When Peter Quill fights alongside his allies in the Guardians of the Galaxy, he's part of an unstoppable band of heroes that has taken on alien empires, hostile dimensions like the Cancerverse, and the cosmic might and madness of Thanos. However, that raises the question of just how formidable Star-Lord is on his own.
In Marvel's 12-issue Old Man Quill miniseries, writer Ethan Sacks and artist Robert Gill are answering that question with a story that pits the Star-Lord from the Old Man Logan reality against some of the toughest villains in the Wastelands. Initially it looked as if he was defeating those foes with the help of his friends, but a surprise twist at the end of Issue 7 revealed the other Guardians had died, and the team that accompanied Old Man Quill through the Wastelands was merely a hallucination. So Peter's triumphs were his own, and with only two issues remaining, he has three powerful adversaries to overcome: Doctor Doom, Galactus, and his own grief and guilt.
CBR spoke with Sacks about those obstacles, the surprise reveal and how late it came in the series' production, and introducing new heroes, like Viv Vision, into the villain-ravaged Wastelands.
CBR: There have been a number of surprises over the course of Old Man Quill, but the biggest came in Issue 7, when Peter realized all the other Guardians had been dead the entire time. How did this twist come about?
Ethan Sacks: It's interesting because our original pitch for this series was the Guardians would all be alive, but we had some plot elements that would have inadvertently overlapped some things Donny Cates had planned in his Guardians book. So I came up with the idea of having the Guardians dead the whole time and Peter hallucinating them after the book had been greenlit. It really was a huge leap of faith by my editor Mark Basso and C.B. [Cebulski], but the more we workshopped it, the more that aspect became a chance to do some unique storytelling.
For example, in that first script the only interaction Peter has in the “present” is with the Brood. In later issues, he's interacting with humans and we had to be careful that they were only interacting with him, since from the readers perspective the Guardians appeared to be there, but in reality, it was only Peter. If one of the Guardians was saying something the secondary characters did not react to it.
Did the Guardians being dead fundamentally change the nature of the story?
No, this always was going to be about Old Man Quill; that's why we chose the title. It really was about his journey after making this horrible mistake with the best intentions. He loses his family and planet, and our story is about his journey to redeem himself, in his own eyes. That was always the arc. He just had the help of the Guardians.
It helped to have an amazing artist like Robert Gill, who drew the Guardians' scenes so subtly. There were little things, like during an action sequence Peter is in the frame with a gun when one of the characters is shooting a gun. So if you look backwards, it all makes sense.
I also want to mention our pair of incredible colorists. We've had Andres Mossa who was such a major part of my early career and such an amazing colorist. We also had the great Rachelle Rosenberg.
It's interesting thinking about Quill in action as a determined solo character, because for the longest time he's been portrayed as sort of a wisecracking, impulsive team leader.
It's not an accident that people are gravitating towards him in this story. They're seeing him as this hero to look up to, especially since there's been such a lack of heroes left alive. There's something about him. When the odds are against him, he finds a way to pull everyone's fat out of the fire.
On the surface it doesn't seem like he would be an effective leader, but when it's all said and done he can be. I wanted to show that with our very first scene where he's capable and confident leading his troops into battle against a larger armada. He was thriving in that role.
I didn't want to have him joking and carousing the entire time because I think he's a very nuanced character; more than he gets credit for.
Yeah, there's almost a bit of Frank Castle style resolve in Issue 8 where he goes toe-to-toe with the Imperial Guard by himself.
A lot happened in our first issue to set up our basic story. Then issues 2 to 6 had to move at a certain pace because we wanted to lull our readers into not realizing the truth about the Guardians. We had to build things up over time so you'd care about them. Then we picked up speed like a roller coaster in Issue 7.
Issue 7 was the reveal, [Issue] 8 was the flashback, and then because we asked so much of the readers and revealed that the Guardians were dead it was a little depressing. I knew Robert could draw incredible action sequences though. So I wanted to build to the battle in Issue 9. It was the payoff for the eight issues that had came before that we planned from the beginning.
And as much as I love Peter, he's in over his head against characters like Gladiator and some of the other Imperial Guard. So we had to help him out a bit by giving him the Hulkbuster style Iron Man armor. Hopefully that sequence landed. We wanted to give readers something different after punching them in the heart for a couple issues.
Like Frank Castle, Peter's resolve in this story is driven by the loss of his family; both his biological one and the one he built. Do you see any other similarities between the Punisher and Old Man Quill.
