Leery's
Leery's
Official Name: Leery's
Location: Extraterrestrial;
Dive-Town, a minor suburb of the continent-spanning supercity/starport cosmopolis of Lumina, planet Xarth Three, unrevealed star system, unrevealed galaxy;
Staff: Nrrsh ("ran the place" and apparently served as bartender);
unidentified/unspecified other regular staff members (such as waitresses)
, plus potentially varying acts, including eighty coalescent pseudo-moeba dancers and a Kymellian band
Clientele/patrons/visitors: Droook and various War Brotherhood Devastation Cadre (including warrior Lorg), Groot, Kree businessmen, Recorder #127, Roamer, Rocket (Raccoon);
numerous others unidentified
Major Resources: The Timothy;
various other intoxicants
Defense: Cyberneticons, Nrrsh
First Appearance: Guardians of the Galaxy: Rocket Raccoon & Groot -- Steal the Galaxy (2017)
Features:
Leery's is typical of most Dive-town hostelries: Split-level,
multi-bars, a dance floor, an orchestra pit, a ranged sequence of
fighting arenas, and a quasi-sidereal gateway to the Multiverse that no
one every uses because they are too busy getting hammered, betting on
the arena fights, dancing, or having a flarking good time of it. Plus,
a bandstand, a salad bar, and well-carperted floors, which may or may
not have been typcial for Dive-Town bars.
The bar is known for a drink known as the Timothy (which will get a profile of its own at some point).
A band and dancers are features that may have been regular, consistent, occasional, or rare.
The deep and immense rock-fuse piles upon which Dive-Town was built, bored into the planet's mantle in ages past by the first constructors of Xarth, were affected by at least ultralow infra-sound frequencies, sometimes causing the ground/bar to jump up and down.
History:
(Guardians
of the Galaxy: Rocket Raccoon & Groot -- Steal the Galaxy Chapter
One: Last Orders
(fb) - BTS) - Located on planet Xarth Three's Dive-Town, Leery's was a
popular bar...although nobody who frequented it could actually remember
who Leery was or why the bare bore his (or her, or its) name.
Not even Nrrsh, the Skrull who ran the place.
(Guardians of the Galaxy: Rocket Raccoon & Groot -- Steal the Galaxy Chapter One: Last Orders (fb) - BTS) - Every Skrull-Day (or when he drank too many Timothies), Nrrsh sang the Skrullian traditional anthem, "Tarnax! Tarnax! Always shifting!"
(Guardians
of the Galaxy: Rocket Raccoon & Groot -- Steal the Galaxy Chapter
Three: Throwdown (fb) - BTS) - Nrrsh hired a number of highly skilled Cyberneticons from the Raxus war zones as bouncers to police Leery's.
(Guardians
of the Galaxy: Rocket Raccoon & Groot -- Steal the Galaxy Chapter Two: A Spot of Brother (fb) - BTS) - Recorder#127 hid underneath the
bandstand at Leery's.
(Guardians
of the Galaxy: Rocket Raccoon & Groot -- Steal the Galaxy Chapter
One: Last Orders) - Per Recorder 127, "the suns were setting like hot coals spitting as they sank into murky water. "
In the streets outside, neon lamps were pulsing. Necro-droidal trash gangs were howling at the rising moons, eager to begin a night of vicious turf wars and lucrative organ scavenging.
Having gotten a lead that there was a zunk trader at Leery's, Rocket (Raccoon) and Groot arrived (while the Guardians of the Galaxy were on something of a sabbatical, they had obtained a cargo of 48 tons of zunks that they hoped to sell) at Leery's, where it was business as usual:
The dancing girls -- actually a shoal of eighty coalescent pseudo-moeba swirling in stylish, syncopated formation...with ostrich feathers -- were dancing
The band -- a close-harmony squadron of Kymellian interpolatory trumpatoonists who were using brass acoustic-tubes to produce disconcerting and frankly uncomfortable (to Recorder 127's perceptions) horse-fart noises at ultralow frequencies. With a samba beat -- was playing.
