Every installment of Abandoned Love we will be examining comic book stories, plots and ideas that were abandoned by a later writer without explaining that the previous story was retconned away. Click here for an archive of all the previous editions of Abandoned Love. Feel free to e-mail me at bcronin@comicbookresources.com if you have any suggestions for future editions of this feature.
Today, we take a look at Groot's odd history - is he seriously the king of his planet? Find out!
Groot first showed up in 1960's Tales to Astonish #13, with art by Jack Kirby and Dick Ayers and a story by an unknown writer (I bet Larry Leiber)...
Notice how Groot refers to himself as the Monarch of Planet X.
So Groot shows up again decades later in Keith Giffen's Nick Fury and His Howling Commandos series. Giffen then brings him over to the pages of Annihilation Conquest: Starlord (drawn by Timothy Green III and Victor Olazaba), as one of the members of Starlord's basically Suicide Squad. He is introduced in #1, as Peter meets the members of his team...
The next issue, he is introduced as being royalty...
Giffen's shtick with Groot was to have him talk like Doctor Doom style royalty (his transition to "I Am Groot" was explained away later on)...
Okay, so Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning launch Guardians of the Galaxy out of Annihilation Conquest and Groot is front and center and, in Guardians of the Galaxy #24 (by Abnett and Lanning and artists Wes Craig and Serge Lapointe), we get the following...
So, it's pretty cut and dry, right? Groot is the king of Planet X.
Not so fast, people!
Go to the next page for the truth!
In the back-up story in Annihilators #1 (by Abnett, Lanning and Timothy Green III), Rocket travels to Planet X to meet up with his old friend, Groot, after the Guardians of the Galaxy break-up following Starlord's seeming death during The Thanos Imperative, but he learns something shocking while there...
The next issue, he goes to rescue Groot...
After dispatching with the birds, he's shocked to see Groot go up in flames...
And so they've been pals ever since.
That's it for this installment! Feel free to drop me a line at bcronin@comicbookresources.com if you have a suggestion for a future Abandoned Love!