By Brent McKnight | 6 years ago

We expected Marvel’s deep space adventure Guardians of the Galaxy to be good, and even moderately popular, but we weren’t sure if general audiences was going to climb on board with such a strange world and an unfamiliar title. Apparently that shouldn’t have been such a concern, as the film has now topped the $500 million mark worldwide. The wide array of unusual creatures and beings from all around the galaxy wasn’t off putting, in fact, it looks like the opposite was true. With so many new alien races thrown into the mix, you better believe there were numerous ideas floating around about how to approach each and every last one. And a key piece of the puzzle, Zoe Saldana’s Gamora, almost looked drastically different.

The first thing you notice about Gamora is the fact that she’s green. It’s really hard to look at her and not immediately notice that fact, unless you’re colorblind, then it’s totally understandable if you miss that. But this wasn’t always the case, and she was very nearly grey. Just check out this picture from Andy Park, a designer who worked on the character’s concept and appearance for Guardians. As he says in his tweet, this was “before she was green.”

Fans of the comics may be scratching their collective heads about this possibility, because traditionally the green-skinned assassin has, well, had green skin. That’s kind of a defining aesthetic characteristic. Surprising as it may be, there is apparently some groundwork that has been laid for such an option. Just take a quick look at this image of the character in an earlier incarnation in the comics. While not exactly grey, it’s hard to unequivocally say that this is 100% green, either.

This isn’t the first alternate version of Gamora we’ve seen. The other day we showed you some of Park’s alternate imaginings of Karen Gillan’s Nebula, Gamora’s adopted sister and chief rival, one of which features both interstellar badasses. You’ll notice that her skin here is a much more decisive shade of green than in the earlier picture.

There’s also this concept picture, which features both Nebula and Gamora—obviously it’s a companion piece to the last image.

So what do you think of this alternative Gamora? Do you think they made the right choice (we certainly do)? Are there any other changes to the appearance of the characters that you would have liked to see or are you satisfied with the way things all turned out?