Your Spoiler-Filled Guide to All the Easter Eggs in Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2

Starhawk
Sylvester Stallone’s character was, like Howard the Duck, a Steve Gerber creation (with an assist by artist Sal Buscema). And, like Stallone himself, Starhawk came straight out of the ’70s. The child of superheroes Quasar and Kismet (also known as Ayesha…more on her shortly), Stakar was born in the far future of 2002 and ultimately developed superpowers that were partly the result of his parentage, and partly the result of a gloriously convoluted backstory. I’m not sure any of that relates to the character Stallone plays in the film: he’s a high-ranking Ravager with mixed feelings about Yondu, but that’s it. Worth mentioning: he was one of the early members of the Guardians in the comics. The original team didn’t have any members that film fans would recognize, except for Yondu (on the page, Yondu was a founding member of the team that inspired the later grouping that we see in the film). We do see cameos of most of the original team hanging out with Stallone/Starhawk, including Michelle Yeoh (also booked for Star Trek: Discovery, if that ever airs) as Aleta, Ving Rhames as Charlie-27, and Smallville and the animated Justice League’s Michael Rosenbaum as Martinex (the crystal guy). It certainly seems as though we were supposed to take note of them. Maybe we’ll see more of them in a future movie—perhaps as a competing team of Guardians?

Howard the Duck
After making a brief appearance during the closing credits of the first film, Howard gets a few extra seconds of screen time here. Created by Steve Gerber and Val Mayerlik as a backup for Marvel’s Man-Thing, the surly, chain-smoking duck has long been one of the most bizarre characters in the Marvel stable. He even won thousands of actual write-in votes in the 1976 presidential election when he created a fictional political party in the comics. Today, he’s probably best known for the much (much much much) maligned (so much) 1986 film, which almost singlehandedly destroyed Howard’s filmic aspirations…until just recently, when he apeared in two of the biggest moneymakers of all time. You call it a cameo. Howard calls it a comeback. Or possibly a comequack. Quackback? (Also worth noting: his stellar comeback quackback comequack comeback in comics, via the pen of one Chip Zdarsky.)

Her and Him
In the film, Ayesha is the leader of the Sovereign people, the genetically engineered snotbags who serve as secondary antagonists. In the comics, the character was created by the Enclave, a group of morally bereft scientists working to create the perfect being. Remember the closing credits scene where she reveals her perfect creation/instrument of future vengeance, Adam? On the page, Adam Warlock (also known as Him) was created by the Enclave first, but rebelled and was replaced by Ayesha, who also wound up rebelling against her creators, and spent a great deal of time as a superhero while also being obsessed with finding a perfect mate. She’s also been known as Kismet, Paragon, J’ridia Starduster, and, more simply, Her. Her kinda-brother Adam has a long history on the cosmic side of Marvel comics, but perhaps most significantly has been involved in a lot of stories involving Thanos and the Infinity Gems (Hmm…). He traditionally possesses the Soul Gem, the only one that we haven’t seen in the MCU yet.  (HMMMMMM…)

Taserface
One of my own favorite incarnations of the Guardians in the comics involved the original team facing off against The Stark: in the far future, a whole bunch of Tony Stark’s tech winds up on a planet of largely un-advanced, generally unpleasant beings. Doesn’t stop them from adapting the tech for their own uses before setting off to conquer the galaxy. Taserface (his given name, though he sometimes goes by the equally subtle “Overkill”) was one of their scouts. The reasons why his parents named him Taserface remain shrouded in mystery.
He does not shoot tasers out of his face.
Which, note to Marvel: sucks.

The Watchers
Fans cannot possibly be surprised that Stan Lee shows up in Guardians, and this might well be the über-cameo. He’s in a spacesuit, hanging out on a rock in space, talking about having once played a FexEx guy (in Avengers: Age of Ultron). He seems to be playing himself, telling stories to the increasingly bored aliens with giant heads. Those are Watchers: created by Stan and Jack Kirby during the ’60s heyday of Marvel, they observe and record the events of the universe, but have a strict code against interference. Like in Doctor Who, though, there’s always a rebel: it’s Uatu, the Watcher we encountered first and most often in the books. When things have been particularly dire for mankind, he’s lent a hand—at least until the recent Original Sin crossover, in which Nick Fury is (kinda) forced to kill him. And then steal his eyeball. Before taking his job as penance. A fan theory (that I rather liked) had it that Stan Lee’s various appearances in Marvel movies suggest that he was, himself, Uatu, wandering the Marvel universe and keeping an eye on things. Here it seems like he’s just Stan Lee, which is probably better.

My Dad, the Living Planet
So, the movie version of Peter’s parentage isn’t the same as in the comics. Which makes sense: the answer to the big mystery the first movie introduced wouldn’t have been too surprising otherwise. On the page, Star Lord is the son of J’son of Spartax, a king who developed a relationship with the human Meredith Quill but left earth before learning that she was pregnant. He turns out to be kind of a jerk, but not quite as big a jerk as Peter’s dad in the movie: EGO, THE LIVING PLANET. Created by Stan and Jack back in the ’60s, Ego is a…well, a living planet. He’s in that vein of characters whose motivations are slightly beyond the good and bad of the rest of the heroes, but he’s gone insane on at least a few occasions, at which times his behavior is less capricious and more evil. He recently learned that he has a brother named, no kidding, Alter-Ego. They’re both Celestials, as in the movie. Though not much is known of their origins, the really, really big and god-like beings predate pretty much any other life in the cosmos. The Celestials around today are the survivors of an ancient purge by an even bigger robot called the “Godkiller.”

Mantis and Kraglin
Finally, the film introduces two potential new Guardians, both with long histories in the comics. I say long histories, but, in the case of Kraglin, the history isn’t particularly auspicious. It’s actually a pretty deep cut: he was part of the invading army of an obscure race called the A-Chiltarians and was defeated by the Wasp and Ant-Man during his single significant appearance in 1963. Mantis, on the other hand, doesn’t go back quite as far, but her history runs much deeper. And weirder. Though Vietnamese, she comes to the attention of the Kree at a young age, as they believe she’s destined to become the Celestial Madonna, apparently a big important job. She was an Avenger for some time, and met the being whom she was fated to mate with, but when her co-creator Steve Englehart left Marvel, he took her with him. A pregnant character meant to be Mantis showed up in a couple of issues of DC’s Justice League of America, and even in an issue of a book from the now-defunct Eclipse Comics, before she showed up again at Marvel with her baby. That’s a lot of backstory on a character that doesn’t have all that much to do with the lookalike character in the movie, but her comic journey is pretty interesting
I know it’s killing you…so what did we miss?