally: if you’ve liked what Humphries has done with his other Marvel books, let alone “Sacrifice” or “Our Love Is Real,” you will be quite surprised to find out what’s in “Legendary Star-Lord.”
Read on as we chat with writer Sam Humphries about space, the final frontier, “Blueberry,” orphanages and more, as well as an exclusive reveal of the cover to “Legendary Star-Lord” #4.
With Star-Lord, outside of maybe a mini or two, this is the first time that he’s held an ongoing series. He’s currently always been part of the Guardians. When taking him out of his team dynamic, when putting him on his own, how do you get into this role to help the character finally speak for the first time with his own, modern voice?
SH: I kind of look at it from the opposite end of the dynamic. I don’t look at the solo title as his life outside the Guardians. I think he’s a part-time Guardian, full-time Star-Lord. It’s the Guardians that provides the partial look, and it’s “Star-Lord” that proves a full look at him as a character.
In terms of how to get into his voice, his motivations and where he comes from and how he looks at not just the world but the cosmos, I always go back to his dual-heritage. He’s half-human, half-alien. His mom was a tough but loving mother; she sacrificed her own life to save Peter’s life when he was ten. His father is the king of Spartax, who we’ve seen a lot of recently, and he’s just about as corrupt as you would imagine a power-loving, intergalactic despot would be. Peter comes from two very separate dynamics, and you see that in his character. He’s a scoundrel, he likes to gamble and carouse and have fun. But no matter how deep he gets himself into trouble, or how he close he gets to that forgotten treasure or whatever, there’s that side of him that will always be heroic.
I like the way that you describe him there, because when I first encountered the character and now having read him for a couple years, he always seemed like a Space Sheriff — like he was in the middle of a Western set in space. Do you find that to be similar at all to how you’re approaching him now? Maybe not in terms of the genre, but–
SH: Actually I would say more in terms of the genre and less in terms of the sheriff-ness. [Laughs] I’m really approaching this book like it’s a Western set in space, with spaceships and aliens and all that kind of stuff. I went back and re-read all that I have of “Blueberry,” the French Western comic book by Jean-Michel Charlier and Jean Giraud, who eventually became Mœbius and actually was Mœbius for the last run of “Blueberry.” Those are just such fantastic adventure comics and some of my favorites, so I went back for a very enthusiastic re-read.
This is a Marvel Cosmic book, so you’re probably not going to be thinking about “Blueberry” the entire time you’re reading this. But I hope to infuse “Legendary Star-Lord” with that same sense of adventure and fun and high-stakes, but also that sense of being on the frontier and being in unclaimed/untamed territory. I think that’s Peter is most attracted to those kind of environments; places where you can get away with a lot of stuff, I’ll put it that way. As a scoundrel, he likes to get away with things!
Continued belowAlso, in those kind of areas — whether it’s a French Western comic book or in real-life frontiers in the past or present — you also find people who are not protected, who are not represented, who are getting crushed by people with money and power. I think there’s a part of Peter that’s attracted to that too, because he’s got that strong heart from his mother beating inside him. When he sees people like that, he really wants to be the hero, to jump in and protect them. He was an orphan, he grew up in foster homes for a good chunk of his life on Earth, so he has a strong affiliation for the underdog, for those that have been forgotten — or in this case, the rest of the cosmos.
And! It’s an environment. It’s a dynamic. It’s a setting that really pulls on both sides of who he is as a person. It’s that tension where most of our stories are coming from. They are less plot-based and more character-based coming out of that character tension.
It sounds like you’re approaching this in the one-and-done style, then?
SH: In terms of structure of the story? Yes and no. It’s a little of both; the first few issues are one-and-done stories that are self-contained, but there are quite a few threads that we are starting and kicking off right away in issue #1 that will go through every issue of the series. One of them is a cosmic player we’re introducing called Mr. Knife; there’s also Peter’s budding romance with Kitty. We’re also planting seeds that are a little more long-players in the game. These are threads that will slowly develop over the first huge chunk of issues of “Star-Lord,” and they’re going to have some pretty major consequences and impact on the larger Marvel Universe.