The
joint was literally jumping. The deep and immense rock-fuse piles upon
which Dive-Town was built, bored into the planet's mantle in ages past
by the first constructors of Xarth, were actually being affected by the
ultralow infra-sound frequencies of the Kymellian band's horse-farting
and were beginning to twitch. The Recorder describing the events added, "Just a little bit. Oooh, just a little bit."
(Guardians
of the Galaxy: Rocket Raccoon & Groot -- Steal the Galaxy Chapter
One: Last Orders) - After
Rocket ordered a Timothy for himself and a bark and soda for Groot,
Nrrsh scurried to the task. And then the Badoon arrived...
(Guardians of the Galaxy: Rocket Raccoon & Groot -- Steal the Galaxy Chapter Two: A Spot of Brother) - Badoon Commander Droook questioned Rocket about the Recorder, of whom he knew nothing. After one of the Badoon War Brotherhood's sensors detected Rigellian technology in the crawlspace under the bandstand, the Recorder 127 tried to flee. The Badoon rushed the Recorder, which emitted an electronic squeal of dismay, and many patrons scattered while others jeered the Badoon. While bouncers closed in, Nrrsh called out "Oy!" and pointed to a sign that read, "Please do not draw or discharge firearms or energy-disruption devices on these premises as a Skrullian punch dagger in the kidneys often offends."
The Recorder's futile flight caused it to run headlong into a waitress and send three trays of glasses to crash to the floor. As customers screamed and shouted, Droook fired a blast to incapacitate the Recorder while preserving his memory banks. However, the Galadorian Spaceknight Roamer (employed by Timely Inc. to recover the Recorder #127) appeared, taking the blast instead, partially deflecting it into Rocket's Timothy, destroying it...driving Rocket (and Groot), who had sought to stay out of things, into joining the conflict against the Badoon.
(Guardians of the Galaxy: Rocket Raccoon & Groot -- Steal the Galaxy Chapter Three: Throwdown) - Rocket's large blaster struck Droook in face; his force field protected him from being disintegrated, but the force of the blast but the overwhelming "kinetic hammerblow" still knocked Droook off of his feet and sent him to land facedown in the salad bar.(Guardians of the Galaxy: Rocket Raccoon & Groot -- Steal the Galaxy Chapter Four: Exit Strategy) - Rocket, Groot, and Recorder headed in one direction to escape until observing the ogre-mode bouncers as well as Nrrsh getting back on his feet and racking a cut-down ion shotgun. After being berated by Rocket for pointing out the obvious hazards to that route, the Recorder suspended his speech functions. They then headed in another direction but found that path blocked by a newly-arrived Badoon support squad, with Droook yelling commands and expletives in equal measure from behind the salad bar. As War Brotherhood laser rounds and exterminatron bolts peppered the air, Rocket fire two shots at the Badoon to keep them ducking and then blasted a whole in the ground and then hurled his weapon to Groot, who used it to fight off the ogre-modes. As Rocket used another weapon to hold back the Badoon, he urged Groot to the hole he had made, noting it was time to make the tree. "And leaf?" asked the Recorder, after which Rocket corrected him with, "And fall!"
And Rocket, the Recorder, and Groot jumped down the hole, and dropped eight meters into the midst of the pit-fight ring.
(Guardians
of the Galaxy: Rocket Raccoon & Groot -- Steal the Galaxy Chapter Five: Let the Games Begin)
- After escaping the pits, Rocket, Groot, and the Recorder rushed back
to Rocket's ship, encountering a number of people fleeing the chaos at
Leery's en route.
Comments: Created by Dan Abnett.
In the Acknowledgments section, Dan thanked Stuart Moore, Jeff
Youngquist, Axel Alonso, Dan Buckley, Sarah Brunstad, and James Gunn
for their support in this project.
He also noted "fist-bumps to <the Appendix's own> Ronald Byrd for continuity-fu."
Both the bar Leery's and the drink
the Timothy are homage to Timothy Leary, who was a controversial
American psychologist and author known for his strong advocacy of
psychedelic drugs. Google him for more information...
