Peter QuillStar-Lord

Peter Quill was born on Earth, the son of a human mother and an alien father. Plucked from his rural home, he was thrust into a life of roguery and adventure across the stars. Now teamed up with a group called the Guardians of the Galaxy, Peter Quill has been kicking bad guy butts and saving the day under a different moniker: Star-Lord.

Star-Beginning

The Earthling who would grow up to guard the galaxy was born in Colorado to Meredith Quill, a human, and Jason (AKA J'son of Spartax), the heir to a galactic empire whose ship crashed in the Rocky Mountains. His ship blew a converter as he made his way home from exploring the stars to help his father in a war that had broken out between the Empire and the Ariguan Confederacy. Meredith was the only person who witnessed the crash and she dragged Jason's body from the wreckage, performing CPR before nursing him back to the health.

Despite being the royal heir to a galactic empire, Jason fell in love with this simple human female. After a year, Meredith was pregnant and he was ready to return to his home world, but not wanting to endanger her (or their child) during the interstellar voyage, he reluctantly left her behind, locking her memories of him before departing so as to spare her a terrible heartache. Meredith then married a man named Jake, who nearly killed the newborn Peter after suspecting it was not his child. Luckily, Jake suffered a fatal heart attack before he could snuff out an innocent life. Baby Peter, left outside during the chaos, stared at the stars before his beaten mother found the strength to retrieve him.

Peter was raised solely by his mother and grew up a loner fascinated with science fiction and NASA. When the Spartax-Ariguan War turned in favor of his Empire, Jason sent his uncle, Gareth, to fetch his wife and son. Gareth, having his own machinations for the throne, sent an assassin to Earth to kill Meredith and Peter, though they only succeeded in slaying the former. Peter, having witnessed the brutal event, swore vengeance.

When Peter grew up, he was accepted into NASA's astronaut program. Eventually, he was also accepted to join Eve, NASA's first permanently manned space station. One day, a celestial apparition calling itself "Star-Lord" appeared to the crew and said that one of them could become a higher being like itself. Quill, disappointed in mankind's primitive technology, immediately volunteered, but NASA command in Houston did not feel he was right for the mission. He was sent back to Earth where he stole a ship and intercepted the Administration's choice, becoming the Star-Lord. He was given a ship and allowed to destroy an Ariguan ship as "vengeance" for his mother.

The ship itself, aptly named "Ship", is actually a living star in steel form, which can change its form and density at will. It also serves as Quill's guide and companion.

Star-Power

In his new role, Peter can survive in space, fly faster than the speed of light, and generate a personal force field. His other abilities include being able to recover from injuries quickly, super human strength, and universal language translation.

Adept in marksmanship, sword fighting, and hand-to-hand combat, Star-Lord is a formidable cosmic hero whose red-eyed, Kree-fitted helmet is one of his most defining pieces of equipment that enhances his sight and provides data analysis. He also has a gun that only obeys only his commands and can shoot energy blasts summoned from the elements of the planet R'Ralmis. Additional weapons capable of firing tranquilizer projectiles and explosive rounds are just for added protection. He also receives cybernetic enhancements like an electronic eye, which can glimpse energy spectra, as well as a memory chip in his brain that grants 100% memory recollection.

Even when "depowered", Peter is still a formidable force, able to understand Kree (but not speak it), while wearing a universal translator on his forehead. A "passport" bracelet gives him access to Knowhere (a scientific outpost inside the decapitated head of a Celestial) and its teleportation facilities.

Star-Enemies

Peter makes a few foes early on when, just after a year of being Star-Lord, he come into the sights of the slavelord Kyras Shakati, who was depopulating and enslaving entire worlds. Peter helps spark a slave rebellion and gains allies in revolt leaders Kip H”lm of Windh”lme and Sandy of Pryd'ri. As it turns out, Shakati is the very crime lord hired by Jason's uncle Gareth to dispatch Peter and his mother. Before Shakati is defeated and his palace destroyed, Peter learns of Gareth's treachery and races to Spartax, where he kills Gareth and the assassin Shakati hired, Ariguan Sith-Lord Rruothk'ar. Jason, now the Emperor, arrives just in time to reunite with his son and inform him of his origins. Peter, however, refuses to be the heir to the throne.

Coming across the Fallen One, a former herald of Galactus, Peter has Ship destroy a mining operation on a moon that orbited Avaleen-4. This snuffs out 350,000 lives, but saves millions more on Avaleen-4 by incapacitating the Fallen One. In the process, Ship is seemingly damaged beyond repair. Feeling guilty about losing his guide and killing so many people, Quill renounces the title of Star-Lord and places himself in Kree custody.

By thwarting a plot by Death with the help of Thanos and Gladiator (Kallark), as well as defeating Annihilus' Annihilation Wave, Quill later becomes a military advisor to the Kree leader Ronan.

Star-Friends

Over the years, Star-Lord's closest allies have been his Ship and his teammates, the Guardians of the Galaxy. Although the group often bickers, Peter cares very deeply about each of them and sees them as more than just a Super Hero team, but as a surrogate family.

Star-Lord founds the second iteration of the Guardians, recruiting the likes of Groot, Rocket Raccoon, Gamora, Drax the Destroyer, Quasar, and Adam Warlock into his super crew.

