When the Spartax prince
J'son's ship crash lands in Colorado, he is taken in by a local farmer,
Meredith Quill. The two form a relationship while J'son makes repairs to his ship, but he is soon contacted by his people with news that war has broken out and his leadership is needed. He leaves not knowing Meredith is pregnant with their son, who she names Peter. Ten years later, Meredith is killed when she is attacked by two
Badoon soldiers who have come to kill Peter and end J'son's blood line. A teenaged Peter defends himself with Meredith's shotgun, finds a weapon J'son had accidentally left behind, and escapes his home before it is destroyed by the Badoon ship. The Badoon presume Peter has been killed and leave. Now an orphan, Peter becomes an astronaut for
NASA when he reaches adulthood. During a mission where his ship malfunctions and leaves him stranded in space, Peter is found by the Ravagers, a group of space pirates led by
Yondu. After the Ravagers save Peter, he tries to steal their ship, humiliates the Ravagers by outsmarting them, and even knocks out Yondu before capturing him. After Yondu awakens, he frees himself and attacks Peter, letting Peter choose between death and
marooning. Peter instead asks Yondu if he could join the pirate captain's crew. Yondu eventually learns that the two share something in common: growing up as "kids without homes". He lets Peter stay on with the Ravagers as their cleaning boy. Peter slowly works his way up the Ravagers' ranks to become a seasoned pirate, picking up various skills and weapons from his new brethren. Peter encounters the
Fallen One, a former
Herald of Galactus, and is almost killed defeating the entity, which results in his ship being destroyed and the Ravagers leaving him for dead. Peter and the Fallen One are subsequently imprisoned by the
Nova Corps in the intergalactic prison called the
Kyln. Peter is freed by the hero
Nova during the
Annihilation War and aids the Corps against the forces of
Annihilus. He is subsequently appointed as military advisor to the
Kree general
Ronan the Accuser. When the Kree homeworld of
Hala is
conquered by the Phalanx, Peter assumes the name
Star-Lord and leads a band of rebels against the invaders until the war is over. Determined to prevent the atrocities he witnessed from happening again, Star-Lord forms a new version of the
Guardians of the Galaxy. They are "proactive" and try to end emerging galactic threats early, but are unsuccessful at preventing a war between the
Kree and Shi'ar. During a war with an
invading universe, Star-Lord and Nova are prepared to sacrifice themselves to defeat
Thanos but only Nova dies and Thanos escapes.
New Guardians and Kitty Pryde Peter decides to remain inactive for a time until he discovers his father was planning to pass a law that forbade any interaction of extraterrestrial or space origin with Earth. Knowing this would be an open invitation for invasion, Peter decides to reform the Guardians with six members:
Gamora,
Rocket Raccoon,
Groot,
Drax the Destroyer, and
Bug, along with himself, and start protecting Earth from any attack. Soon they aid the
Avengers against the returned Thanos. After this, Star-Lord and his new team of Guardians engage in conflicts with the Badoon. He is soon captured by the army of Spartax but he escapes imprisonment and broadcasts a video showing the unfairness of his father's reign. During the war of the builders, he infiltrated the
S.W.O.R.D. facilities and rescued
Abigail Brand along with Rocket and new member
Angela. He also declared war against the Shi'ar empire after intervening in one of their trials to rescue the kidnapped young
Jean Grey along with the
X-Men. During this mission Peter meets
Kitty Pryde, and the two eventually have a romantic relationship. Afterwards, the Guardians are cornered and captured by the Spartax Army. Peter is sent to Spartax where he confronts his father again and escapes after exposing once again his father's tyrannical reign. A riot forms in the Empire and J'son is deposed as a consequence. Peter keeps a low profile and remains dedicated to his long-distance relationship with Kitty. Soon he discovers he is elected by the Spartax people to be their new emperor. Peter ignores the announcement and focuses on Kitty and his search for a gangster named Mr. Knife who had put a bounty on his head. After being captured by Knife, he realizes Knife is J'son, his father. He escapes thanks to Kitty, and they spend some time together. Peter convinces Kitty to stay in space with him. He decides to steal an important artifact from J'son as payback.
