Guy Gardner: DC's Punching Bag

[Hotfoot]

Guy Gardner. If you know the character at all, you know he's a prick and generally disliked by most of the DC Universe heroes, but not without his positive qualities, and yet manages to not be the worst Human Green Lantern because, well, Hal Jordan exists.

But spurred by a small factoid I found out about the character (one that almost never comes up) I did some research into Guy's backstory within the DCU. Now, keep in mind, this is NOT for the New 52, but the previous continuity.

First off, Guy had a troubled childhood, his father beating him while drunk, he briefly became a juvenile delinquent before getting straightened out by his older brother, who was a cop. Guy went to the University of Michigan and played football, paying his way with a loan from his brother, working a job, all while going to school and playing college football. Then, his brother was outed as a dirty cop, paralyzed in a shootout, and committed suicide.

Despite this, Guy went on to get a degree majoring in Education and Psychology, worked as a social worker, with prisoners, and finally, as a teacher for children with special needs.

Yeah, nice fucking guy with shit in his life that he dealt with. Does this sound like the Guy Gardner you recognize? Wait for it, this one is good.

So he finds out his father, the one who was an abusive drunk, is dying of liver failure. Yeah, nobody could see that coming. What does Guy do? He goes and spends a week with his dying father, mends the tattered fucking ruins of their relationship and let the old man die peacefully.

Confused? This is Guy Gardner, a man who dedicated his life to helping people worse of than he was because he remembers how bad things could be. A man with such willpower that he kept going despite all the shit in his life, and with enough compassion to forgive even the man who caused him most of the pain in his life. That's the makings of a hero right there. It's no small wonder that then, when Abin Sur's ring looked for a new Green Lantern, Guy Gardner's name popped up. Why, then, did the ring go to Hal Jordan?

Hal was closer.

But that's cool, that just means that Guy was the backup GL for the sector, should anything happen to Hal. Hal knew this, but Guy didn't at first. Hal even went to Guy in Baltimore and became friends with him, though he didn't reveal his secret to him.

Then something happened to Hal, and the Guardians had to choose a new Green Lantern. So down the ring went to Earth, into one of America's worst cities to find the man with the willpower, the determination, the heroism to be a Green Lantern. A man who stood against the crumbling urban decay and did everything he could to help. And thus, John Stewart of Detroit became the new Green Lantern.

Guy Gardner, you see, had been hit by a bus rescuing one of his disabled students and was in traction. It's cool though, he met a woman there that he fell deeply in love with, and so at least something good came from that hospital trip. Still though, he was the backup Lantern of Earth, and so when Hal hit his head on another billboard, Guy finally got the call.

Hal, though, didn't take very good care of his ring or lantern it seems, so while Hal was off to Oa to get his ring fixed, his Power Battery, which was also fucked, BLEW UP IN GUY'S FACE, the resultant blast of energy knocked him into the Phantom Zone.

Yeah, THAT Phantom Zone. The one with Zod. Who was there. With all the other fucks that had been put there over the years. Who then tortured Gardner though his entire stay.

While he was gone, everyone thought he was dead, include Hal and Guy's girlfriend, who Hal "comforted". Repeatedly. And then nearly married. I say nearly, because on the DAY OF THE WEDDING, Hal finds out Guy is in the Phantom Zone, so, to his credit he calls up Superman and they go get Guy. Hal doesn't get married, and Guy ends up in a coma that lasts several years from his ordeal, which included getting bounced around by FUCKING KRYPTONIANS.

When he finally wakes up, he's got brain damage, and this is where the tale turns.

You see, after all of that, playing football through college, being hit by a bus, and being waterboarded by Zod for a few years, turns out that when Guy wakes up from his years-long coma, he's got brain damage.

So, what do they do? Do the heroes band together and help him recover using super-science, or plain old medical-know how, or magic, or what have you? Do they do a thing to help this pillar of the community, this selfless super-hero, this brother in arms?

NOPE!

The Guardians of Oa say fuck it, let Gardner and Jordan brawl over the grave of Abin Sur, instate a brain-damaged Gardner to full time Lantern status, then order him to assemble a team of super-villains to go attack the Anti-Monitor!

I mean shit, I knew the Guardians were fucking stupid, but this was decades ago. They were supposed to be better then! This rivals the shit they've done in recent years, in fact, it may top it!

But wait, it gets better. Realizing that they may have done something bad by sending Guy in charge of bunch of super-villains to go attack the Anti-Monitor, they send in John Stewart to stop Guy, who beats him down, and then reinstate Hal Jordan, who was previously passed up in favor of brain damaged Guy Gardner. That's right, rather than have no Lantern at all, or going to find ANYONE ELSE who could handle the ring, they give the job back to the person who was a WORSE PICK THAN THE MAN WITH BRAIN DAMAGE. Fuck you Guardians. FUCK. YOU.

What follows is a mess of galactic proportions, since the Guardians decided to "Train" Guy instead of, you know, helping cure his brain damage that caused his current overly aggressive personality shift. This results in him, after many general fuckups, becoming the Green Lantern of Justice League International, where he once again manages to find love, only to be given further cranial trauma by Batman. Yeah, the one punch incident? It made his brain damage worse in the books, to the point where he had massive personality shifts any time he took a blow to the head. Did anyone on Earth or Oa seem to give a fuck? Nope! It's just Guy Gardner, fuck that prick.

So the entire DC Universe turns a blind eye to the ruined life of Guy Gardner, a caring, dedicated man, a fellow hero, because after he was tortured for years and put into a coma, he was kind of an asshole as a direct result of the brain damage he had suffered.

[rhoenix]

For fuck's sake. Yeah, now I see what you mean about Guy.

[Dark Silver]

...I...

I never knew that about Guy.

Holy shit, no wonder he seems to have a big chip on his shoulder for other Heros.

[Josh]

Guy, as first presented in Crisis, actually seemed like a pretty cool dude. But post-Crisis they decided to make him into the DC universe version of Dennis Leary. He was supposed to be somewhat anti-PC and an embarrassment to the other heroes, as well as being an overly cocky asshole.

It's a shame, because the scene where he's standing over the murdered Guardians and swears vengeance in Crisis was pretty fucking awesome, but then he became another victim of the nineties comics.

Still I was always fond of him because he was freaking different.

But no surprise that all the other heroes are assholes about it. I've come around to the Watchmen view of superheroes, that they're pretty much all emotionally fucked narcissists and so on.

[frigidmagi]

You paint with to board a brush sir.

Neither Superman or Captain America (or even for that matter Spiderman or Daredevil or Blue Beetle or Cyborg) are emotionally fucked narcissists. Supes and Cap are good men given gifts beyond what the normal person gets, doing their best to use their gifts for everyone's benefit. Or at least they are when written by someone with some understanding of the character. Peter is a young man struggling to understand how to use his gifts and find his place in society. Daredevil is a man who has lost much but gained much in return and seeks to help. I can keep going here.

[Josh]

We all know Superman is a Dick and I don't even have to link the site.

I'll concede the others, though.