Nebula's Relationship with Gamora

One of the things the movie Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) and its sequel did really well was take a lot of disparate cosmic Marvel characters and form them into a cohesive whole. Credit where credit's due, the process was started by the 2006 event Annihilation, which the movies take a lot of inspiration from, but the movies really ran with it. One example of this is the relationship between Gamora and Nebula.

Gamora, aka The Deadliest Woman in the Whole Galaxy, first appeared in Strange Tales #180 (April 1975) as a bounty hunter looking for Adam Warlock. Only a few months later in Warlock #10 (October 1975), we learn that she was rescued by Thanos as a little girl and raised as his daughter to kill an evil version of Adam Warlock called The Magus.

Meanwhile, Nebula is introduced in Avengers #257 (May 1985) as a pirate who has taken over Thano's ship, the Sanctuary II. We learn there's more to the story in #260 (August 1985), however, when she reveals that she's Thanos's granddaughter.

In Infinity Gauntlet #1 (May 1991), Thanos calls the legitimacy of this claim into question, but accepts her as his granddaughter anyway.

For the next two decades, Gamora and Nebula only appear in a handful of issues together. In fact, they don't interact until Annihilation: Ronan #2 (May 2006), and don't show any sign of familiarity. In Annihilation: Ronan #4 (July 2006), Nebula has joined Gamora's team, the Graces, but they still don't seem to have any level of relationship beyond that.

Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) changes this drastically. In the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Gamora and Nebula are both Children of Thanos, and they have an intense rivalry as he constantly pits them against each other in combat. The reason Nebula is a cyborg in this universe is that, every time Nebula lost a fight against Gamora, Thanos would upgrade her to make her better. By this point, she's mostly machine. However, once they each turn on Thanos for their own reasons, they grow closer together and treat each other like sisters.

In Thanos Annual #1 (May 2014), Nebula is referred to as a daughter of Thanos for the first time. As it came out a few months before Guardians of the Galaxy was released, I don't know if it was planned to be roughly in time with the movie, or if it's just a coincidence. Either way, the Nebula discussed in this issue is from an alternate reality, so it doesn't really count one way or the other.

Guardians Team-Up #2 (March 2015) complicates things. Nebula and Gamora interact more than ever before, and it seems like they have personal history. Nebula in particular says she has many things she could blame Gamora for. That being said, the person who has hired Nebula to capture Gamora doesn't like Gamora because she's the daughter of Thanos, which implies Nebula is NOT a daughter of Thanos.

Guardians of the Galaxy: Best Story Ever #1 (April 2015) doesn't clear up anything. On one page, it re-affirms that Nebula is a granddaughter of Thanos, yet later Gamora refers to Nebula as her "sister" (quotes hers). Either way, there's clearly an animosity between them.

I thought Gamora #1 (December 2016) settled the issue. In it, Gamora and Nebula consider each other sisters and act as if they were raised together. But I don't actually know if it's continuity. The writer says it's set in the MCU, but nothing in the comic itself claims that (not to mention that Gamora and Thanos use their comics designs, not their movie ones). To make it worse, the genocide of Gamora's people, as depicted, doesn't match the movies OR the comics. So we'll just disregard the whole thing.

Unfortunately, that means this entry won't end with the smoking gun I thought it would. But I feel that the two Guardians stories from 2015, and the recent Asgardians of the Galaxy #3 (November 2018) that shows Nebula has a clear rivalry with Gamora, add up to make essentially the same point.