So what is your experience with Marvel Cosmic, coming into working on this series? More as a reader or a fan than a writer.
SH: My first comic that really, really hooked me was “Secret Wars.” That’s a gateway drug for a lot of people of my age. The thing that I really always loved about “Secret Wars” is, it’s got that beat ’em up storyline where it’s just one set of characters against another and they punch each other as much as possible, and I was introduced to people like the Beyonder, a being of unlimited power. It’s got Galactus in there, too. But it has these really intense moments of moral decisions that I just loved and continue to love.
Like, the moment where it looks like Galactus is going to win. The heroes are fighting to stop him and Galactus disappears and Reed Richards disappears. In Galactus’ ship they have this conversation. Reed, in talking to Galactus realizes that the only heroic thing to do is lay down and die and let Galactus win, because if Galactus wins then he’ll get his wish from the Beyonder, or steal the Beyonder’s power, whatever, and Galactus will never feel the hunger, he’ll never eat planets again. To lay down and let Galactus win would be to save an untold number of hundreds of billions, of infinite lives currently living on planets out there that may one day get eaten and devoured by Galactus — which is kind of, like, a very intense decision to put in front of a hero, you know? Essentially give up and do the right thing, or fight on and put an infinite number of lives in peril forever.
I love how cosmic stories, in particularly Cosmic Marvel stories, give you those kind of opportunities for those really intense character decisions.
And taking a character and putting him on his own in a new frontier probably elevates that to entirely new level of what you could get away with.
SH: For sure. And, the cosmos is a big place, you know? [Laughs] It’s a lot bigger than Earth. The vast majority of Marvel Comics, or any comics, really, take place on Earth — which leaves you a lot of space out there to create new characters, to show new dynamics, to show perils that you haven’t seen before. Or even just take a high stakes situation that you have seen before and twist it in new ways. It’s a really, really fun place to play.
Continued belowSpeaking of different dynamics, this is your first solo-character Marvel book. You’ve done “The Ultimates,” “Avengers AI” and “Uncanny X-Force,” but those are team-dynamics where characters play off each other. How do you approach working on “Legendary Star-Lord” differently than you would those series?
SH: With a lot of relief, really. [Laughs] I’ve been waiting to do a good, solid solo book. Not that I don’t love all the team books that I’ve done at Marvel, I do, but it’s a very different form of writing. I like to get really character-focused and it’s tough to do that in a team book since there are so many different characters running around. Writing a team book is a real juggling act, and it can get very difficult and very complicated to figure out what sort of story you’re going to write next — mostly because you have too many options, too many choices, too many voices pulling you in different directions. If you can master that, that tension of the different characters going in different directions, then you have a great team book.
Something like “Legendary Star-Lord,” though, all you really have to do is sit down and say, “OK, what would Peter do next? What does he want to do next, or what doesn’t he want to do next?” If you can answer those questions and find that dramatic tension between the two sides of Peter, then you’ve got a great story. At least for one issue, anyway.
So, it’s been almost like a vacation to write a solo book, in a sense. [Laughs]
Considering the characters’ past history in comics, what do you think it is about Peter now that makes him sort of worthwhile for a solo book? What makes him the Legendary Star-Lord, as opposed to just Star-Lord of the Guardians?
SH: That’s a great question, because, well, I go back to what I said earlier: he’s always Star-Lord. He’s a part-time Guardian. It’s like, well, Iron Man is always Iron Man, but sometimes he’s with the Avengers. That’s what this book is; it’s not a spin-off or a continuation of “Guardians,” but this is Peter’s story. He’s a strong character with his own tale to tell in his own voice on his own path through the universe.
