Star-Lord

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.

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’-xtracted Peter and Jack.