The Black Vortex Peter and Kitty were successful in stealing the artifact called
The Black Vortex, but found themselves outnumbered by J'son's killing squad so they decided to call the X-Men and the remaining Guardians for help. Knowing the artifact could give them the needed power to defeat J'son, Peter wanted everyone to submit to the Vortex to gain cosmic powers. Kitty stood against the idea but some of their friends submitted anyway. After failing to stop them, the submitted cosmic warriors attacked
Hala the Accuser and Peter went with a team to help the Kree in the battle. After some failed negotiations for the Vortex his team had to escape, but J'son found them and destroyed Hala in retaliation. Peter escaped on time. After finding Spartax had been completely covered in amber by
Thane, including Kitty, Peter lamented not having heard her since the beginning and apologize to her. Kitty escaped thanks to her phasing powers and they had a reunion. Seeing no other way to defeat J'son and his cosmic empowered team, Peter tried to submit to the Vortex but after seeing the power would eventually make him push Kitty away, he refused. Kitty ended up submitting and saving Spartax. After the war ended, Peter had a romantic talk with Kitty where he proposes to her, a proposal which she accepts.
Secret Wars When the universe is facing its imminent end, Star-Lord and the rest of the Guardians of the Galaxy come to the world's final battle against the Children of Tomorrow. During the battle, Groot and Rocket Raccoon are killed, and Star-Lord is teleported away by
Reed Richards to his ship. In the end, he is one of the few survivors of the apocalypse aboard the
Fantastic Four's "life raft". After the end of the universe,
Doctor Doom somehow creates a new, patchwork world formed from the remains of dead universes. The life raft that Star-Lord was on remained in
cryostasis for the next eight years, until they are awakened by
Doctor Strange, a new Thor, and
Miles Morales. Doom becomes aware of their location, and ambushes them. Knowing they are the only hope of reviving the old universe, Strange casts a spell to spread the survivors across the world using the wind, with Doom vowing to find them. Star-Lord ends up in the domain of
Manhattan, where he gets a job singing in the popular club, "the Quiet Room", singing
Disney songs, as Disney films never existed in
Battleworld, using the alias of Steve Rogers to hide from Doom. It is here that he runs into an alternate universe version of Kitty Pryde (from the
Age of Apocalypse universe), who is hunting down artifacts from before Battleworld's creation. Hoping to talk to who he believes is his fiancée, he accidentally foils a deal between Kitty and
Gambit to obtain an ancient artifact. Gambit leaves, but Kitty uses a scanner to discover that Star-Lord is from before Battleworld's creation, and she plans to take him to Doom. However, they are ambushed by a group of robots connected to Gambit. The two decide to steal an artifact that Gambit has, but it is a trap, and the two are captured. Right before Gambit can kill them, a version of Drax appears. Drax hired Peter to work in the Quiet Room. Drax knocks out Gambit. The three leave with the artifact secured. When they are safe the next morning, Kitty shows it to the two, only to find out its Rocket Raccoon's tail. Star-Lord laments the death of his friend, and Kitty decides to allow him to keep it, as it is the one thing left of his old universe. Star-Lord thanks Kitty, who kisses him before heading back to her home of Doomguard. Realizing the two are out of a job for abandoning the Quiet Room in the middle of a show, Star-Lord and Drax decide to go back into Star-Lord's old career as a thief. He asks Drax if he knows a good geneticist, as he plans on using Rocket's tail to make a
clone of his friend, possibly an army of them. During the final stand against God Doom, Peter not only piloted a ship to take the two Reed Richardses to the heart of
Castle Doom, but also managed to keep
Black Swan occupied by using the last twig of Groot, kept in his pocket ever since the Incursions to be planted at the crucial moment.