It’s interesting that you bring up the word “Legendary” because originally the title was just “Star-Lord.” I came up with the title “Legendary Star-Lord” and threw it at editor Mike Marts who loved it so we rolled with it. There’s a couple things, though: one, I love the Marvel adjective tradition, you know? The AMAZING Spider-Man! The INCREDIBLE Hulk! The UNCANNY X-Men! And so on and so forth. I felt like “Star-Lord” alone was a little dry, and I wanted to put a little swagger in there. [Laughs] But the other thing is, it goes back to the two-sides of Peter. He certainly believes he’s a legend, but he believes it because he can fly ships real fast and he can shoot the bad guys and flirt with alien babes. That’s what he thinks makes him legendary. But I would argue, and the book would argue and I think a lot of people who know Peter would argue, is that the thing that makes him legendary has to do with his mother’s side of his heart; when he sacrifices himself to save the little guy, or when he stands up against a great, unimaginable evil for the benefit of the universe. Or when he’s always there for his friends, and how he’s always loyal to his friends — he’ll drop anything that he’s doing when his friends are in trouble to rescue them.
I think there’s a question there, not just for Peter but for anyone: what truly makes someone legendary? Not just legendary in terms of being famous, but in anyone’s day to day life. What decisions that you make make you a legendary person?
I really like that description for approaching his mentality. He’s certainly a character that has had retcons in his past and whatnot, but I like this new approach to defining him. Obviously this sort of spins out of what Brian Bendis has done in “Guardians” with the relaunch, so have you been in touch with Brian to kick back and forth ideas on the character?
Continued belowSH: Absolutely. Even before I took the book. Brian and I were in touch a lot when I was on “the Ultimates,” one of my first Marvel books. He was doing “Ultimate Spider-Man” so we worked together a lot through that, and we’ve gotten to know each other a lot during my time at Marvel, on the retreats and so on and so forth. It was really natural as soon as I heard the words “Star-Lord” to pick up the phone and call Brian, to talk ideas and what he has planned for Peter. He has a really strong character-turn coming up in “Guardians,” and it puts Peter in a really great place as he takes on his first solo ongoing.
So I heard his plans for the Guardians and where he’s taking the book, and immediately I realized how strong the Marvel Cosmic bench is right now. It’s a really deep bench; we’ve got all these great books: “Star-Lord,” “Guardians,” “Captain Marvel,” “Cyclops,” “Nova,” “Rocket Raccoon,” “Silver Surfer.” That’s a really strong slate of books, and a really great group of characters with an amazing, kick-ass line-up of creators. Pretty much from those first conversations, I started thinking a little bigger, of ideas of where we could go with all this, and that’s where some of the ideas we’re planting in the very first issue of “Star-Lord” that are going to develop comes from. It’ll grow into some very impactful events for the entire Marvel Universe.
Interesting. When you put it like that, I guess I hadn’t realized how big the Marvel Cosmic line has become. It’s always been “Guardians” and “Nova” for what you think of Cosmic, but it’s so much bigger now. What do you think it is that has made Cosmic suddenly so appealing? It used to have a good-sized fanbase, but was still considered a niche audience, you know?
SH: Right. Well, the movie certainly doesn’t hurt. [Laughs] When you have other parts of the corporate family devoting hundreds of millions of dollars to “Guardians of the Galaxy,” it certainly makes everyone internally and externally take a second look at things.
However strong the Cosmic line is now, it all goes back the “Annihilation”-era: Keith Giffen, Dan Abnett, Andy Lanning and all the work they did with these characters. I don’t know how many if any of these characters they created during that time, but they certainly took characters like Star-Lord — who had maybe been in twelve issues of Marvel Comics up to that point? And had been batted back and forth through different character interpretations but had never really been very solid — they took him and made him a fan-favorite character. The took Groot, who was one of those Kirby pre-“Fantastic Four” monsters in that tradition, and they made him a fan-favorite. They re-defined and re-scoped the whole Marvel Cosmic Universe and brought them together, making great stories and great characters. I think, if we’re really going to the root of why we have strong Cosmic book now, you have to go back to those fantastic stories that all of those creators told in that era.
You did bring up something that I wanted to talk about as well, in the upcoming film. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that you’re like most of us and haven’t seen it yet, but to what extent if any has the general work of Chris Pratt influenced how you approach Star-Lord?
SH: You’re correct, I haven’t seen it — but honestly, not very much. Not in an arrogant way or anything like that, but I’ve been working on “Star-Lord” behind the scenes for quite a while, back before anybody knew “Avengers AI” was ending.
