I had a really great idea for this weeks ‘Where are they now?’ but it is one of those ideas that if y0u don’t write it down somewhere you forget it and well I didn’t write it down.
This left me struggling for a subject and then watching footage of the Guardians of the Galaxy panel from SDCC 2013 when it came to me… How much do people really know about Yondu?

Week 6: Yondu, Blue Skinned archer of the Guardians

Who were they?: For quite a few people (myself included) the first exposure to Guardians of the Galaxy was not through the now very much in vogue cosmic super team that has Star Lord or Rocket Raccoon among it’s ranks but was rather through the original 31st century based team featured in Volume 1 from the 90’s. Yondu was a founding member of the team which over the years/issues would grow vastly. Along with Martinex, Charlie-27 and time traveler Major Victory formed the core team which were briefly shown during the 60’s then picking up Starhawk, his sister Aleta and Nikki before the team go it’s own series in the early 90’s.
Like a majority of the team Yondu stayed on a planet that was part of a human colony (Centauri IV), And as with a majority of human colonies the time the Badoon invaded, conquered and destroyed it. So gaining vengeance on the Brotherhood of the Badoon became not only his but also the teams objective as a majority of the Guardians had similar histories with the Badoon. Within the issues Yondu is the token archer of the team and warrior like by nature but tends to be level headed. Of note during the run he later loses his hand and has it replaced with an axe which proceeded DC ‘coincidentally‘ dong the same with Aquaman. Eventually his hand was restored and he found remnants of his society that hadn’t been erased by the Badoon and rejoined them and disappeared from the team for more than a year in before returning for the rest of the run which I feel declined more in quality in later issues.

What have they done recently?: Not very much, The only recent appearances was occasional panels of Guardians vol.2 (the modern team) except issue 16 when the original team of Martinex, Major Victory, Charlie-27, Yondu and later member Starhawk team up with the current team and we see him share a brief flirtation with Mantis. But with that run having reality being altered and this Yondu having a different costume and tribal tattoos it isn’t certain if this is the same as the Yondu from the original Guardians run. That is about where any link he has to the current team ends, he doesn’t play any major roles in that series as Starhawk or Major Victory did. This makes his upcoming appearance in the Guardians of the Galaxy film all the more strange given he has hardly interacted with the current team in any profound way.

What can we expect next?: Quite a lot, aside from it being fairly obvious Marvel will exploit his new found rise out of obscurity and insert him into the pages of Guardians at some point would be a safe bet. We do know that he will appear in the upcoming ‘Inhumanity’ series after being featured in Steve McNiven’s teaser poster. So all in all looks like you should start getting read up on him if you haven’t already and the best place to start is Guardians of the Galaxy volume 1, Which despite being thoroughly enjoyable you can see single issues going for pennies.

That’s it for this week if you have a ‘Where are they now?’ suggestion hit me up and I will see what I can dig up.

The writer of this piece was: Gary Kane aka (GK)
Article: Where are They Now (Prev: Under The Influence)
GK tweets from @Kanoclassic