Guardian appearance in X-Men Legends 2: Rise of Apocalypse

Here's a neat thing I stumbled across this past weekend; Guardian had a brief appearance in an X-Men video game in 2005. Unfortunately, he's not available as a playable character, but it's still kind of cool to see him involved.

The clip I include below was lifted from the Mikkel Frost Gaming youtube account.  Mikkel basically walks us through the game. You'll hear the occasional comment from him

You'll note that this is part 27 of the game walk-through.  Heather McNeil Hudson (in the green version of her outfit) was included in the previous part.  She explains to Wolverine and the X-Men that Guardian was sent on a mission to something called the Infinite Factory and has yet to be heard from since.  And, you know, in light of how often he dies, that's the kind of thing that you want looked into!  So she asks the team to investigate because it's not as though she'd ever been in charge of a team full of superheroes and mutants herself.

When the X-Men finally locate Guardian, he needs little convincing to get out of the way. If the video does not start in the right spot, fast forward to 3:18 or so.



Guardian provides additional instructions further along in the game but never gets directly involved in the action (that I know of). He was voiced by Jim Ward for this game.

Finally!! My friggin' Guardian Heroclix!

In the early morning hours today, the temperature began to dip to -26 "feels like -38" in Ottawa.  Yet I almost ran to the mailbox in pajama pants when I saw that the Guardian Heroclix I ordered was showing as "delivered" on the US Postal Service website.

Getting my hands on this thing has been a chore. I first ordered it in early November (on e-bay).  The person I purchased it from shipped it in no time, so I was pleased to see that.  I was tracking the package on the US Post site.  Everything seemed to be going fine.  Until it got jammed up somewhere.  It didn't move for over a month.

While seeing if I could order it from somewhere in Canada instead, I inadvertently ordered a second one from the States.  And then noticed that I did so from the same dude I bought the first one from.  Bloody hell.

Then the morning after my second purchase, I checked on my first more out of habit than anything.  Damned thing had apparently been released from the holding facility in which it was stuck and was on its way after all.  Bah.  Oh well, I guess at least I would get both rather than have one lost somewhere.

Not yet!  I looked closer and my first purchase has apparently ended up in Brazil.  In light of the temperature here though, I can kind of understand why it would do such a thing instinctively.

But my second one did make it, as promised by US Post!  I plucked it out of the mailbox this morning and I quite like it!

Except...

The front looks pretty great, at least compared to the original version of this game piece (shown on the Collectibles page above).  Here it is, blown up significantly.

Sure, there are slight paint flaws along his right arm.  But the actual piece is only about two inches tall so it's actually not very noticeable. On the flip side, the yellow eyes don't stand out very much on the actual figurine.

The problem is on the back.

Uhm...What the hell is that?  They'd done a pretty good job with the maple leaf in the front of the piece, how could they butcher it so badly on the back?  Gack!

If my first Guardian ever comes home from Brazil, I'll compare the two.  And as far as having two in the collection, I can paint a small red stripe on the above one's mask and pretend he's Mac's clone from volume two of Alpha Flight, and that the other one is Mac returned from being blasted into space by Department H. 

There.  Problem solved.

New Guardian Heroclix

The "And One Shall Surely Die!" t-shirt from the previous post was not the only item solicited this past August to include Guardian. The other was the Invincible Iron Man Heroclix set.

Get armored up for action this autumn! Build-up your HeroClix collection with the latest Marvel set to focus on the armored Avenger, his allies, and some of his most dangerous adversaries!

Iron's Man's allies include Alpha Flight, apparently. I won't try to reason that out, I'll just appreciate that there's a second Guardian Heroclix (even though I don't even play the game) to add to the collection.

And it looks like a significant improvement over the first. I love that the piece includes Guardian's force field, in a pose reminiscent of when he burst out of the ground in his first comic book appearance. I also enjoyed the "If I can just bridge this circuit" name for one of his abilities, a reference to the countdown to Guardian's death in issue #12 of Alpha Flight (first series).

A digital image of the figurine had been released a while back but I wanted to wait for an actual picture of the piece before posting about it. I lifted the one above from this site and will add it to the Collectibles page shortly.

The Possible Mystery of the "Reverse" Guardian Action Figure

There have been a few quiet additions to the Collectibles page over the past few days.  None is particularly newsworthy on its own, since most items date back more than a decade, but a couple of them reminded me of a small mystery from a number of years ago.

The two items in question are a Toy Biz mail-in exclusive action figure and a card from the Overpower game.  Both were issued in the mid to late 90's.

The "negative" version of Guardian displayed on the card (at right) isn't in use for merchandise a great deal since it lasted only about a year within comics.  It was the results of Guardian's first of several returns from the dead and was the result of the Building Block storyline that ran from issues 87 to 90 of the first volume.  So the combination of that uniform and a rare action figure reminded me that I once saw an action figure of "negative Guardian" years ago yet have heard or seen nothing of it since.

If I recall correctly, I was at a comics store on the upper floor of the West Edmonton Mall.  I don't believe that the action figure was a custom piece because it seemed to be expertly packaged.  This would have been in the summer of 1998.  It was fairly pricey, which is why I chose against buying it at the time (now regretfully).

Does any of this ring a bell with anyone?  Is anyone aware of some such "exclusive" or rare piece?  If so, feel free to drop be a line at jf4nier@gmail.com and tell me what you know.  I'm not necessarily interested in buying it now (but not uninterested either ;-) ).  Either way, I'm certainly curious.

Guardian in Super Hero Squad

I stumbled across this earlier this week while looking for new Guardian artwork.



Pretty cool. I've never played the game (and don't really plan to...I don't think I'm in the target age range) but the "power emote" segment was worth a giggle. If you're not up to watching the whole video, bring it to about 0:28 or so and check out the three "powers" that are credited to Guardian. They're silly, but I have to admit that the first one is pretty damn cool. I was pretty optimistic after seeing that one, but it got goofy real quick.

Whatever. Like with any action figure set, it's just good to see him included at all. And not, you know...killed. Again.