Guardian Year One

Not being particularly interested in Wolverine's early days aside from his interaction with James MacDonald Hudson, I was a little unsure as to how much I would enjoy this book.  Now that I've read it, I'm still not certain I do.

The book describes itself as a "contemporary retelling" of Wolverine's formative years, but since much of that period was spent with, and impacted by, the Hudsons, it is nearly inevitable that their history will be affected by any modification or modernization to Logan's.  That includes the sudden revelation of an early model of the Guardian armour.

Such "touch ups" don't have to be a bad thing.  For example, the "Hudson hunting honeymoon" has ceased to be.  The Hudsons don't shoot Wolverine in the wild and nurse him back to health, but rather recover him following his devastating battle against the Wendigo.  The hunting aspect is not specifically important to the scene so its  removal doesn't negatively affect it.  Really, it arguably improves it as the Hudsons have never shown an interest in hunting since, that I can recall.

What does seem out of place is Mac's dialogue throughout much of the book.  Many of his actions that appear to be out of character can be explained as the result of his patriotism being abused by his superiors.  That's historically consistent so not difficult to accept.

But his words towards Logan are often malicious and petty.  A lot of them are spoken after Wolverine has put Heather in harms way, so the anger is understandable at that moment, but it persists well beyond that point and is far worse than the trash-talking type of dialogue in X-Men 109.

The other inconsistency is in Mac's confidence.  Mac's reluctance to wear the battle suit is well documented.  In this story, not only does he do so without a second thought, he takes to it like a fish to water.  During a scrap with Wolverine in which he has the upper hand, he even states "I could do this all day".  He seems more comfortable with the suit in this book than he does in his next chronological appearance (again, X-Men 109).

While a lot of gaps in Wolverine's (and by association, Guardian's) background are filled in, because some of the story is inconsistent with other works, it feels like it's out of continuity.  But based on the pitch as a retelling (not re-imagining), it doesn't seem like that should be the case.

As a stand alone book, both the story and art are quite good.  If you're detail-oriented, those little inconsistencies may get on your nerves.  I found myself trying to consolidate parts of the book with what I know has gone on since that period in Wolverine's life until I realised that it's not my job to do that, it's the writers'.

To be fair, my focus was on Guardian.  Theirs was on Wolverine.  My criticism might be a touch more valid if this book had been "Alpha Flight: Season One" which, regardless of my opinion of this book, I would buy in a heartbeat.

Of Clothes Not Making The Man

I really don't like Wolverine.  This is why I had no idea that Mac (and Heather) are both quite prominent in the recently released "Wolverine: Season One" book until it was reviewed on alphaflight.net.  I sought out the book at Chapters and gave it a quick flip which, combined with the above review, convinced me that it was a worthwhile purchase.  I saved a few bucks by purchasing it online instead of in the store, so it's in the mail and I should have it by Monday.

The part of the review which was particularly attention-grabbing was the mention of a Guardian suit prototype being tested (click on the link above to see a small scan of one panel on which the suit is displayed).  I suppose it makes sense that the path from the original clunky mining suit to the micro-circuitry uniform that we've come to know would be achieved gradually, but it seems like this one came out of nowhere.  We'll see.

In the meantime, seeing another version of the Guardian armour triggered an idea.  Much like the "About Guardian" page was expanded to include information about the character's creation (and not just his fictional history), details about other armours worn by James MacDonald Hudson will be added to the "The Suit" page above.

Most of the alternative suits are completely brutal, true, but they are part of Guardian's muddled history so they should be acknowledged.  I guess.

Early Guardian (well...Captain America...) samples

Sometimes, things just fall right into place.

I was filling out the "About Guardian" page at above left.  There wasn't much information to add that hadn't been included somewhere else on the blog, so I had the idea to copy some of his "real" origin.

At first, my plan was to include quotes from John Byrne that appeared in the Guardian Eaglemoss magazine. In order to flesh it out some, I started searching for similar interview excerpts.

As you can now see on the page in question, I was able to access parts of Modern Masters #7.  This was a bit of a stroke of luck, because being a Google books preview only, many pages were deliberately skipped.  But the one I would have ripped right out of the book given the choice was readily available.

On that page, Byrne mentions that he drew "bad samples" when asked to display his skills for a Captain America story set to take place in Canada.  In the story, Cap was to fight a Canadian superhero that, we now know, would later become Guardian.

Other versions of Guardian's true origin usually ignore the Captain America aspect.  They do make reference to sending a Canadian superhero to bring back Wolverine, of course.  That this superhero is one that Byrne dreamed up many years before is often mentioned, but that Guardian-to-be might have appeared in a Captain America book beforehand tends to be left out.

By complete fluke though, I stumbled into what appears to be a copy of one page of those samples.

It was up for auction in 2005 so the image has been floating around for a while.  Maybe it's common knowledge to die-hard Alpha Flight fans, but I admit that this is the first time I come across it.

I do recall Byrne stating that "badly coloured" pages of that sample artwork were still owned by someone.  It seemed like a harsh assessment but, well, I can kind of see how he reached that opinion.

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.