Marvel Presents #5: Guardians of the Galaxy (Marvel/1976)

Marvel Presents #5: Guardians of the Galaxy

Steve Gerber (w) A. Milgrom & H.Chaykin (a)

For those of you more familiar with the films starring the current Guardians (good as they are) this is the original team introduced way back in Marvel Super-Heroes #18 in 1969. This is the team I grew up with and saw occasional adventures of as they always had difficulty sustaining a regular title. Marvel presents was a "try-out" comic that did feature some on-going series.

The original Guardians consisted of Starhawk, Major Victory, Charlie 27, Martinex, Yondu and Nikki. In this story Starhawk has been apparently eaten by some energy consuming creature that they were pursuing across the Galaxy. Now their ship is disabled and in need of repair.  The team beam down to the planet below as life support is failing leaving Martinex to deal with the ship.

Arriving in a forest rather than a city as they expected the team are confronted by the Gardener. It turns out this "forest" is on the roof of a building owned by the local gangster. Oops.

The inevitable fight breaks out and the team go on the run in a tale simply titled "Planet of the Absurd". In a twist reminiscent of the Skrulls copying twenties America for one of their worlds (way back in Fantastic Four #91) the Guardians find themselves in a world resembling New York.



There are multiple alien species and everyone seems to be acting in a crazy fashion as fist fights break out in bars and Charlie 27 finds himself behind bars. Of course the prison fails to hold him and as riots seem to endlessly breakout wherever out intrepid heroes find themselves a spaceship appears and they are whisked away by a group of aliens who explain that the planet is in fact an asylum for 50 different planets and the inmates have built the world based on their own desires.

Mystery solved and spaceship repaired off our team fly.

I enjoyed that. From a time when comics could be just plain fun and not as dark as they tend to be today.  The Guardians appeared in issue #3 through #12 of Marvel Presents short run.