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| Unsung Superheroes |
Guy Gardner.
The Green Lantern introduced to many people through the 2025 Superman film.
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| Nathan Fillion as Guy Gardner in Superman (2025) |
Who is he? Where did he come from? Why is he such a horse's ass?
Well, the answers to the last bit are mostly bad luck, a bad childhood, and significant head trauma. But perhaps I should elaborate.
First of all, one must know that Guy Gardner is primarily a Green Lantern. The Green Lantern Corps is an organization of cosmic police officers taken from 3200 space sectors and given a ring of futuristic space tech that allows them to create energy constructs of whatever they can think of as long as they have the willpower to create it. They also get a battery to recharge the ring, shaped like a green lantern (hence the name). The administrators of the Green Lantern Corps are a group of small, blue-skinned immortals called the Guardians of the Universe, who leave on the planet Oa which is ostensibly at the very center of the universe. The only two hard and fast qualifications to being a Green Lantern are that the candidate be completely honest and fearless.
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| Green Lantern #59 |
Guy Gardner is first introduced in Green Lantern #59 in 1968. In that story, it's revealed to the then-current and only Green Lantern of Earth, Hal Jordan, that there was another candidate to become Earth's Green Lantern, but that Hal's dying predecessor chose him because he was physically closer. Most of the issue then occurs as a sort of “imaginary story”, showing what would have happened if Guy had been chosen instead of Hal, as related by one of the Guardians' futuristic machines. Despite the antagonistic pose and dialogue he's given on the cover of this issue, Guy Gardner is generally a nice guy at this point. He's an honest and fearless physical education teacher who's shown living through many of the highlights of Hal Jordan's Green Lantern career before being shown stopping an endless war game on a planet of children before succumbing to an alien plague and passing on his ring to Hal Jordan. Back in the real world, Hal decides to meet and make friends with Guy and does so by joining a health club Guy's a member of.
So, next is the beginning of a storied career for Guy Gardner, right? Well, not exactly.
Guy ended up a back-up Green Lantern after training with an alien Green Lantern named Kilowog. During this time, he wasn't really remembered so much for his feats as his lousy luck. During an earthquake, Guy attempts to save some of his students and is hit by a bus. This puts him out of comission for a while and in the meantime Hal Jordan recruits John Stewart as his new backup. After returning to duty, Guy tries to charge his ring on Hal Jordan's power battery. The battery explodes and sends Guy into the Phantom Zone, the otherdimensional Kryptonian prison from the Superman comics. Guy is trapped there for months, during which time Hal Jordan starts dating and eventually tries to marry Guy's girlfriend Kari Limbo. Guy only managed to get freed because he ends up interrupting the wedding by sending Kari a telepathic message. After he's freed, though, it's revealed that all these misfortunes have not left Guy unscathed. It turned out that Guy had suffered brain trauma and ends up falling into a coma.
He ends up coming out of the coma, but Guy isn't quite the same guy after he wakes up.
The new Guy Gardner is rude, loud, crass, egotistical, hot-headed, and even a little jingoistic. Granted, by now it's the 1980s and he's a perfect parody of the Reagan-era United States. And all the while, he was still “honest and fearless”, which made him a worthy Green Lantern.
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| Guy Gardner when he returned post-coma. |
The place where Guy Gardner got a lot of use is in the new Justice League International, where he served as the team's resident hothead and conflict creator. However, because of the new Justice League's more comedic tone, his volatile nature was used for comedic purposes. Like the time he challenged Batman to a fistfight and got knocked out in one punch.
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| Guy Gardner, knocked out with one punch. |
Other times, his antics were far less funny, like the time Guy nearly caused World War III by flying into Soviet airspace.
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| Justice League #5 |
But overall, he was a member in good standing on the team (it helped that the writers developed a gag that allowed them to curb his more troublesome behavior. Basically, they made it so a blow to the head could change him from “jerk Guy” to “nice Guy” and back again). He even received some unexpected character depth when he started to develop feelings for team sweetheart Tora Olafsdotter, aka Ice.
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| Guy and Ice. |
It was after this that Guy broke away from the Green Lantern Corps and got his own comic book series. On the surface, this seems like it might have been a time where there wasn't a solid direction for Guy. First, he starts using the yellow power ring that was first used by the Green Lantern villain Sinestro in order to play vigilante. Then he finds out he has alien DNA and somehow activates it and develops the ability to turn his arms into weapons. Yet, it's during this time that Guy receives the most character development. He became more tempered, but not without his flaws.
It's during this stretch that we find out about Guy Gardner's early life. We find out that Guy lived under an abusive father who always favored his athletic older brother Mace over him. We also find out about Guy's misspent youth as a juvenile delinquent and that big brother Mace Gardner, who became a police officer, wasn't the squeaky clean, perfect figure his father always thought of him as. We also find out how hard Guy worked to get through college and get his teaching degree,
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| Guy Gardner #1. The start of his solo career. |
At the end of the day, you start to wonder how much of Guy's life is him taking it on the chin because he was a prickly jerk, and how much of it was Guy being a prickly jerk because he was always taking it on the chin. One thing I couldn't help noticing is how much Guy at his worst is like his abusive dad. So, he's in that place of taking after his father while also trying to be a better person than him.
DC, because it's what they do, also tinkered around with Guy's origins a bit. After DC's big line-wide reset Crisis on Infinite Earths, they published a miniseries entitled Emerald Dawn II which changed it so Hal Jordan first met Guy Gardner when he was working as a social worker helping Hal get through a stint in jail caused by a DWI. In the 2010s, they wrote a new origin for Guy where he was the disgraced son of a family of cops who lost his badge due to what he claimed was a false report.
But ultimately, Guy's defaulted back to his previous origin, abusive dad and all. Just like he defaulted back to being a Green Lantern even after the yellow power ring and alien DNA stuff.
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| The one, the only, Guy Gardner (thank goodness) |
And that's basically Guy Gardner. The hot-headed, egotistical, roughneck Green Lantern who, despite his well-recognized flaws, still manages to be a hero at the end of the day.
