I'm hoping they reference the original GROOT story at one point. I was thinking this is not THE Groot the whole time because of all the macro comic references in the first film and can't grok the good Groot at all as an original Groot fan.
In the 80's, I had made a parody of the Groot story but I had to destroy it because it was poking fun too harshly at someone that I knew's behaviors with unflattering images.
Are they ever going to say Drax is from Earth placed in a golem-like body and was brain damaged by his daughter Moondragon? Too comic obscure? Where is Pip the troll?
It's not like Marvel hasn't been changing characters left and right since the beginning.
Have you ever tried to match up the Golden Age comics with the Silver Age? The original Vision of the 40's was interdimensional being trapped in our world that was solidified in cigarette smoke. In that version he was more "American" than Captain America in a way! I recall the old timers moaning about the characters being different especially the old timey Batman fans. I remember saying Batman doesn't use guns in the 80's and getting laughed at.
Even the "Hulk" isn't the original Marvel "Hulk". They retconned his name into "Xemnu the Titan".
All that aside, they have gone really far with his backstory in the comics from the attention the series GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY has received. It seems they have annihilated the original Groot story with all the overwriting retcons. They're saying the scenario in TALES TO ASTONISH that Groot was lying about the whole thing about being ruler of Planet X and experimenting on people. All of which was because of his imprisonment by the Kree had compelled him to lie. I don't know this seems weak. Then how would you explain the Groot replica in the 1976 HULK Annual? He had to be replicating the ruler of Planet X so they can't just say that scenario is easily dismissed.
It's funny that you bring that up, because I just recently bought the Golden Age Omnibuses for Superman and Batman.
I agree with you about some of the retcons being weak. I like it that writers care enough about continuity to try to link up the current character conception with earlier appearances, but I don't always like the way it is done. Sometimes the lameness of mediocre writers seems to create a ball and chain characters have to drag around... like that Spiderman "One More Day" crap where they wiped out his marriage to Mary Jane. WTF! That's like a study of how not to use continuity.
But what you are talking about might be one of the reasons why Gardner Fox is considered such a great comic book writer: the way he tried to match up the Golden Age DC heroes with the DC Silver Age characters. By contrast to the Groot retcon, I thought Fox linked the old with the new in interesting ways that didn't dilute the originals and were also springboards for new stories: alternate earths with crossovers. I never understood the urge to "clean everything up" with the Crisis on Infinite Earths... That was just stupid, since the alternate earths are great ways to keep things separate but real instead of just doing "dreams" or "what if" stories... Remember the "Super-Sons" -- Superman Jr. and Batman Jr. -- back in the 1970's? And how it turned out they were imaginary the whole time? Ugh, that was terrible. I also respect Stan Lee for bringing back Golden Age Marvel characters once the "Marvel Age" of the 1960's really took off: like Captain America and Namor. The way the Human Torch was brought back or "re-imagined" in the 1960's was probably more typical of the way pre-Bronze Age or pre-Modern Age comic book writers thought: i.e., that comic books were throwaway pleasures printed on cheap pulp with readers who would only be into them for a few years, and therefore the writers didn't feel any obligation not to re-invent or completely redo old characters and character concepts to suit a new story.
Sometimes we were lucky to get more than 5 titles a month between me and my younger brother in the mid-1970's. My parents divorce had my father having to take us somewhere, which slowly whittled down to just me and him, so I got to pick out a lot of comics per week when he was on the weekend shift at Bellevue Hospital and sit in the office(Heh, I used to hear them say "Bellevue" in old movies and cartoons and think how do they know that lunatic works at Bellevue? )
I just found the title where they reprinted Groot:
One great thing about the Lee-Kirby team is that they were not afraid to put themselves out there on the tightrope, without a net, every single issue...
It's fascinating to read their comics from the late 50's/early 60's period just before "it all came together." Like the monster stories, Challengers of the Unknown, etc. It was a time of unbridled creativity and experimentation. So much energy, and no fear of looking stupid.
A retcon that never sat well with me was making the Vision have the body of the original Human Torch. It was like they were trying to tie back the Vision with the oldest (appearance-wise) Marvel character, which I could see would give the character more weight in the Marvel Universe... But I have never liked that retcon because I never felt like they were the same guy: totally different powers, look and personalities. And why would Ultron, building a more advanced synthezoid in the 1960's need to use the body of an android from 1939? That's like insisting we put rockets on a Model T rather than building a new jet from scratch. As a retcon this never felt like a good fit.
Also, I thought it took away from the thematic resonance of Henry Pym building a robot who rebelled against him, and that robot building another robot who rebelled against it.
There was a lot of that post-Kirby Avengers where it got sketchy. Like the origina of the quinjets were from Wakanda then it just blurred out. I love Buscema's stuff even though its the time that they were favoring him over Kirby. Even Roy Thomas has his good moments. Those fringe heroes really get sketchy in the mid-70's like WEREWOLF BY NIGHT and GHOST RIDER. Its like Kirby left and the tone got a little incoherent but when he returned it was like Kirby was out-of-synch with the fringe Marvel stuff. Although Kirby's return I loved especially the Cap stuff that was the best time to read comics. MACHINE MAN was my favorite at that time.
I didn't appreciate Kirby's art enough at the time. I thought the 70's stuff was sloppy and I used to say he should be called "Squarefingers" Jack instead of "King" Kirby. How embarrassing for me. I've totally changed my mind on that, of course, and now I'm one of the Kirby faithful. What I used to see as sloppy I now see as energetic. Looking back now, I have to say the 1970's Kirby stuff -- both at DC and when he came back to Marvel -- was some of the most creative and best stuff in comics, ever, even if some of it was pretty psychedelic.
I also recently bought the Omnibus on Kirby 1970's run on CAPTAIN AMERICA. I had most of those comics as a kid, from Madbomb and the Rollerball thing up to Cap vs. the Swine and "Rio De Muerte" and the devil fish in South America and the first appearance of Arnim Zola. And who could forget the Night People! I also had Kirby's 2001 and MACHINE MAN, and a few issues of THE NEW GODS. Wow, did DC get a lot of mileage out of that!
The one I missed out on was THE ETERNALS. Kirby reworked this 'superheroes blurred with gods' concept a few times, so it seemed to be a recurring theme with him... He was always in touch with the idea that superheroes are the "New Gods" in the old storytelling traditions of Greek and Norse Mythology.
I got into MACHINE MAN because of the weird 2001 A SPACE ODYSSEY series. It was like each issue tried to remake the movie from a different approach and the Machine Man issue was how a machine could evolve. It was the most out of place movie adaption like almost ten years after the movie came out. That was Kirby: totally unconventional.