To be sure, many of these characters proved no more than minor players, and Marvel's Star-Lord-- despite an impressive translation to the cinema in recent years-- couldn't even be said to be one of the sales-failures that remained a fan-favorite for years later, such as Killraven and the Man-Thing.
The base-concept of Star-Lord was essentially "Green Lantern without the Green Lantern Corps." His origin involved an alien giving Earthman Peter Quill cosmic powers, with an eye to creating more space-supermen later. But Quill/Star-Lord was the only one created, and despite his ties to Earth, his few adventures didn't involve his home planet, also in contradistinction to DC's Green Lantern. Given an "element-gun" for self-defense and an intelligent ship named "Ship" for transport, Star-Lord tooled around various galaxies for about a half dozen stories, before disappearing for the remainder of the Bronze Age.
The title "Planet Story" does concern a planet, though it's likely that either writer Doug Moench or artist Tom Sutton also had in mind the famous pulp-magazine PLANET STORIES, which specialized in adventurous space-opera. If so, it's an ironic title, because the script bears less resemblance to space opera than to more involved science fiction meditations on quasi-sentient planets, like Harry Harrison's DEATHWORLD. Moench does not give the planet in his story a name, but for convenience I will call it "the Sharing World."
Star-Lord and "Ship" have no particular agenda, save curiosity, when they happen across the Sharing-World. Their survey indicates that the world is replete with lush vegetation but no "higher fauna." Yet Star-Lord also observes a ruined city, indicating that at some point intelligent beings occupied the planet. Under his own flight-power, Star-Lord leaves his vehicle in orbit and descends. As soon as he does, various phenomena-- a volcano, an earthquake, and a bunch of tentacled plants-- assail the hero. He makes his way to the ruined city but finds no clue to explain the absence of the city's makers, though Star-Lord suspects that the populace may have been exterminated by the hostile environment.
Once Star-Lord leaves the city, again he's attacked by planetary phenomena, such as wind and lightning, but this time, the phenomena are driving him toward a destination. The hero is precipitated into the "organic cavern" of a huge tree, and the entrance seals up when Star-Lord tries to leave. The only thing inside the tree are various honeycombed chambers, which Star-Lord mentally compares to "cadaver-drawers" with no contents. Then he learns that they do have contents: groping plant-tendrils that try to grab him, though he's able to keep his distance from them.
Suddenly, the planet itself communicates with Star-Lord through the medium of dust that arranges itself into holograms (no, there's no explanation of how this could be accomplished). Through these images the Sharing-World informs its guest of its history with its sentient inhabitants, through the vehicle of the giant tree (and possibly other trees elsewhere on the planet).
Long ago, an intelligent race of parrot-headed creatures existed alongside the glories of the sentient planet, living as "noble savages in an alien Garden of Eden" (which is implicitly Star-Lord's interpretation of things). However, the parrot-people, whom the planet calls "the Sharers of Old," begin to dislike the planet's tendency to interact with them through the tree-tendrils. (Moench's script is unclear on some points: at first it sounds like some of the Sharers are killed by having their energies drained by the "vampire tendrils," but later it sounds like a symbiotic relationship that injures no one.)
In any case, the relationship is in later sections deemed as important by the Sharing-World, because intelligent beings, unlike lower animals, can choose whether or not to participate in the sharing-ritual. However, the parrot-people choose to leave this 'garden" and build their own cities. Then they follow the usual course of tool-using sentients, exploiting the planet and giving nothing back. In response the planet begins to die, and finally the Sharers give up and desert the Sharing-World via spaceship.
Then, as soon as Star-Lord has been given a Cook's Tour of the world's history, the feeding-tendrils latch onto him. At this point Moench and Sutton shift the narrative viewpoint to that of the Sharing-World, which describes its quasi-erotic attachment to the long vanished Sharers, and its desire to have Star-Lord take up the same role. The planet's attacks were caused by its eagerness to take on a new "lover," but though the reader learns these facts, but Star-Lord isn't tapped into the planet's ruminations. He breaks free of the tendrils and returns to his orbiting vessel. Once there, he confers with his intelligent ship, wondering if he ought to use the ship's weapons to destroy this menacing world. However, "Ship" talks the hero out of doing so, and the two of them leave-- which proves a final irony, since by that point the Sharing-World wants to die for its lack of loving symbiosis.
(The entire story can be read here.)
Even without Moench's early Eden-reference, one could hardly miss the tale's indebtedness to the Old Testament narrative of Adam and Eve. In said story, God gave the first humans the choice of whether or not to obey God's commandment not to eat of the Tree of Knowledge. Moench neatly inverts this myth, for here it's a tree, through which the planet manifests its will, that's more or less "feeding" on the inhabitants of the "garden." There's no tempter that moves the parrot-people to leave; they do so of their own volition, and Moench largely implies that their motives are more selfish than self-protective, and they're rejecting their quasi-sexual union with the planet rather than coming to a new knowledge of male-female sexuality. Christian philosophers have opined that humankind's exile from Eden was a "fortunate fall," but in Moench's story, strongly suggestive of ecological ideals like the "Gaea theory," the Fall is unfortunate for both the world and its intelligent denizens.
The element of "choice" is also less metaphysical and more sensual: the planet wants to share only with those who have the power to choose. Tom Sutton's art emphasizes the chaotic curves of natural life as against the hard lines of sentient dwelling-laces, and Star-Lord's brief captivity by the tendrils suggests a sort of human-alien sex along the lines of Philip Jose Farmer's 1953 story THE LOVERS, though Sutton's imagery suggests rape, as does one of Moench's lines:
"...the exit irised shut with a sloppy, wet sound that made me think of ripeness and guilt."
No comments:
Post a Comment