TGH: Welcome back as we march forward through the epic saga of Guy Gardner: Warrior! Last week Guy stopped pirates from killing the president. This time Guy and Steel get in a fight while some new guy gets stuck in a door, if the cover is any indication (it usually is not).

QP: I don’t know what this gentleman is thinking. That doorway is clearly marked “Slendermans Only.”

TGH: Is Sledge DC’s answer to the Rhino? Timely, guys!

QP: I’m sure he’ll turn out to be another classic villain. We’ve had so many of those introduced in this book.

TGH: His power is that his entire body is his neck.

QP: Oh, I thought his head just sprouted out of his mid-chest area. Such good art.

TGH: When in doubt, just add muscles. There was a lot of doubt in the artist’s room that night.

QP: I’m pretty excited that this is part 1 of 3.  This creative team is really good about condensing a story down to it’s most important elements.

TGH: Since they don’t have to wrap this one up for two more months, the story begins with a full-page nonsense dream sequence of Guy being The Best.

QP: I don’t believe for a second that Guy could take Bane OR Mongul single-handed, or that other guy, whoever he is, let alone all three of them at once.

TGH: He was the dude from Zero Hour that Guy didn’t touch even once.

QP: Oh yes, him.

TGH: I’m sure we’ll be seeing him again any time soon.

QP: Of course, he’s a timeless character.

TGH: Guy is getting a medal for saving the president last issue, which is a surprising touch of continuity. Nick Santos is even there. I was certain we would never see that guy ever again. (He probably goes away forever after this though.)

QP: Superman and Steel are incognito in the audience. Not sure why the Daily Planet thought one of their best reporters needed to be at a simple medal ceremony, but whatevs.

TGH: He probably just said he had to go to the bathroom and flew over there. Nobody would know.

QP: True.

TGH: He only does like 20 seconds of work a day.

QP: I guess when you can knock out a full days work in 20 seconds, why not?

TGH: After the ceremony, Guy goes to mope about being an alien, since we haven’t heard about it for a while.

QP: Guy is of the opinion that, since he’s some kind of weird-ass alien hybrid, he can no longer be the all-American hero he thought he was. He also tells this to Superman and it’s like, duh, Guy, really?

TGH: Superman does his best to pretend that he cares at all, but reminds Guy that, he doesn’t know how much Guy knows about being an alien, but he is an expert.

QP: Guy realizes that maybe he’s been wrong about Superman all this time, and also maybe lots of things.

TGH: Like when he thought milk came from bees. He thinks for just one glorious second about asking Superman to help him locate Mace, but fuck it.

QP: Yeah, we’re not gonna wrap that storyline up so easily. And then Steel shows up, and the introspective moment is over.

TGH: Steel tells Guy how great he is now. I mean he had been in the Justice League for years and despite being an asshole everyone seemed to think he was an okay hero, but this is apparently an actual big deal.

QP: I guess Steel was that last little bit of validation Guy needed.

TGH: All of the actual character development comes to an end however, when some anthropomorphic muscle shows up screaming. I think his name is Sledge, but they weren’t clear.

QP: He either crashes into or out of the Washington Monument. The art is not the most elucidating.

TGH: Wherever the hell he came from he starts punching the thing for seemingly no reason at all. Guy makes a hilarious remark with regards to flatulence.

QP: The onomatopoeia doesn’t even sound like a fart. C’mon Guy, try harder.

TGH: Poor Steel tries his best to stop Sledge but it does not go so well for him. This would not have happened to Shaq.

QP: Steel makes the mistake of trying to hit this guy with a sledgehammer, which does not work and gives him the unfortunate opportunity to make a bad joke.

TGH: Meanwhile, Guy changes into his tattoos immediately this time, which is convenient.

QP: This apparently involves bleeding out of the eyes, and that is really unpleasant-looking. If I were him, I wouldn’t want to change until I absolutely had to, either.

TGH: Guy gets some mace hands, which actually looks pretty cool. It’s too bad he is somehow slower than a guy that should have too many muscles to even move properly, let alone dodge.

