Guy Gardner: Warrior #24

[iamrman]

Writer: Beau Smith

Pencils: Mike Parobeck and Butch Guice

Inks: Dan Davis

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Zero Hour tie-in.

Guy is transported back in time to the day of Coast City’s destruction.

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Comments

[tcampbell1000]

I was surprised to learn that Kari had appeared numerous times before this--and was also involved with Hal for a hot minute. Now, this is pretty much textbook fridging. Kari's alleged predictive powers don't do shit, She says nothing of consequence and does nothing except be loved by Guy and die.

But...at least Guy gets broken up about a character whom longtime readers would've actually met and gotten to know. Whereas Hal in "Emerald Twilight" mourns his hometown in general, but when it comes to specific people he knows who died... well, Carol wasn't in Coast City when it blew up, and neither was Tom Kalmaku, and Guy sure wasn't, and Hal's parents had died long before. The best that story could do was roll out Jennifer, some old high school sweetheart whom I'm pretty sure had never appeared before. And never would again!

'Cause her life is abridged
She was born, born to be fridged
No use asking why
She was...always gonna die

Born to be fridged
Born to be fridged

One other minor point in the story's favor--we cut straight from this to Guy's reaction upon learning that Tora is dead, so there's a sort of emotional continuity to ease the otherwise wrenching transition from crossover back to Guy's own narrative. Again, fridging is not a great look, but if you have to, there are still better and worse ways to go about it. This feels like signposts on actual development and growth for Guy as a character, rather than (like so much else about the Nineties) just shock for shock's sake.

[iamrman]

What's more, Hal hooked up with Kari while Guy was in a coma/presumed dead/trapped in the Anti-Matter Universe.

[lbd_nytetrayn]

Oh, that's it for Kari? I don't think I've seen her before, but the little we got here piqued my curiosity for more. =(

[tcampbell1000]

Well, she appeared in a number of earlier comics, FWIW.

[windleopard2]

My favorite bit of trivia is learning the inspiration behind Guy's Warrior powers:

At the same time all this power talk was goin’ on, on TV the kid’s show The Mighty Morphing Power Rangers was huge. DC said they wanted Guy to be able to morph weapons. That’s like bein’ a manly blues singer and havin’ your agent say ya gotta sign like Justin Timberlake. Ugh…

Again I tip my cowboy hat to Mitch. He came up with a very cool visual for Guy to morph stuff. Saddled with this morphin’ stuff I made it that Guy could only morph the weapons of the greatest warriors of the universe. I figured that would narrow it down to spears, knives, swords, guns… and so on. Thought I was safe there. I would’ve been but all of a sudden we had rising sales on Guy and now everybody and their ugly brother wanted to borrow him for their crummy books.

I made real hard lone rules about what Guy could morph. What happens?

I open up these other books and these jokers have Guy morphin’ chain saws, egg beaters and everything short of a dildo. See what happens when super powers get forced on ya?

https://web.archive.org/web/20110810202316/http://www.comicsbulletin.com/busted/107815836153701.htm

[thanekos]

" [Guy one-punching Batman] would be an easy revenge, too easy. A crummy British writer would do something like that. " is funny when you remember that Geoff " born in Detroit, Michigan " Johns was the one to script something like that.