Working on Star-Lord and examining Peter as a character, all that kind of stuff, for me has been going on for months. So I’ve not seen the movie; all I’ve seen is what anyone else has seen in terms of trailers. I’ve not read the script or anything along those lines. I really just kind of took the material I had, which was hundreds upon hundreds of pages of comics, and put my own spin on it, deciding the direction I wanted to take Peter in. Marvel was down, and there was some guidance along the way that was, well, almost more like confirmation? In my early pitches or in early discussions about the character, they’d say, “This is great, because this is in line with how they’re treating him in the movie.” If I hadn’t been along the same path, I don’t know if they’d have had me start over, but probably not. From what I understand, from people who have seen the movie or read the script, what James Gunn and Chris Pratt are on very similar parallel paths to what we’re doing in “Legendary Star-Lord,” which is fantastic.
Continued belowChris Pratt’s portrayal of Peter looks amazing and I can not wait to see the movie on August 1st with everybody else. But, yeah, just because of timing and because I’m not under twelve additional NDAs, I’ve just not been exposed to the movie and am just sorta doing what I’m doing. But based on the feedback I’m getting – if you’re excited for the movie, you’re gonna love the book.
And it actually strikes as probably one of those things where, you know, if you ever get to meet Chris and hand him a copy of the book, then that reaction to it could be pretty interesting.
SH: [Laughs] I don’t know if I’d ever hand him a copy of the book. I’d probably just be like, “Hey, let’s do a shot!” [Laughs]
You touched on something in that answer, though, that I should’ve asked earlier: You’ve been working on this book for a while. What kind of stuff have you been doing to prepare for the book? How much research or how many notes have you been putting together? How long have you been prepping for “Legendary Star-Lord?”
SH: It’s tough to pinpoint, you know? It’s a very fluid process, because kind of what happened is Axel floated the idea. “Star-Lord? Star-Lord solo? How do you feel about that?” Kind of whispering in my ear, almost. But as soon as he had said that name, I knew I wanted to do the book. I knew that there was going to be some scheduling issues, that I’d have to leave some books and perhaps some other things going on behind the scenes in terms of new projects coming up that haven’t been talked about in public, so there was already a lot of shuffling already happening. But, well, I was wrapping up the very end of “Uncanny X-Force” and planning the end of “Avengers AI” while I was thinking about it. So I was talking to Brian and reading all his previous appearances and making notes and reading “Blueberry” and zeroing in on that kind of vibe that I wanted to bring to the book, that kind of stuff.
It was something that I started months ago, and it was a very fluid process from there. I wrote up something that could just be passed around the office, maybe thrown up the ladder if need be, just so they could see if I was on the right path. I wrote up a couple paragraphs of stuff, showed off a couple directions; we zeroed in on one they liked, which was the same that I liked which was great. So, great, here’s the book and here’s the deadline!
That’s a long rambling answer to say: a) I don’t know remember, and b) even if I went back through my gmail to figure it out, it’d be really difficult to define when it started.
But I started really early, which is great, because now we have the fantastic Paco Medina doing art and we’d like to keep him doing the art of the book as long as possible. I’m pretty ahead of him and that has given me the freedom to work on some of the other plans that has not been announced yet, or some of the other projects I’m working on with Marvel. The way the scheduling shuffle worked out and all that has been working out really well, and we’ve had a lot of freedom in the form of time to make this book really awesome.
It certainly sounds like it. So, moving towards the wrap-up: looking at “Legendary Star-Lord” and what’s coming, you don’t have to be specific or spoiler-y but what are the things that you’re really excited for the readers to see? Whether that’s in terms of what is going to happen to the character or the things happening around him?
