TGH: Welcome, Guy Gardner Nation, to the final chapter of the time Guy was kidnapped and electrocuted in the neck a bunch of times! Last time, Guy and his Lantern friends managed to escape from their prison and made a break for it, only to be stopped by Guy Gardner’s evil clone, who owns the only other pair of those boots! Will Guy and company make it out of here alive?

QP: My knowledge of comics from the last 20 years says: yes. Unless he’s been a ghost this whole time.

TGH: Guy should probably do something about his clone, once he’s done drooling over his new favorite person. Hopefully he can keep his head together.

QP: There’s a bad joke in there, and I am going to leave it to our readers to make it themselves.

TGH: While clone Guy fires at everyone, we get our dose of exposition, so at least that’s out of the way nice and early.

QP: Guy doesn’t think cloneGuy is hitting them with everything he’s got. And then the ring says a thing that Guy understands, even if he doesn’t actually understand it. Specifically, that the ring is about to totally crap out again.

TGH: Real Guy uses this opportunity to punch clone Guy, who I guess wasn’t expecting to have to fight for real. Actual Guy kind of gets into a berserker rage beating himself up, which again, is kind of fucked up.

QP: RealGuy gets a bit carried away and keeps punching CloneGuy when he should be stealing his ring back and making a break for it. Again, explaining why he gets Red Lanterned later.

TGH: In case we thought this story was going anywhere interesting right now, the Draal walk right up to Guy and give him the neck zap he’s been asking for.

QP: They give him the old face crab, and we’re transported back to where we left off: Mace getting shot in the face.

TGH: Guy’s dad makes sure to word his sadness in a way that lets us remember who they are in relation to one another.

QP: The doctor tells Guy he needs to be strong for his parents, which gives Guy a moment for a nice soul searching soliloquy.

TGH: Mace got messed up pretty bad, and only has 48 hours to get out of his coma.

QP: Just then, the police show up, and Guy’s dad lets them have it…until they tell him that Mace was actually a pretty crooked cop.

TGH: Mace was taking money from all of the drug dealers, until I guess they had enough and decided to get rid of him. So even if he survives the shooting, he’ll be kicked off the force.

QP: Dad takes it predictably poorly.

QP: Mace survives, but as a paraplegic.

TGH: At some point, he rolls his wheelchair to the river and kills himself. Down those stairs even.

QP: Which seems…suspicious, but perhaps that’s for another issue.

TGH: Guy’s dad turns his life right around. Just kidding, he drinks full glasses of vodka at a time.

QP: Dad decides it’s time to start drinking himself to death, and mom decides to at least make it a balanced breakfast.

TGH: Guy takes this as the perfect opportunity to leave town forever.

QP: Who can blame him, really?

TGH: Was this all right after the football game? What a fucking weekend.

QP: The next handful of pages are exposition city.

TGH: Guy takes his electrical engineering know-how…and gets dual psychology/education degrees? For at least a year or so Guy Gardner is a decent human being.

QP: You kinda get the feeling from this that he would’ve had a better and more fulfilling life if he hadn’t become a Green Lantern. And the idea that anyone let Guy near special needs kids? Its a little disappointing that we never see this side of Guy. Maybe they’re just throwing this in there to make it seem like he has a heart, but damn.

TGH: Yeah, I doubt we’ll see that come out in the future as we journey deeper into the gritty 90’s. Everything going great until an earthquake drops some sort of bus/firetruck from the future on Guy. So he was 2nd choice for being a Green Lantern, but is out of the running for falling in a hole? Nice one, Guardians.

QP: Meanwhile, in case you forgot who Sinestro was since the last time we mentioned him…

TGH: Guy loses his mind after the whole Sinestro thing, which makes the Guardians like him more, so he finally becomes a Lantern. Who then cuts his hair like when he was a kid again. Nothing weird about this at all.

QP: I’m not sure which one is supposed to be Guy in that picture. The one in the bubble kinda has his haircut, but the one punching Sinestro has red hair.

TGH: I assumed the bubble since he was bait for Hal.

QP: Maybe. The colorist gets points docked for this issue.

TGH: They basically summarize every comic up to this point, making issue 4 of a 4-parter the perfect jumping-on point for Guy Gardner, oddly enough.

QP: Except Guy Gardner Reborn clearly left out the part where Sinestro’s ring would’ve fit Andre the Giant.

TGH: Guy wakes up after reliving his entire life, mostly because his facefucker couldn’t take it anymore and died. Seems telling.

