With the Marvel Cinematic Universe starting to really get underway in the mid-2010s, a lot of casual comic fans were taken off-guard with the announcement of 2014’s Guardians of the Galaxy. Sure, Iron Man had been a long shot in 2008. However, the Guardians had always been on the side of the Marvel Comics universe, while Iron Man had been a founding member of The Avengers.

Well, as it turns out, the Guardians of the Galaxy had also been around almost as long as Iron Man and the other Avengers! However, their story is one that is remarkably weird and convoluted. For example, Star Lord wouldn’t become a member of the team until 2006, despite being one of the main characters of the movie trilogy. Yondu is actually a founding member of the original team, unlike his rival to ally relationship in the movies, but is a completely different character from the ground up.

As an amusing side-note, Groot is the oldest in terms of real-world time, having premiered in 1960’s Tales to Astonish issue 13.

And so, let's look at the first story the team ever appeared in: "Earth Shall Overcome!", as published in January of 1969 in the page of Marvel Super-Heroes Presents #18.

Ok. Scratch that. Let’s try the other cover this story was published under. Astonishing Tales issue 29, from 1975! 

There. That’s better.

These are the Guardians of the Galaxy, at least Marvel's first version of the team. As you can tell, they're not quite the same team we know and love from the MCU. The first cover doesn't do them any favors either, thanks to poor printing, bad coloring choices, and unique designs being presented badly. Also, that orange-turned-blue naked guy on the right? That’s Yondu Udonta. Yeah, the awesome blue guy from the movies with the whistle-controlled death arrow played by Michael Rooker. Kinda scary how odd his original design was, isn't it?

These Guardians, and indeed the entire concept of the Guardians of the Galaxy, were all dreamed up by legendary comic author Arnold Drake, co-creator of DC B-listers like Deadman and the Doom Patrol, and art legend Gene Colan, himself famous for working on nearly every book Marvel ever published in the 1960s and 1970s at some point. Also on this book are inker Mike Esposito, colorist Stan Goldberg, and letterer Herb Cooper.

Our story opens with the far-off year of 3007 in the orbit of Jupiter, and features a lone spacecraft hurtling through the void of space. The Jovian native known as Charlie-27 has been patrolling for alien invaders, the Badoon, and has come home from his six-month mission. However, there doesn't seem to be anyone around.

The Badoon, for those curious, were basically Marvel’s first generic alien species to be shoved into various places when they needed a foe who wasn’t a Skrull or Kree alien. They showed up to fight the Defenders, the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, and nearly anyone else who lived in New York. They’re generally nonthreatening outside this storyline, and have even lost to some of the weaker incarnations of teams like the New Warriors.

Well, worry not about suspense. The previous page actually spoiled why the entire planet is so empty:

Yep, worldwide genocide, and we're not even a page in. Thanks, Arnold Drake!

It quickly turns out that the entire planet of Jupiter is devoid of life (though how one can survive on Jupiter is anyone's guess)... except for the very alien invaders that Charlie-27 was trying to keep from invading. Man, Charlie-27 really sucks at his job.

Wasting no time, Charlie-27 tackles one of the two Badoon and hurls him down the incinerator, punches out the second Badoon, and flees the scene to one of the various methods of public transit available on Jupiter.

Now, fans of a certain DC Comic from this era might notice a lot of similarities between this and that comic. For those not in the know, go check out a popular Silver-Age Comic: The Legion of Super-Heroes. This kind of "science labeling" shows up all the time in those comics, though this was hardly limited to DC’s future comics at the time either. Really makes me wonder if Arnold and Gene, both regulars with DC, didn't just take an abandoned story idea about a dystopian Legion adventure and published it with Marvel instead after changing up the characters.

Seeing how Marvel Super-Heroes was one part original content and three parts reprints of older stories from the start of the Silver Age and the end of the Golden Age, this would not shock me. The same applies to the later Astonishing Tales as well, though they more focused on adventures of modern Marvel heroes from the Golden Age. These pages were often a dumping ground to test out ideas, or to let people just get some concepts onto the page as a passion project, at least from what I can see.

Despite not setting a destination, Charlie-27 lucks out and winds up on Pluto. Which is also completely abandoned, but that doesn't mean Charlie-27 can't help himself to some abandoned food.