SH: I’m really excited for people to see Paco’s artwork on this book. He’s an artist I’ve loved for a long time and I’ve had my eye on him for a long time. When I was on “Ultimates” he was on “Ultimate X-Men,” and I would see his work sometimes day by day as it came into the Ultimate Office, and I was like, “Damn, who do I have to bribe or who do I have to blackmail to get him on one of my books?” And it turns out a lot! [Laughs] No, they suggested Paco and I was really into it. Paco’s got a great, very fluid style that I think is very well suited for this book. He’s almost got a slightly… I don’t want to say “cartoony” because when you say that it puts certain ideas in your head, but something with a bounce to it, and some manga influence in it too. I think all that is really well-suited for what we’re doing in “Legendary Star-Lord.”
Continued belowI’m really excited for people to see Paco’s art, because even long-term fans of Paco are going to be really surprised and really excited to see the work that he’s turning in.
And it’s certainly a great fit because he’s done cosmic. He did a run on “Nova,” so that fits really well. He’s that kind of artist that can do the big, sci-fi Western landscape.
SH: Yeah, and like I said, we’re doing these done-in-ones so every issue has new environments and planets and ships and antagonists and alien-design. He must be having the greatest time doing all these designs, because they look fantastic. They look awesome.
One of the things that I’m excited about for in the announcement for “Legendary Star-Lord” is that it kicks off the new Young Guns initiative. People have different opinions on variants, sure, but you’re getting six new variants from all these immensely talented artists. What are your thoughts on having “Star-Lord” get to be the launch of that?
SH: Oh, I love it. I’m super excited about it. It’s cool for me because a lot of the creators in Young Guns are artists that I came up with in parallel paths, in a lot of ways. Dave Marquez and I have been friends for years, because he and I both did some of our first early professional work at Archaia. He did “Days Missing,” and I did the Fraggle Rock books, so Dave and I used to spend 90% of our time at comic conventions at the Archaia booth next to each other. We got to know each other over the years, and all of a sudden we’re both working at Marvel at the same time, both signing exclusives at the same time; now he’s a Young Gun and I’m writing “Star-Lord,” and he’s doing a cover for it which is fantastic.
Valerio Schitti, he did two issues of “Avengers AI” with me, and I loved working with him and getting to know him. He does fantastic work. Sara Pichelli was doing work on “Ultimate Spider-Man” when I was doing “The Ultimates.” Ryan Stegman is a pal. It’s kind of like having the whole gang as part of the launch. You can only have one interior artist and I’m not giving up Paco to anybody, but it’s cool to see them come up at Marvel at the same time that I was coming up at Marvel. Now we’re all together for this book.
I’ll quote Drake on that: “Started from the bottom, now we here.” [Laughs] It’s that kind of vibe. We’ve all taken some hits, we’ve all worked our asses off, and we’re all doing some great work. I’m really proud of them all, of the way that fans have embraced their work. I’m a fan of them myself, so I’m really proud of their accomplishments and real proud to have them do covers for the book.
Certainly with a book like this, there’s a fair amount of Cosmic stuff carved out, but that infinite aspect that comes with space and variations on the final frontier… I would imagine there’s a fair amount of freedom to just play with new ideas in this book that you may not have on the actual Marvel Earth?
SH: Yeah, well, on Marvel Earth you’re always bumping elbows with everybody and anybody. Other books, other characters, other creators. That is certainly a lot of fun sometimes, but I’ve been really enjoying being able to say, “Well, I want to do a story that involves an orphanage. OK, what kind of orphanage? What kind of environment? What kind of struggles will they have?” And I get to create not just a planet, but a whole system — a whole environment. No orphanage is an island, but you get to create all the pressures that push and pull on this orphanage and make it what it is. You get to put everything into a position where Peter is faced with some tough choices and you can learn more about who he is by how he responds to it. That freedom is really great.
Obviously a lot of people over the years have taken the cosmic environment and gone to a lot of wild places. Jim Starlin’s Adam Warlock; that kind of trippy stuff, all those things over the years. I look at space and the cosmos as a place where we go not necessarily to find and discover new things, but to go out and discover ourselves. Space is like a mirror, and the things that we encounter there teach us more about who we are. I think that’s true for fictional characters like Peter and Captain Marvel, and I think that’s also true in real life. We live in orbig, we land on the moon, we look through telescopes to find new worlds, but it is in discovering the cosmos that we learn the most about ourselves.