TGH: I wonder if Guy got to the part where he had to relive his life and re-relived it over and over again.

QP: That’s some Groundhog Day fuckery.

TGH: Guy discovers that most of the Draal are dead, which suggests that his “friends” probably passed through and left him there.

QP: Guy finds them just in time to discover that CloneGuy re-powered his ring and is now invincible.

TGH: Chewy points out that the Draal “somehow” found a way to recharge the ring. Not because that creates a new mystery or a way for Guy to do it, but because that moves the story along.

QP: I certainly hope Guy questions him as to how he did that before he beats him into a coma. Or maybe it’s just a deus ex machina, since Guy doesn’t seem terribly concerned that there’s another way to recharge the ring.

TGH: So does clone Guy have the rest of Guy’s knowledge now? He wasn’t laying next to him when they sucked his brain. He’s been fighting this whole time. I need some answers here!

QP: I’m glad that’s your takeaway from this section.

TGH: That nothing that happened in 4 issues is adequately explained? It’s supposed to be a big deal. Like those world-ending cult aliens that ran away forever.

QP: It’s the Lost of comics. All origin story, no mystery solving.

TGH: So of course Guy can’t do anything to his clone, and he flies away towards Earth to do whatever it is he’s going to do before Guy shows right up behind him. They’re supposed to be sleeper agents according to Graf. Doesn’t work very well when the real one is still there. Gardner!!!

QP: Although presumably not *too* right behind him, since they can’t get the ship moving too fast. Possibly since the ship was designed to be steered by multi-tentacled aliens.

TGH: On the plus side, Jell-o Lantern made it through just fine.

QP: Oh good, I was worried. Guy tells the Lanterns to take him to Baltimore, and then kicks it back big-pimpin’ style in the captain’s chair.

TGH: Guy knows the clone is a threat, but he’ll be stopping by his house to yell at his dad first I guess. The Lanterns offer to help Guy stop his clone, but Guy refuses, because they’ll be damned if they’re drawing these guys anymore.

QP: Maybe so his dad can beat the dogshit out of his clone. “Look, dad, there’s two of me to abuse!”

TGH: That would be great if the clone’s only weakness was his dad.

QP: Hey, it might be.

TGH: Like so many times before, Guy sails off into the sunset with no actual powers. I feel like this story didn’t end on a high note. The Draal ended up being pretty disposable after we got all of Guy’s exposition, which they really crammed in towards the end. I don’t think we even ever find out what their plan was.

QP: It was four issues of exposition with some nonsensical alien brainwashing thrown in for funsies. They could’ve just had Guy go up against Psycho Pirate for that. And then explain that the high collar is symbolic of his lack of…yeah I don’t know. It’s been done way better.

TGH: Clone drama has been a popular theme in comics for years, but what a clunky way to introduce it. So now that Guy has an evil clone on Earth, I assume the coming issue will be dealing with that, and probably some fallout. Next time we’ll be checking out Guy Gardner #15, but also stopping into JLA #83 to see what Guy’s clone has been up to.

QP: Being nice to Ice, obviously.

TGH: They’re probably already engaged.

TGH: The letter section opens with an announcement that Joe Staton will no longer be on the series, which worries me. The art has always been one of the few consistently good parts of the comic, so who knows what it will be like after this.

QP: Yeah, he’s had some issues, especially in the beginning, but for the most part his art has been nice and dynamic.

TGH: Issue 16 promises a “no-wussies” rogues gallery, so I’m already “excited” for the future.

QP: Oh. Yay. God, the back half of the definitive Guy Gardner issue list is clearly just filler. A full column and a half, with reprints!

TGH: Seriously. Its only value is filling up almost an entire page of the letters section.

QP: Guy confirms that Lizard Man is fired, which leads me to wonder why his character was ever introduced in the first place. Until he sheds his people skin to show us his true form, and attempts to take over the earth.

QP: Eddie Teller from Rhode Island is a fan of the exclamation point. Eddie Teller is probably 8 years old.

TGH: I hope he hand wrote that, and the editor had to count them so he could type it correctly.

TGH: Mike K. straight-up wants Guy to kill Hal. Oookay there, buddy.

QP: That’s a bit much.

QP: Someone suggests Guyland as an alternative to Disneyland.

TGH: Captain Guy in 3-D sounds like something you’d never forget, no matter how hard you tried.

TGH: Guy Gardner, Funeral for Nobody Special is pretty funny.

QP: Yeah, that’s a bit cute.

TGH: Then Guy calls him a blockhead because his name is Charles Brown.