While this is not a profile on
Xarth Three, Lumina, the Luminals, etc., the Recorder does note that Xarth
Three "occupies a long season, 'sling loop' orbit around the binary
stars Fades Primary and Fades Secondary in the Xranek Group," and that
Xarth Three was a class M world with a population of 9.9 billion, and a
gross industrial export principally comprising --
and the Recorder stopped at that point.
In-continuity?
People question whether novels should be in-continuity. There is a
mindset that they should arbitrarily and automatically excluded. I
don't get that at all. If the stories fit seamlessly in-continuity and
they add to the
rich texture of the "Marvel Universe," why exclude them? In any case,
characters in such
stories as novels, games, etc. that don't contradict -616 continuity
are considered "fringe characters." They fit into existing continuity,
but are not definitively part of it until they are confirmed to be so
in a story, handbook, etc.
There is one significant continuity glitch, but it
has been referenced in other stories confirmed to take place in
Reality-616 (see Donald's discussion below)
They
sure fit in better than a lot of stuff by certain writers...you know
who you are...and we know who you are...
Not only that, but the story specifically references the universe in
which they dwelled to be Reality-616...however, the Marvel Cinematic
Universe movies refer to their mainstream reality as -616 also...
Counterpoint by Donald Campbell:
As much as I liked this novel, there were some
elements that bothered me. For example, Alpha Centauri is described as a
"cosmic hubworld (that governs) almost thirty systems and trillions of
lives." This definitely does NOT sound the like 616 Alpha Centauri system
where the Centaurians are usually depicted as only having a
"bow-and-arrow" level technology, the Alpha Centaurians (assuming
they are not nearly extinct) are focused on desperately trying to keep their
homeworld habitable, and the Centurii from Centuri-Six (which may or may not
actually be part of the Alpha Centauri system) were all kidnapped by slavers.
And yes, I hold this opinion despite the fact that, in
Annihilators#1/2, Abnett and Lanning established that Rocket Raccoon had
worked for six months as a mail clerk at the Alpha Centauri offices of the
Customer Services Division of Timely Inc. Also, while the Timely offices
were aboard an orbiting ship in that comic, in this novel they are on the
planet Alpha Centauri...which is also wrong/inconsistent with the Marvel Comics
universe.
In conclusion, I really enjoyed the novel but I
don't think it was meant to be canon and I don't think that it should be
treated as being "in continuity." And I would REALLY like some writer
to finally get around to explaining the current status quo in the 616 Alpha
Centauri star system. I mean, what level of technology do the Centaurians
actually possess? What do the Centaurians actually call their race? What is
their name for the planet known to Terrans as Centauri-IV? Can Alpha
Centaurians still live on Arima or was the planet left too dehydrated after
Sub-Mariner I#18? Is Centuri-Six actually in orbit around Proxima
Centauri?
Me again:
Valid point on the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but the difference is
that the novel is not clearly a different reality or part of a
different Multiverse than the comics Reality-616 as the cosmic
hierarchy, (Uatu the Watcher, Galactus, etc.) etc., is the same. Additionally, this story goes to
great lengths to fit solidly with Reality-616's continuity, alien
races, etc.
The Alpha Centauri discrepancy is
certainly significant, but bigger issues than that happened consistently in
Bendis' and other writers stories that are considered Reality-616.
Profile by Snood.
CLARIFICATIONS:
Leery's has no known connections to:
images: (without ads)
None
Appearances:
Guardians of the Galaxy: Rocket Raccoon & Groot -- Steal the Galaxy prose
novel (2017) - by Dan Abnett (see comments)
First posted: 12/08/2023
Last updated: 12/10/2023
Any Additions/Corrections? please let me know.
Non-Marvel
Copyright info
All other characters mentioned or pictured are ™ and ©
1941-2099 Marvel Characters, Inc. All Rights Reserved. If you like this stuff,
you should check out the real thing!
Please visit The Marvel Official Site at:
http://www.marvel.com
Special Thanks to www.g-mart.com for hosting the Appendix, Master List, etc.!