QP: At a certain point, muscle mass just stops you from being able to move. I’m pretty sure Sledge is well past that point.

TGH: Sledge overcomes his disability and punches Guy in the mouth so hard that it completely smashes it into the shape of his fist. That is borderline terrifying. Guy really is just a ball of loose flesh now. No wonder he lost his shit when he found out.

QP: Guy says it’s his body protecting itself. If that’s protection, I’d hate to see him undefended.

TGH: I guess undefended would be his head flying off and crashing through a window of the White House.

QP: Considering that Sledge’s fists seem to be about the size of Guy’s chest, yeah, probably.

TGH: Guy and Steel team back up, and I guess this fight’s not hard enough for them, because they have plenty of time to stand around and talk shit to each other.

QP: Sledge does a ground pound and sends them flying. Meanwhile, in some shadowy bunker somewhere, we discover that someone is watching them, and from the sound of it, set Sledge loose on DC.

TGH: It’s of course the Quorum, and Militia’s handler gets to drop a flashback on us. Believe it or not, Sledge was created for destruction.

QP: That is so surprising.

TGH: Sledge is so important that his actual name never even comes up.

QP: Unfortunately, Sledge didn’t just want to destroy enemy assets, but also literally everything standing in front of him, be it friend or foe.

TGH: They somehow managed to subdue him and instead of drowning him or something, they put him to sleep and shoved him in or around the Washington Monument for reasons, until it was time to wake him up, for reasons.

QP: Back at the Mall, Steel and Guy can’t find Sledge, possibly because he burrowed a snow tunnel underneath them.  This story is set during the devastating winter of ’94, when Washington DC got 20 feet of snow.

TGH: Sledge apparently got Bugs Bunny’s powers.

QP: If only he’d get lost on his way to Albuquerque.

TGH: How could he even dig underground with his giant body? I guess he can do anything if you don’t have to draw it.

QP: That sums it up nicely.

QP: In any case, Sledge emerges out of the snow and tosses Guy straight into the Washington Monument.

TGH: Then he tries to pop Steel’s head off. Steel is clearly outmatched in this fight. He was not a very good Superman replacement. Speaking of which, where the hell did he run off to?

QP: You’d think he’d have heard this battle from space and come back to help.

TGH: Steel uses some quick thinking to shove is foot into Sledge’s mouth and fire his thrusters. This buys him roughly 5 seconds, which he then squanders.

QP: Fortunately, this gives Guy an opening to throw part of the monument at him.

TGH: The physics behind Sledge’s trajectory are questionable.

QP: I guess the rock bounces up into him?

TGH: I think he was standing there, and then, upon catching the rock was lifted upward majestically. It’s how early planes worked.

QP: Guy goes running after him and tosses him onto the reflecting pool. I think in the future, Guy needs to make a point of avoiding the Mall altogether.

TGH: I think the president should have simultaneously given him a medal/banned him from the capital forever.

QP: That would’ve been a good call. Especially when the Washington Monument finally gives up the ghost and falls on Sledge’s head.

TGH: The Washington Monument was clearly rigged with explosives as the entire thing blew up as it landed.

QP: I mean, it could be some poor coloring choice.

TGH: I hope nobody was in there at least.

QP: But yeah, it does look explody. Maybe Guy is just using his explosion powers from last issue.

TGH: It would probably still be standing if Guy hadn’t just started ripping chunks out of it to throw at Sledge.

QP: The FBI sends their best hovertank to pick up Sledge, who is somehow not dead despite having at 81,000-ton stone obelisk dropped on his head.

TGH: Guy gets the stink-eye from Militia’s handler. So I guess the FBI is secretly the Quorum then? Maybe they shouldn’t wear the Quorum jumpsuits out to an “FBI” pickup. I guess this is the ’90s DC universe, so every professional had a jumpsuit that left nothing to the imagination.

QP: Jumpsuits seem distinctly “henchman of a worldwide association of villains” so you’d think they wouldn’t want to be seen out in them.