QP: *golfclap*

90’s Ad Showcase:

TGH: I don’t know how good a game World Heroes is, but good God that ad is not helping it.

QP: Nice M. Bison rip off.

TGH: M. Policeman.

QP: They all kinda look like Dollar Store versions of other fighting game characters.

TGH: Red Yelling Guy, Mullet Yelling Guy, Hulk Hogan Yelling Guy. Glow Hands.

QP: Sophitia. King Friday.

TGH: Ryutwo. This is a series that’s going places.

QP: I’m sure it’s a cult classic and that’s the only reason we’ve never heard of it before.

TGH: Oh definitely.

QP: The Bloodlines trading cards look just as boring as every other set of comic book trading cards we’ve seen advertised.

TGH: Yeah, cards were a big deal in the 90s. More things to collect.

QP: Thank God for the collector mentality.

TGH: I’m sure it all paid off for everyone.

QP: A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy graphic novel, drawn by Steve Leialoha, sounds like it would be fantastic. I’m sure it probably wasn’t.

TGH: I don’t even know where to start with that ad. It is the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen.

QP: I can’t tell if that alien is a drawing or an actual piece of plastic.

TGH: If the final product is even a fraction of the ugliness on display here, I don’t want it on my planet. Better throw an ugly-ass low-res background on there too for good measure.

QP: The only thing that could possibly be uglier is the Joker on the facing page. It looks like a bad caricature of Michael Jackson.

TGH: Tiny baby Joker mouth. Tiny dainty Joker nose.

QP: Eyes waaaaaay too far apart. Batman’s face is on fire for some reason.

TGH: Some sort of burning ring passing above.

QP: Maybe a train track?

TGH: Is that a train track? You need a little more support I’d think. But then again this is an awful drawing.

QP: Batman’s face is a series of hatch lines. I don’t know if the artist could fully render an accurate elevated rail system.

TGH: Good point.

QP: Jim Balent, of Tarot: Witch of the Black Rose fame, would like us to see Catwoman’s boobs.

TGH: Ugh.

QP: Jim Balent would like you all to look at this very nice Catwoman costume that he designed, and also at how creative he is in titillatingly destroying it

TGH: I’m sure there’s a perfectly sexy explanation for this.

QP: Boobs. It probably doesn’t involve sexy Krampus though.

TGH: It’s probably those damn claws she has. She tore the hell out of herself putting that on. Claws LAST, Catwoman.

QP: I really do like this costume, though, probably because my parents foolishly let me buy a few issues of this run of Catwoman when I was a young and impressionable child. It is unfortunate that someone competent in how ladies and their clothes actually work did not draw that run.

TGH: It was a simpler time when you didn’t yet know that everything he drew was to get himself off.

QP: *shudder*

QP: DC Universe is back in form. With a checklist of new characters introduced during Bloodlines. I have literally never heard of any of them other than Hitman, so clearly these characters were built to last.

TGH: I’m sure they’ll be in the New 52 any minute now. There’s also some awful Metamorpho puns.

QP: So bad. Can they even say Morbius?

TGH: If they throw Meta in front of it apparently.

QP: DC uses some Dick Sprang art to advertise a Batman miniseries that Dick Sprang does not appear to actually be involved in making.

TGH: Joe Staton is on it. Guess that’s why he’s too busy for Guy now! How did Bob Kane not get top billing on this project?

QP: Had he sued for the right to be crowned King of All Shitheels yet?

TGH: Apparently not. Things were so much better then.

QP: Mortal Kombat tries to pick a fight with Street Fighter II.

TGH: Tough talk from a Game Boy enthusiast magazine.

QP: I have to assume Street Fighter II on the Game Boy was just as unimpressive as Mortal Kombat.

TGH: I haven’t played either, but I can’t imagine it being very good.

Next Time:

TGH: Next week, Guy returns to Earth, only to find that hundreds of years have passed, and Guy clone is considered the planet’s greatest leader. Guy finds a statue of clone Guy standing with his dad, who was very proud of him.

QP: His biography has a foreword by Batman, praising him as the greatest hero of the age, and a consummate gentleman.

TGH: General Glory, convinced that Guy was a better hero, became his sidekick.

QP: CloneGuy spent every waking moment that he wasn’t heroing helping prisoners turn their lives around, and raising the spirits of disabled and disadvantaged youngsters.

TGH: Guy Gardner pogs are now the universal currency.

QP: Children worldwide willingly wear his haircut out of respect and admiration.

TGH: Real Guy walks into a porn shop and punches the cashier. The End.