[TheBlueMarvel]

I wouldn't characterize Guardians of the Galaxy as a bottom rung franchise, nor an obscure property that owes it's celebrity strictly to the MCU film. Annihilation, which was so popular as an event that Marvel was planning an animated feature (only to have licensing issues with the cosmic FF related mainstays involved derail the effort), set the stage for Annihilation: Conquest and the birth of DnA's Guardians of the Galaxy. DnA's run on the title established the Guardians as a bonified commodity in 2008 well before the 2014 movie. DnA's (Dan Abbett & Andy Lanning) tone and use of humor in conjunction with weighty conundrums of cosmic relevance was ported over almost exactly in presentation for the film.

The MCU didn't make Guardians of the Galaxy a thing as much as they were smart for choosing a franchise that already enjoyed a great deal of popularity within the modern comic-reader context and lexicon. That's a bit like saying Michael Bay made Transformers popular, or these new Godzilla flics put the character on the map.