The "Eh-Team"

The piece below, of Guardian high-fiving Captain Canuck, was done by Darren Rawlings and was the final image in his "Little Friends" series on deviantart.

Fun deal.  Check out the rest of them here.

Pre-Alpha Flight look at Guardian

Courtesy of the "John Byrne Draws" tumblr account.

It's probably fairly obvious, but the second character from left was referred to as an early version of Guardian (quite early, since the sketch is said to be from roughly 1971) when I first came across this piece.  Viewing the page now, I see an asterisk next to "Guardian" but with no explanation as to what it signifies so I suppose there's a possibility that it is not the case, or at least not confirmed.

If you're a John Byrne fan, you need to follow that account, or the similar Twitter account "John Byrne says".  They display tons of rare art and quotes from the controversial writer/artist.

Gutters #207

Just came across this funny piece on Twitter, though it's about a year and a half old.

Lol...some harsh words there...Click on the image for the originating page, or right click to view the image in a separate tab.

It cracks me up that Guardian is pissed at a "cancellation".  Now I am actually far from a Marvel Comics fan.  In fact, if they didn't publish Alpha Flight (on occasion) I wouldn't buy any of their material.

However, I give them a bit of a pass on the "cancellation" thing.  I know a lot of fans were annoyed by that, but going back a little further in time, the last Alpha Flight series was actually originally announced as a mini anyway.  It got extended to an ongoing, then Marvel changed those plans.

When the book was first announced as a mini, Alpha Flight fans were happy at the news.  When it went from an ongoing to a mini, fans were irritated.  But the end results was the same.  Really, Marvel would have benefited from not making a decision on the length of the series until a few issues had been released.

In any event, with Puck in X-Factor and Northstar in the X-Men, at the moment I'd be perfectly happy with a mini-series that featured Guardian.  Even if it was extended, then returned to its original mini-series status.

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.

Guardian sketch by Dale Eaglesham

I haven't been able to find a date on this, but you have to assume it's from just prior to the most recent Alpha Flight mini which Eaglesham drew.  Its existence may also be common knowledge based on the 3.7 million Facebook "likes", yet oddly enough it was never tweeted.

I find it most interesting for the scribbled comments, particularly about Mac's little nicks/scars and toughness.  I guess when you return from the dead four (five? six?) times, you develop a pretty thick skin.

Future writers and/or artists could stand to use this as a basic character guide.

Edit: I did not remember it at the time that this post was written, but a small version of this sketch appears at the end of one of the early issues of the 2011 Alpha Flight mini-series.