It doesn't take long for the Badoon of Pluto to track Charlie-27 down, either. While under attack from Saturnian Hound-Hawks, which are dogs with bird feet and wings, Charlie-27 runs smack dab into our next hero: Martinex!

Martinex is a humanish guy made of silicon, altered by the extreme temperatures of Pluto. This somehow makes him able to make things really hot or really cold. I'm not sure how that works, but whatever. It's the Silver-Age. That doesn't matter much. You can say the same about Charlie-27, who was made into a stocky and super-strong being by the intense gravity of Jupiter.

Martinex is able to distract the Badoon by using a forehead-installed piece of tech to control store mannequins to run interference while he and Charlie-27 run back to the teleporters and head off to Earth.

We cut over to Earth, where the Badoon lord over all, especially another hero for our story: Major Vance Astro. Who is not to be confused with Vance Astrovik, one of the New Warriors. Despite the fact that they're the same person. It's a long, and confusing, story.

Yeah, that's Vance: the purple blob behind held by the green blob. Vance also happens to have a tragic story, one that the Badoon demand to keep hearing. Vance would much rather die than tell it again, so the Badoon simply force him into a flashback machine, and watch the TV. You see, Vance Astro was an Earthman from the far-off distant future of 1988...

Man, that's something I love about old sci-fi comics: they just kept getting so many predictions wrong. Anyhow, Vance is wrapped up in a copper wrapping designed to let him survive in stasis for over a thousand years so he can explore planets as the first man to step outside the solar system. A thousand years go by...

As a side-note, these pages are incredible. Rather than the standard square panels and splash pages, Gene Colan looks to be genuinely experimenting with the layout of a comic itself. There is barely a right-angle to be seen when it comes to the borders of a panel, but it completely messes with capturing a good image of those pages. In that respect alone, this comic is a beauty.

Also, as you probably noticed above, Vance's copper suit is the only thing somehow keeping the ravages of time from catching up to him. If it's pierced, he dies a horrible, painful death. He can't even consume food, presumably still somehow embalmed by the suit and kept alive through SCIENCE. Warily, Vance walks out onto the surface of this strange and mysterious planet: Centauri-IV. What he finds is truly horrifying.

Well, I think we've firmly hit Twilight Zone territory.

I'm not sure which is darker - the Jupiter holocaust, or the mental breakdown of Major Astro there. The Badoon have also decided that Vance should work for them. I mean, he is a venerable elder right now, having outlived just about everyone else.

The Badoon ask Vance to kill off his traveling companion, Yondu. And Vance agrees, but not before asking to use Yondu's own weapon against him. Vance is kind of a jerk.

Ah, so it was all a trick. You'd think the Badoon would have been smarter than this, but that's why they're the Badoon. Vance and Yondu escape into the air, flying into the local teleport station just as Charlie-27 and Martinex show up. They beat up some more Badoon and flee to the far-off Earth colony of New New York. Where our story ends:

Unfortunately, the Guardians wouldn't find their proverbial feet for quite a few years. Fan response to their original appearance in Marvel Super-Heroes Presents must have been lackluster, but they began to appear more after the story was reprinted in Astonishing Tales. By this time, Steve Gerber had taken a shine to them, having them show up in his time with Marvel Two-In-One, the Defenders, and Marvel Presents in the mid-1970s

In fact, this weird combination of idyllic and dystopian future was considered to be the future of the Marvel Universe until 1980. Realizing that it was unlikely for Vance Astrovik’s backstory to still come true, a trilogy of issues of Marvel Two-In-One by Mark Gruenwald and Ralph Macchio would split the Guardians of the Galaxy into their own alternate reality by having Vance convince his younger self to not take that shuttle mission while also activating his younger self’s latent mutant powers.

It wasn’t until 1990 that the Guardians would have a major influence on comics, arriving in their own self-titled book just in time for the speculation boom to hit the comic market. It was loud, bombastic, and entirely fitting for the radical 90s.

...and I discovered, much to my own shock, that it was also the origin for the joke character Taserface!

The “actual” Guardians of the Galaxy wouldn’t arrive until 2008, spinning out of the events of the 2007 comic Annihilation Conquest. Realizing that the galaxy needed a team of people to actually stop the horrible things from happening rather than wait for it to threaten all life for the third time, Peter Quill would draw together a team of the best and most insane people he could find.

But this is a story for another day, and one we will likely revisit again later!