Best 1969 YA & YYA Lit (1)
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January 18, 2019
One in a series of 10 posts identifying Josh Glenn’s favorite 1969 YA & YYA adventure novels. Happy 50th anniversary!
Arnold Drake and Gene Colan’s sci-fi comic Guardians of the Galaxy (first appearance, 1969).
Conceived of by Arnold Drake, who’d previously created the Doom Patrol for DC, and Stan Lee, the Guardians of the Galaxy are an all-for-one, one-for-all squad — originally composed of a Jovian super-soldier (Charlie-27), a crystalline Pluvian (Martinex), a primitive Centaurian (Yondu), and a psychokinetic mutant (Vance Astro, later known as Major Victory) — who’ve united against the threat, to their fellow humanoids on a far-future Earth, of the reptilian Brotherhood of Badoon. The Dirty Dozen-like team would appear and disappear from Marvel’s pages, in following years, landing their own series briefly in 1976, then making time-traveling cameo appearances in Thor, The Avengers, Defenders, and other titles through 1980 — written by Steve Gerber and drawn by Don Heck and Sal Buscema. Starhawk, who joins the team (in more ways than one), is an amazing character, too. Despite how grim and gritty Marvel became in the ’90s, the Guardians have remained a light-hearted, action-packed franchise.
Fun facts: James Gunn’s 2014 superhero film Guardians of the Galaxy, and its 2017 sequel, were pretty fun — though not based on the early stories, which in 2009 were collected by Marvel into a single volume, Guardians of the Galaxy: Earth Shall Overcome.
BEST SIXTIES YA & YYA: [Best YA & YYA Lit 1963] | Best YA & YYA Lit 1964 | Best YA & YYA Lit 1965 | Best YA & YYA Lit 1966 | Best YA & YYA Lit 1967 | Best YA & YYA Lit 1968 | Best YA & YYA Lit 1969 | Best YA & YYA Lit 1970 | Best YA & YYA Lit 1971 | Best YA & YYA Lit 1972 | Best YA & YYA Lit 1973. ALSO: Best YA Sci-Fi.
JOSH GLENN’S *BEST ADVENTURES* LISTS: BEST 250 ADVENTURES OF THE 20TH CENTURY | 100 BEST OUGHTS ADVENTURES | 100 BEST RADIUM AGE (PROTO-)SCI-FI ADVENTURES | 100 BEST TEENS ADVENTURES | 100 BEST TWENTIES ADVENTURES | 100 BEST THIRTIES ADVENTURES | 75 BEST GOLDEN AGE SCI-FI ADVENTURES | 100 BEST FORTIES ADVENTURES | 100 BEST FIFTIES ADVENTURES | 100 BEST SIXTIES ADVENTURES | 75 BEST NEW WAVE SCI FI ADVENTURES | 100 BEST SEVENTIES ADVENTURES | 100 BEST EIGHTIES ADVENTURES | 75 BEST DIAMOND AGE SCI-FI ADVENTURES | 100 BEST NINETIES ADVENTURES (in progress) | 1994 | 1995 | 1996 | 1997 | 1998 | 1999 | 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | NOTES ON 21st-CENTURY ADVENTURES.