Hulk-Buster Guardian

Over the past few months I've been working on acquiring the Guardian appearances that are missing from my collection.

The difficult part is knowing when an appearance is actually worthwhile.  I don't want to buy a book if Guardian and/or Alpha Flight only appears in the background in one panel.  Or as corpses.

So confession time: On occasion I obtain "free" version of digital books to see if they're worth adding to the pile.

Now I was fully prepared to get the "Rules of Engagement" and "The Draco" storylines from the X-Men books in 2003 and 2004 respectively.  From what I could gather from reviews, Alpha Flight was prominent enough in them that they would be worth the expense.

I could also gather that the books, written by Chuck Austen, sucked.  It seemed like a near consensus among X-Men fans that this was a terrible period in that team's history.  Whatever.  It was just a couple of issues anyway and it's not as though all of the Alpha Flight books are gold, either.

Even approaching these books with that mentality however, it's difficult to conclude that these books are anything but crap.

Let's start with the atrocity at right.  You'd be excused if you didn't recognize him, but that is our Guardian in his appearance in X-Men #432 (2004).

We are meant to believe that, fully expecting to encounter Juggernaut, the team (Guardian, Heather as Vindicator and Sasquatch...where was everyone else??) wore specially-designed armour for the occasion.

The only thing dumber than Sasquatch wearing armour is Guardian wearing (traditional) armour, since his usual suit allows him to create a force field anyway.  So what is the point?

Well, there may have been one (does Marvel still award no-prizes for fixing their mistakes?).  In the team's earlier appearance (#422) Northstar completely punks Guardian.  He (Northstar) uses his familiarity with his former teammate to disable and strip Guardian's standard armour.

Let's give the benefit of the doubt, assume that Guardian reacted accordingly (which even if true, wouldn't explain why Sasquatch would wear armour too) and replaced his usual attire with an outfit that Northstar knows nothing about.  How did that work out?

Not so great then. In the previous page, Guardian gets a few solid shots in, but then a suit of armour supposedly designed to combat Hulk-type characters actually makes it easier for Juggernaut to whoop on Guardian.  "Convenient hand-grip" indeed.

Ah well.  I got to read this book for free and I got my money's worth.  Maybe I'll patiently wait to find it in a dollar bin one day.