The Suit

From Marvel.com: The suit is a steel-mesh costume that taps into Earth's electromagnetic field for a variety of effects, most notably allowing Guardian to fly up to Mach-1 and to shoot beams of concussive force, which were originally intended for the suit's capability to serve as a digging tool.

The suit also amplifies its wearer’s strength to superhuman levels and forms a personal force field.

By tracking his global positioning with his suit’s navigation system, Guardian could temporarily cancel the Earth's rotation relative to himself, causing a nearly instantaneous acceleration. To the unaided human eye Guardian would have seemed to have instantaneously teleported himself from one location to another.

The Eaglemoss magazine describes the suit this way: "...the Guardian suit taps straight into Earth's electromagnetic field and relays the energy via 1,200 electromagnetic projectors built into the steel-mesh costume.

By converting the electromagnetic energy into beams of force, which are them directed at the ground, the wearer of the suit is granted the ability to fly at speeds of up to Mach 1.  This same process allows Guardian to unleash devastating beams of concussive force at his enemies or focus the energy around his body into a protective force field.  Initially designed to protect those working underground from rock falls, the force field can handle thousands of pounds of pressure.  In addition to the resilience the suit affords James, the exoskeleton also grants him superhuman strength...

There have been a number of variations of the suit over the years, most of them atrocious and nonsensical, but logic and good taste prevails in short order and the original, classic flag suit always returns. As it should.

The most prominent alternative version was the one at right. Quite simply a "flipped colours" version of the original, Mac wore it following his (first) return to Alpha Flight during the "Building Blocks" storyline.  It is first on display in one panel on the second-to-last page of issue #90 of the original Alpha series and is worn regularly right through to Mac's death (again) in #100.

The peculiar thing about that segment of the series is that the story in issue #92 is predominantly a flashback. It is said to take place several weeks after Guardian's (then Weapon-Alpha) attempt at recovering Wolverine from the United States back when Alpha Flight was first coming into being.

But the suit at right is the one worn throughout the entire issue (both the present and past portions). That would mean that chronologically, once and once only, Mac wore a reversed version of his own suit prior to his death in Alpha Flight #12. That would be like Spider-Man randomly swapping the red and blue on his suit for no apparent reason. Unless he (Mac) is remembering the event incorrectly.

Well, whatever. I wish that was the most confusing aspect of Guardian's background.

The image at right was drawn by Dan Reed, inked by Richard Bennett and coloured by Bob Sharen.

Now then...The so-called Hulk-Buster armour was given more cyber-ink than it deserved a while back in this post. That being the case, we won't dwell on it further here.

Unfortunately, it wasn't Chuck Austen's only attempt to introduce a more literal suit of armour for Guardian. He did so as well as the writer of X-Men Unlimited #45.

No sense in piling on Austen further, especially more than a decade after the story was written. To tell the truth, I think the guy might be a bit of a fan of this team based on how often he used them during his X-Men stint.

It's simply that the notion of an exo-skeleton, after several years of wearing one made of far more manageable micro-circuitry, makes no sense. It's like going from contact lenses to heavy black-rimmed glasses. There's no apparent benefit. I would love to hear Austen's reasoning for doing this not once, but twice, and with two very different sets of armour, no less. It's quite puzzling.

X-Men Unlimited is the only book, that I know of, in which this armour was used.

Most recently, Wolverine: Season One revealed an early version of the suit, supposedly built shortly after the formation of Department H and prior to the Hudsons' recovery of Wolverine in the woods.  That armor is displayed below.

Being that it was, in storyline time, only worn during a short period of time, it is unlikely to be seen much more often.