I've been thinking about Peter Quill, Star-Lord, in light of his killing Adam Warlock last month. The Annihilation: Conquest - Star-Lord mini-series told us that some time ago Star-Lord killed an entire mining colony to use their life energy to stop a crazed Herald of Galactus*. Prior to that, he'd been a cocky, self-assured super-hero, who figured there was no villain he couldn't stop. And if his battle with the Fallen One was any indication, he was right. Still, he turned himself in to the Nova Corps, and was sent to the Kyln, formerly the prison for life sentence convicts only. He basically gave up on life, and trying to do good. Well, tried to, at any rate.
Inevitably, he seems to be drawn back in more and more. Serving as part of Nova's High Command in Annihilation, trying to help the Kree rebuild, leading his little crew against the Phalanx, and eventually setting up the Guardians of the Galaxy. I think originally joining up with Nova might have been a death-wish, since Nova noted that Peter joined right after the good guys were dealt a crushing defeat. Even as he seemed to become more comfortable with being a useful force in the universe, he still wanted nothing to do with the name Star-Lord. He didn't want to be called that, didn't want to be reminded of it. He made mistakes, and wanted badly to put them behind him. Somewhere along the line, he seems to have grown comfortable with his teammates calling him "Star-Lord". Maybe he saw the title really does mean something to them, regardless of past errors, or maybe he accepted they were going to call him that whether he wanted them to or not. He goofed with the whole idea of using Mantis to convince people to join his team, but the group seems to have been quite forgiving**, to the extent they rescued him from the Negative Zone, which had to encourage him.
The concern is how he'll deal when he has to make tough choices. There's little doubt he'll make those tough choices, but the aftermath could be ugly. I already mentioned what he did after he sacrificed that mining colony to stop a guy that was running around destroying entire worlds. He was largely indifferent about his survival after he accidentally let the Phalanx take control of the Kree Empire. When the truth about how he put the Guardians together came out, he went off on his own to stop what he feared was a Skrull infiltration of the Kree Empire. Then he tried to fight Ronan one-on-one, which went as well as you'd expect. So he tends towards self-destructive behavior when he's had to make hard decisions, mostly out of guilt. Now he's saved the entire multiverse from being conquered by Adam Magus, and all it cost him was half his team, including one team member Peter had to kill. Star-Lord's quiet 'Look what you made me do, Adam. Look what you made me do.' does not bode well.
The rest of the team might want to keep a close eye on him for awhile.
* You know, Galactus really needs to do a better job tending to his former Heralds. Some of them help save the universe, but they sure do seem to wreak havoc a lot.
** They really did seem to cut him a lot of slack on that. Except for Adam, he clearly still held a grudge when he rejoined the team, but the others didn't seem to give him much crap about it. Maybe the the actions he took by himself convinced them how seriously he was taking this protecting the universe stuff?
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