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.

Guardian in Fantastic Four #220 (July 1980)

This is a neat cameo.  Chronologically, it takes place after Alpha Flight's attempt to capture Wolverine in Canada, but before a combined X-Men/Alpha team work to capture the Wendigo in  X-Men #139.

There's only thing that burns me about it; when I was a kid, I saw this book EVERYWHERE.  Every department store had it, many times paired up with some other book in a plastic bag.  The Fantastic Four weren't really my thing so I overlooked it a number of times.  To have known that it would include a brief appearance by a personal favourite character that I would want 30 years later, I would have jumped all over it.  Ah well.

So what's the story here?  A mysterious worldwide power failure leads the Fantastic Four to investigate the possibility of a "polar disruption".  The FF fly north, through Canadian airspace, causing Guardian (Vindicator at this point) to do some investigating of his own, good little soldier that he was.

I like the fanboy moment during an otherwise professional exchange. As most Alpha Flight fans know, that team was inspired by the Fantastic Four.

It would have been cool to have Guardian tag along on this mission but this is the extent of his appearance in the book, unfortunately.

Guardian, Pixar Style

Well this is cool.

The above is a photoshop creation by one Phil Postma to simulate what a Pixar-made Marvel movie would look like (though many DC characters are included as well).  Check out the rest of the "cast" here.  It's quite impressive.