One of the most intriguing aspects of the MCU is seeing how the creative minds at Marvel Studios translate characters and concepts from page to screen. Not everything makes the transition intact, as some ideas just aren't practical, and some are just outdated. With alien characters like Nebula, being not as well known and inherently sci-fi, there's a lot more flexibility.

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Still, that doesn't mean that Nebula showed up in Guardians of the Galaxy exactly as she appeared in the comic books. Far from it. Let's take a look at some of the ways Nebula is the same as her comic inspiration, and some of the ways she's different.

The biggest difference is the most obvious. When Nebula first appears inThe Avengers #257way back in 1985, she has long, shiny dark hair. The blue skin and purple-ish costume carry over to the big screen pretty much intact, but sadly, not the hair. The creative team behind Guardians decided to make Nebula totally bald, emphasizing her cyborg parts, and sadly for Karen Gillan and fans of gingers everywhere, she had to shave her head. One wonders if we may see Nebula with hair in the future, as her character continues to grow and evolve from a villain.

Much like her counterpart on screen, Nebula is a straight-up villain in the comics. She's introduced as a space pirate in The Avengers and displays some pretty big ambition. When the team encounters her, she's taken over the Sanctuary II, a massive spaceshiponce under the command of Thanos (more on him in a bit). She wants to take over the Skrull Empire, and she's already massacred a race called the Xandarians. Not exactly the type of girl you bring home to mom. Nebula never really drifts too far from her status as a villain in the comics.

Nebula in the films is virtually all cybernetic, a product of the unimaginable brutality of Thanos. Thanos pitted her against her adoptive sister Gamora, and whenever Nebula would lose - which turned out to beoften - Thanos would punish Nebula by replacing a part of her body with a cybernetic implant. Harsh.

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This eventually transformed Nebula into a bitter, competitive weapon hellbent on proving her worth to her father, and eventually on his destruction. In the comics, she starts off without any cyborg parts and only gets them after a violent run-in with Thanos.

Both versions of Nebula can and do kick butt. In the films, her skills are honed through all those years and years of conflict with Gamora, and in service of Thanos. Nebula is often present or spearheading one of his nightmarish campaigns to cull the galaxy to fit his grotesque visions. Though she's paired with Ronan The Accuser in Guardians of the Galaxy, she really only has one or two interactions with him in comics. In the original Marvel comics, she doesn't need much help. She's naturally gifted. With a blaster, a sword, or her bare hands, she's one space pirate you don't want to mess with. But she probably wants to mess with you, anyway.

In the films, Nebula and Gamora are both the adoptive daughters of Thanos, beneficiaries of his charity (at least, that's one way of looking at it). They grow up as rivals and combatants, before eventually coming to realize they are both tools of a megalomaniacal villain who doesn't really care for them at all. In Avengers: Endgame, their relationship comes full circle as Nebula helps a past version of Gamora realize the error of her ways. We don't know where their relationship goes next, but in the comics, there is no such relation between them.

You can never keep Nebula down for long. She runs into the brick walls of the Avengers, or Thanos, and she still gets back up. In the films, her fierce determination is most obvious in her endurance of unimaginable suffering at the hands of Thanos. In Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.2, her only ambition is to find and kill Gamora. She goes so far as to crash her ship headlong into the ground to do it. Nebula displays the same dogged persistence in the comics, never abandoning her ambitions for galactic dominance, or letting a pesky little thing like death get in the way.

In the MCU, Nebula's goal is pretty singular: prove herself worthy to her father, Thanos. In the comic books, she's got way more ambitious plans. In addition to her early ambitions to take over the Skrull Empire (nothing you do on a whim), Nebula later nearly annihilated the entire universe in a bid for ultimate power. The Avengers stopped her, but just barely.

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And then, most famously, she briefly wielded the Infinity Gauntlet after seizing it from a distracted Thanos. This doesn't exactly work for her; her revenge blinded her to the fact that using the gems to restore herself would also benefit Thanos. MCU Nebula never even gavethe Gauntlet a thought, even with the knowledge her sister had been killed by Thanos.

Though she didn't get her cyborg status until a bit later in the comics, the original version of Nebula did for a time share the same undead quality as MCU Nebula. Remember that we first meet Nebula aboardthe Sanctuary II, a spaceship once commanded by Thanos. He eventually gets it back from her, and she pays the price. Thanos used the Infinity Gems to transform Nebula into something of a zombie, a living corpse mutilated by his anger. Despite her horrific condition, Nebula maintained her focus and desire for revenge, ultimately taking the Gauntlet from Thanos.

Though Nebula introduces herself as the granddaughter of Thanos in the comics, this apparently is a lie. It angers Thanos enough that he zombifies her for it, along with stealing his ship. The relationship with Thanos in the comics remains... nebulous, but in the films, it's one of the more defined aspects of the Guardians corner of the MCU. Nebula, along with Gamora, is introduced as the Titan's adopted daughter and ruthless enforcer. Their dynamic, twisted and heartbreaking, plays out across several films, culminating in Avengers: Endgame.

After her ordeal with Thanos and the Infinity Gauntlet, Nebula is a lot worse for wear. Being a zombie will do that to you. Her brain is damaged, necessitating major, major repairs. As a result, she loses those dark locks and gains the unique baldness that will eventually inform her MCU counterpart. This metamorphosis occurred throughout several issues of Silver Surfer, a title intrinsically linked to The Infinity Gems storyline of the 90s and was executed mostly by a space surgeon called Dr. Mandibus. Mandibus had a long history with Nebula: he was her first mate aboard the Sanctuary II when we first meet her, back in Avengers #275.

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5 Things About Nebula The MCU Changed (& 5 They Kept The Same) - CBR - Comic Book Resources