The first volume of Marvel Spotlight ran for 30+ issues in the early-70s, and seems to have been mostly focused on horror-themed characters. Werewolf by Night, Ghost Rider, Son of Satan, before broadening out to a wider variety of characters in the last half-dozen issues. The second volume only lasted about a year, and seems more focused on space-based characters. Mar-Vell, Captain Universe for the last few issues, and for two issues in the middle, Star-Lord.
The second issue is about some world where everyone must pay forward any good deeds done for them. So when Star-Lord shows mercy on a lady who tries to kill him for saving someone they threw to his death, she repays this by taking her own life. But then Quill has to repay that favor by seeing to her burial, and when he can't cry over the grave of the woman who tried to kill him, the guy he saved sacrifices himself. Quite what would have happened if Quill didn't cry over that death, I'm not clear.
Whatever, the first issue revisits the Master of the Sun, who made Quill into Star-Lord, complete with surprise reveal. The Master is no mysterious sage or soul of stars or whatever Englehart might have intended. No, he's actually a member of the same species of lizard-people that killed Quill's mother. Where Gan and Byrne drew them as at least as tall as Star-Lord, Sutton draws them as barely reaching his waist. I'm not sure why. To make them seem less threatening, so it seems less of a bad thing that they're here to arrest the Master of the Sun (or Ragnar) because he focused on creating Star-Lord and neglected other duties and innocent beings suffered? Maybe there just wasn't enough room in the panels for big lizard aliens.
We aren't told what duties Ragnar shirked, though the others say he interfered in their war. Ragnar makes it sound as if Quill was to be the first of many Star-Lords, and ended up more like Steve Rogers. Quill fights, but ultimately stands down in accordance with Ragnar's wishes, and lets Ragnar be taken off to his death.
Claremont had established Ship was the remnants of a living, conscious star, one forced to supernova by a race determined to wipe out their enemies by destroying the entire star system. The Master of the Sun appears too late, but the fact he sensed her distress and could somehow salvage her into a spaceship would seem to make him more than any sort of mortal being. But Moench seemed determined to strip away any of that sort of stuff from the Star-Lord concept, and just make him another Earthman running around space with a fancy raygun.
2 comments:
I read some of the Byrne/Claremont Star-Lord in my brother's hand-me-down issues of Star Wars Weekly, and they always seemed like fun, but it was basically impossible to find them so I never read the whole story.
Then a few years ago Marvel put out a Star-Lord collection, and crikey, that's a very weird mix of stories. It's basically a complete reboot each time.
That collection's the one I've been working from for all these Star-Lord posts, and yeah, the tone swings a lot. I like Claremont's stuff the best (and Byrne's art paired with it more than Carmine Infantino's), but Engelhart's damaged, incredibly angry guy needing closure before he can evolve has a certain appeal.
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