I think in the end Peter pulls himself out of this hole. I think with every issue he's becoming more and more like the Peter we remember. He's emerging from the darkness and I think that's the big difference between the two of them. Frank never really emerges from that darkness. He lives there.
I know this is a book that can seem very bleak at times, but I hope once readers have read issues 1 through 12 they'll view it as a more hopeful story.
You also helped expand the Wastelands with the introduction of characters who didn't exist when the original Old Man Logan story was published like Viv Vision. Will we see any more of those types of characters before this story wraps?
I wanted to be very sparing with heroes that were still alive. Because the beauty of the Wastelands is it's what would happen if the bad guys won and almost all the heroes are dead. So, if you keep finding new heroes it makes it a little bit easier to get out of these situations.
I introduced Kate Bishop in Old Man Hawkeye because they have such a rich history and she's one of my favorite characters. I love the idea of her going to ground and surviving. They also have a similar skill set. So, as Hawkeye was losing his vision, he could lean on her a little bit.
And I love Viv Vision. I think she has a lot of potential as a character. She's not the first person you'd expect running a resistance. Plus, we had to be careful not to choose a hero who was already dead. So, there may or may not be other cameos in the last few issues, but if there are they'll be characters we know survived.
The teaser for the next issue suggests that Peter is up against Doctor Doom who rules over the Wastelands. What's it like for Doom to be in that kind of position where he no longer has to prove his superiority to heroes or villains?
We know from Old Man Logan that Doom is sort of the last of the great villains left alive. So, now he essentially runs everything.
Now, that he's in charge of everything life isn't at all what he thought it would be. It's boring and there's no one to really challenge him. This isn't the reward he envisioned all those years ago when he was butting heads with Reed Richards. I think he misses Reed to some extent.
So he's basically going through the motions and now he has to step up. I don't think he's thrilled at having to squash whatever's been whipped up by Peter's presence. The idea of being in power isn't as romantic to him as it once was. I find him a bit of a tragic character; an example of be careful what you wish for.
At the end of Old Man Quill #10 the title character is not in his own time and looking to steal the Ultimate Nullifier, which is bound to lead to comparisons to the “time heist” of Avengers: Endgame. Is that what's happening in your final two issues?
It's not like Avengers: Endgame in that I don't think things can be undone. Plus, the arc of the book is the David versus Goliath style face off between Quill and Galactus. Peter is headed towards a confrontation we've been building since issue #6, but it really started 50 years ago when he lost his family and his planet to Galactus.
What inspired you to make Galactus the central figure in this new version of the Universal Church of Truth?
What I've always found interesting about Galactus is he does these horrible things, but he is so convinced of his importance in the cosmic scheme of things that it rationalizes everything he does. All the people that die when he feeds are blessed in a way because they're contributing to this divine good.
So, it didn't seem like a great leap to me that at this point in time, Galactus, who keeps heralds and is important in the cosmic scheme of things, would be at a center of a cult. I felt like in their search for meaning it would be natural for the Church to worship a terrible god like Galactus.
I also feel it would be natural for Galactus to accept their adulation. It's like, “Finally! I'm appreciated for my importance to the universe.” Plus, instead of one herald imagine an entire church of people desperate for your adulation and would do the work for you. It was a symbiotic relationship that felt right to me.
Seems like the Church would enable him to act like an addict and consume more and more planets?
Yes. He's convinced this is his role and they're convinced that the planets that are dying are full of sinners and deserve it. So, it really is this horrible cycle that's destroyed most of the known cosmos.
What can you tell us about the coming climatic battle between Quil and Galactus? How can he possibly hope to defeat both the planet eater and the Universal Church of Truth?
I don't usually start writing unless I have an ending shored up. So, even before we settled on our plot twist I knew that this was going to be Peter versus Galactus. I wanted it to be an action packed story that was ultimately about someone who was wrestling with loss and trying to move on, even after 50 years. I wanted all of that and with the plot twist he had to accept the loss of his friends along with his family.
All of that gets tied up in a way that's hopefully satisfactory for the readers because from day one that's how both me and my editors wanted this book to end. So I'm really hoping issue #12 is what our fans wanted to see.
The other thing that I can tease is a couple of splash pages. There's one in issue #11 that's my favorite in the entire series. I believe It's a nod to a Jack Kirby page from Fantastic Four #51. It's a beautiful piece of artwork by Robert Gill. Plus some of the Galactus shots in Issue 12 are worth printing out and framing. They're really fantastic.
Old Man Quill #12, by Ethan Sacks and Robert Gill, goes on sale Dec. 4.