Comic Book Questions Answered – where I answer whatever questions you folks might have about comic books (feel free to e-mail questions to me at brianc@cbr.com).

Reader Jason K. wrote in to ask which galaxy, exactly, are the Guardians of the Galaxy referring to when they say that they are the "Guardians of the Galaxy."

In the original comics, it was plainly the Milky Way Galaxy...

They were all from planets within Earth's solar system and their fights initially were centered upon freeing the planets within Earth's solar system from the evil Baddoon invaders. Even when the Guardians began to travel around a bit more in the later years, the Milky Way was still the galaxy that they were guarding.

In the later comics, it is tricky. They formed on Hala, the Kree home world...

That's in the bizarrely named "Large Magellanic Cloud" galaxy.

However, the name they took was just taking the name of the original Guardians of the Galaxy (they meet a time-traveling Vance Astro, who says he's from the Guardians of the Galaxy and Rocket just steals the name)...

So it's unclear if the name meant anything other than being a cool name.

In the film, they are on Xandar, which is in the Andromeda galaxy.

James Gunn has confirmed a few times that the galaxy that they are guarding is, therefore, the Andromeda Galaxy.

So there you go, Jason!

Thanks for the question! If anyone else has a question they'd like to see me address, just drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com!