Today, we look at how Guy Gardner discovered that he had alien shapeshifting powers and how that era was unceremoniously dropped later on.
This is "Never Gonna Be the Same Again," a feature where I look at how bold, seemingly "permanent" changes were ultimately reversed. This is not a criticism, mind you, as obviously things are always going to eventually return to "normal." That's just how superhero comic books work. It's just fun to see how some of these rather major changes are reversed. This is differentiated from "Abandoned Love," which is when a new writer comes in and drops the plot of the previous writer. Here, we're talking about the writer who came up with the idea being the same one who resolved the change. This is also differentiated from "Death is Not the End," which is about how "dead" characters came back to life, since this is about stuff other than death.
What people often forget is that Guy Gardner's series was called Guy Gardner: Warrior MONTHS before he received his new powers. You see, when Chuck Dixon briefly took over writing duties on Guy's comic book series, Dixon didn't like the idea of Guy not having a superhero name, so he came up with Warrior as Guy's new superhero name. This was during the period where Guy had been kicked out of the Green Lantern Corps (which is a whole other story) and fought for and took control of Sinestro's yellow power ring. However, soon after receiving his new superhero name, Hal Jordan went nuts and destroyed the Green Lantern Corps, including the Green Lantern Corps Central Power Battery. Guy's ring was powered by the Green Lantern Corps, so when Hal destroyed it all, Guy's ring was destroyed, as well.
This led to a storyline with the then-new writer on the series, Beau Smith, started where Guy was looking for new powers (as Beau was told by his editor that DC didn't want Guy without powers). Smith later recalled his initial idea for Guy's new powers, which were revealed in Guy Gardner: Warrior #0 (by Smith, Mitch Byrd and Dan Davis)
That why I came up with him being part of an alien seed plantin’ process that was put into the work thousands of years before. Guy Gardner was the fruition of the most noble race of galactic warriors ever… The Vuldarians.
They came before the Green Lanterns, before the Dark Stars… before the Space Rangers. They were like a mix of “Braveheart Meets The Texas Rangers.” The Vuldarians were the greatest warriors the universe has ever seen. Bar none. They were the best fighters ever. Mention the word “Vuldarian” to any crummy crook, and they would fill their pants right then. Bad guys would kiss Batman and call him Mommy rather than face a Vuldarian. They were that bad!
Since I’m limited to space and your attention span I won’t go into the whole history of The Vuldarians. Check out my issues of Guy Gardner for that.
Like I said… I made Guy the last of his kind. Part human, part Vuldarian. The greatest warrior of all. Nobody in the DC Universe was a better fighter… not even the sacred cow himself… Batman. I was so sick of Batman being touted as the end all of end alls.
However, as I detailed in an old Comic Book Legends Revealed, Smith's plans went awry based on, of all things, the Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers...
I just wanted to leave Guy at being the greatest warrior in the DCU… but the powers that be wanted more powers. Ugh…
This next part you will really groan at. I did.
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…
So yeah, Guy's new powers involved the ability to shapeshift (or "morph") his body into weapons...
Even here, Smith at least initially wanted to have it to be that Guy could only shift into weapons, but that quickly went by the wayside in other comic books and soon Guy was practically being treated like a slightly more matcho Plastic Man.
But anyhow, Guy's series continued for roughly another twenty issues with this status quo and Smith really made the most of the concept. When the series ended, though, there was not a whole lot of people who had any use for Guy even BEFORE he had these weird new powers, so they CERTAINLY weren't going to do anything with him NOW, so he was just in character limbo until he was killed off during the Our World at War Superman crossover. That was very short-lived, as Joe Kelly had a new take on him as a sort of dark repo man, but that was dropped, as well, and by the time Green Lantern: Rebirth #1 came out in 2004 (by Geoff Johns, Ethan Van Sciver and Prentis Rollins), Guy was back to his normal Vuldarin-powered self.
Well, until he pretty much exploded in Rebirth #1, that is!
Later in the issue, when the Justice League and Justice Society showed up to take Guy into custody to see if they could help him, they saw his body basically rejecting itself...
In the next issue, we saw that what happened was that essentially, the villainous Parallax had taken control of Guy and forced his body to reject the Vuldarian parts of his body and essentially recreate his body so that it was just like it was before the Vuldarian powers were brought out of him...
In other words, for almost his entire life, Guy thought he was simply human and his body showed that, as well, as the Vuldarian powers were not tapped into, so now, Parallax simply reversed the process and so the Vuldarian powers are suppressed again and Guy is just a human again....
And that's been the case ever since...unless someone wants to change it back in the future! Guy Gardner: Warrior nostalgia? Maybe in a few more years.
If you have a suggestion for a future Never Gonna Be the Same Again, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com