Star-Lore

It was under Ronan that Peter was called to create a preventative task force to take a stance against future threats. This was the original concept for the creation of the Guardians of the Galaxy, but the group did not take form until after the techno-organic Phalanx's transmode virus infected the Kree War-Net on their home planet of Hala.

After the Phalanx were beaten and their virus vanquished, the galaxy's defense system was in shambles. Peter took steps to put together the aforementioned task force, but had trouble gathering a group of well-known Super Heroes, so he had the empath Mantis use her telepathic abilities to encourage Drax the Destroyer, Gamora, Quasar, Rocket Raccoon, and Adam Warlock (unwittingly hosting the gestating persona of his evil alternate reality self, the Magus, inside him) to join. Thus, the Guardians were born and established their base in Knowhere, an interdimensional crossroads housed in a Celestial's severed head, from which they could teleport virtually anywhere in the universe.

Not entirely trusting his new hosts, whenever Quill attended meetings with Knowhere's ruling council, he took Mantis along to read their thoughts and alert him to duplicity. Warlock revealed that the Annihilation Wave had ripped fissures in space and time, and the group accepted a mission to find and seal these rifts before they were ruptured wide open. While closing down one breach, the team rescued the temporally displaced and partially amnesiac Major Victory (Vance Astro) of an alternate future timeline's 31st century Guardians of the Galaxy, and adopted his team's name as their own.

While the Guardians' mission brought them into conflict with the Magus-worshipping Universal Church of Truth, in the near future a T-Bomb's detonation triggered a progressive cosmological collapse called the Fault, which consumed one future timeline after another. Starhawk, of another reality's Guardians, traveled back in time to prevent this, but initially assumed Major Victory was the catalyst, bringing him into conflict with the mainstream timeline's present-day Guardians.

The discovery of Skrull shapeshifters on Knowhere forced the Guardians to war with Knowhere's other inhabitants, including Cynosure's Luminals, a rival peacekeeping force. During the unrest, another reality's Starhawk attacked the Guardians, recalling and sharing the other Starhawk's mission, but was captured. Learning Peter had mentally manipulated them to join, Drax, Quasar, Warlock, and Gamora quit. Peter, angry at himself, went to Hala to warn the Kree about the Skrulls, but there he found the Kree had reactivated the Babel Spire, shielding their empire from the outside world while they rebuilt.

Peter ordered Ronan to shut the Spire down, fearing it might further damage the already unstable fabric of space, but Ronan refused, overpowered Peter, and banished him to the Negative Zone. There, Peter discovered Blastaar leading an army attacking the Earth-created super human prison 42, which Blastaar saw as a route to invade Earth. Blastaar sent Peter in to negotiate for the inmates' surrender, but instead Peter allied with vigilante hero Jack Flag (Jack Harrison) and, using a telepathic inmate, contacted Mantis. As Blastaar's forces breached 42, the Guardians, bolstered by Rocket's new recruits Groot, Bug, and Major Victory, extracted Peter and Jack.

Warlock informed Peter that a Kree-Shi'ar war had broken out, and the Guardians split into two squads to approach each side's leaders, hoping to convince them to negotiate. Phyla, Jack Flag, Gamora, and Bug accompanied Peter to see the Kree's new ruler, the Inhuman Black Bolt, but he and his advisors disbelieved warnings about the cosmos' fragility.

Later, Peter quit the group to take over as Emperor of the Spartax Empire, the role his father once had. To fill the void he left, Kitty Pryde of the X-Men became the new Star-Lord. After relinquishing his throne, Quill went back to his roguish old life, fighting the Badoon, saving orphans, and flirting with Pryde. He'd eventually return to Earth when the Guardians became stranded there, so he became a bartender at a dive where villains regularly convened.

While trying to grab a beer with Old Man Logan, Quill was attacked by some petty criminals. Though he and Wolverine were able to defeat them, Peter's antics led to property damage, getting him arrested by the NYPD. Matt Murdock represented the city in the case and attempted to convict Quill, but Abigail Brand of Alpha Flight showed up at the last minute to save the day. She struck a deal with the judge, agreeing that Peter would pay a $10,000 fine and perform 100 hours of community service. Part of this service involved him visiting old folks like Edmund Allen (the former Silver Bandit) to keep them company in their twilight years. Edmund wasn't interested in hanging out with Quill, but they went for a walk. On their jaunt, Peter witnessed, and tried to prevent, a bank robbery, but Ms. Marvel got there first and showed him up.

Finally returning to space, Peter crash-landed on a desert planet called the Softlands and ended up as the deputy of a small town reminiscent of the American Old West. While there, he protected the place from the outlaw known as Greylight. With some help from Bruce Banner, Greylight was defeated and Peter was able to leave the planet on his repaired ship. Then, he suddenly woke up back on a ship with the Guardians with Rocket reviving him. Unsure of whether or not his experiences on the Softlands were a near-death experience, he asked Gamora for advice. She voiced her uncertainty about what happens after death, but made a promise not to let Peter kick the bucket just yet.

After Ant-Man briefly joined the Guardians of the Galaxy in the wake of the Hydra Secret Empire fiasco on Earth, the group worked with Scott Adsit to root out double agents within the ranks of the Nova Corps.

Following that, Peter and the Guardians have become embroiled in the cosmic-wide hunt for the Infinity Stones, which have ignited a spark of war across the galaxy.