All-New, All-Different Marvel Following the restoration of reality, Peter ascends to the throne of Spartax, with Rocket taking over leadership of the Guardians while Kitty (under the alias Star-Lady) and the
Thing (following the disbanding of the Fantastic Four while the Richards family worked to restore the
multiverse) joins the team. After Hala the Accuser and Yotat the Destroyer cause mass destruction on Spartax while trying to eliminate Quill, he returns to the Guardians due to the accusations of his delegates about his responsibility for the resulting deaths. During the
Civil War II storyline, Star-Lord and the Guardians of the Galaxy assist Captain Marvel as her surprise weapon in the fight against
Iron Man. During the battle, the Guardians ship is destroyed which leaves them stranded on Earth. After Iron Man's faction leaves, Gamora overhears a conversation between Peter and Kitty in which she learns that Peter knew (without telling the rest of the team) that Thanos was on Earth the entire time they were there. After stopping Gamora from storming into the Triskelion and killing Thanos, Gamora and the other Guardians leave Peter due to the secrecy. Peter and Kitty then break off their engagement.
Grounded Living alone in an apartment given to him by
Abigail Brand, Peter calls
Howard the Duck to try and have drinks with him, and Howard furiously hangs up. He then finds Kitty and
Old Man Logan in an art gallery, where Kitty shouts at him for carrying his guns into an art gallery with children. Frustrated, Peter leaves. Logan then catches up to him and has drinks with him in a bar, where they fight hitmen, which attracts the attention of the police. Logan flees the scene and Peter is captured. Peter is prosecuted by
Matt Murdock, who argues that unlike other superheroes, Star-Lord was reckless and endangered civilians while causing substantial property damage. The trial is interrupted by Brand, who gets the judge to reduce Peter's sentence to community service, to which Peter agrees. Brand and Alpha Flight then give him a new skin-tight costume, and he is assigned to senior citizen Edmund Allen, a retired super-criminal named Silver Bandit. After a day of bonding, Star-Lord is hired as a bartender at a bar for supervillains owned by Edmund's son.
Master of the Sun When the reborn Olympians began wreaking havoc throughout the universe,
Richard Rider interrupted the Guardians' party and asked them for help to deal with the mad gods. Despite other Guardians' wishes to rest, Peter was unable to do so while innocent people were being killed, and that, alongside recurring visions of the Master of the Sun asking him if his life felt lacking as of late, drove him along with Rocket Raccoon to join Nova and an assortment of other cosmic heroes to fight the Olympians. While Nova and Captain Marvel distracted some of the gods, Star-Lord, Rocket, and
Moondragon snuck inside the Olympians' interdimensional ship intending to blow it up. However, before this was accomplished, the team was discovered by Hermes and Artemis, who had remained behind. After Star-Lord was captured by
Hephaestus, he killed the Olympian, and remained behind to detonate the bomb and destroy New Olympus while the rest of the strike team evacuated. The bomb successfully detonated, destroying New Olympus, with Star-Lord seemingly dying along with it. However, Quill did not die in the blast, and was instead transported to a different universe after the explosion. He was taken in by a pair of travelers on this new world, Mors and Aradia, to whom he eventually acquitted himself both as friends as well as family and eventually lovers, while spending more than one-hundred and eighty seven years running a gauntlet of escapades with them. He came to see that his Element Gun had changed significantly since when last he used it; initially the blaster had a finite charge on which elements he could churn out at which succession, but because he'd used it to siphon the divine energies of Olympus's pantheon, he found that use of the gun did not seem to diminish its power supply. Whilst out camping with his new companions, Quill's fears, including an underlying suspicion as to why his personal keepsake never lost its juice, were confirmed by the reappearance of the mad Olympians. They revealed the constant use of Peter's signature weapon that bound and drained their powers also freed the petty gods from captivity with each usage, and that now they sought to reacquire their stolen might from him by any means necessary. Feeling responsible for bringing their wrath down upon their world, Quill opts to take a portal back to his universe to lead them away from his new home. In doing so he is met by the Master who states that having passed the test of his new life, he will make Quill into the one true Star-Lord: the Master of the Sun. It is later revealed that Victoria survived and that her condition has stabilized; Peter assumes the throne of Spartax until she can recover. ==Powers and abilities==