TGH: Well it fooled those two geniuses anyway.

QP: Possibly. Guy and Steel talk a little more shit to each other, before putting the bro talk aside to be mature adults.

TGH: I think the Guy/Steel exchange is the very first non-douchey thing that has ever happened. Guy did grow, months after the comic told us he did!

QP: Elsewhere in the universe, someone has picked up on some Vuldarian activity.

TGH: Someone evil!

QP: Probably those embodiment-of-all-known-evil aliens from a few issues ago.

TGH: Probably! I don’t feel like taking a second to look it up though!

QP: Me neither. We are at least as lazy as everyone else working on this book.

TGH: Looks like those Vuldarians have ruined everything for Earth yet again!

QP: Stupid Vuldarians.

TGH: After the Sledge fight, Guy decides to drop by his house unannounced to visit his mom.

QP: Unfortunately, instead of awkward family interactions, he finds Major Force making fridging jokes.

TGH: “Not a lot of room in your fridge. Know what I mean? I mean it was hard to get a body in there. Which is what I did. I put your mom in the fridge.”

QP: “The side-by-side freezer was probably a poor choice.”

TGH: I’m pretty sure this is the only page that’s related to the three-parter, just like the beginning of Emerald Twilight, so I will call bullshit yet again.

QP: Oh, you mean Sledge isn’t gonna come back next issue to finish the job?

TGH: He might! He seemed like he’d be the mastermind behind something huge.

QP: He did come off as quite the schemer.

TGH: Will Guy find a place to store the milk and other perishables before they go bad? Does Major Force really equal major revenge? Find out next week!

QP: Guy Talk confirms that poor Beetle got stuck making all the stupid Warrior licensed merchandise.

TGH: Poor Beetle. Lost his really awful robosuit and then was forced to work in a sweatshop.

QP: He’s probably glad the robosuit is gone. Multiple people seem to think they’re breaking the news about Ice to Guy, as if this letters column isn’t compiled five issues later by the people who make the damned comic.

TGH: They probably don’t even read the letter section until they send their own letter in, so they probably never bother to do the math.

TGH: Guy makes a mention in one of his responses to give him feedback if they’re interested in a standalone series about Buck Wargo and his friends. History gives us the answer to that question.

QP: I am really surprised that no one wanted to read more about the Douchebag Explorer Brigade.

TGH: They would’ve run out of shitty one-liners halfway through issue 2. Later Guy tells everyone to bug DC if they want them to start making W hats. That worked out pretty well too.

QP: This book didn’t have nearly the readership they want us to think they did.

TGH: I think our theory that these are the only letters they get is probably pretty spot-on.

QP: They’ve all been pretty positive lately. Maybe they started paying kids to write them.

’90s Ad Showcase:

QP: Mortal Kombat II is still trying to convince someone to buy it. I wonder if anyone ever did?

TGH: The fact that their campaign is still trying to pretend that Street Fighter doesn’t matter doesn’t say much for them. Also, everyone bought that game.

QP: I mean, obviously not if they had to keep advertising it.

TGH: It was a pretty huge franchise at least until the 3rd game. It didn’t make it to the next generation of consoles quite as well. Which makes its hubris pretty funny in hindsight. If they had worked on making a better game and not yelled “STREET FIGHTER WHO????” every morning things would be different.

QP: Speaking of Street Fighter…AKA Gomez Addams will KICK YOUR ASS.

TGH: And Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.‘s Ming-Na Wen as Chun-li.

QP: It almost makes want to go back and watch it to see baby Agent May kicking ass.

TGH: I think it would be weird to see her smile in something.

QP: I wonder if she’s been doing the Spinning Bird Kick in S.H.I.E.L.D. all this time and we missed it.

TGH: It’s on the DVD extras.

QP: The ad for Red Zone does a really great job of giving you absolutely no clue what the game is about. The art and the screencaps don’t even look like they’re for the same game.

TGH: I feel like that was the strategy for most game ads back then. Blurry screencaps, maximum attitude, crappy taglines. I wonder what the music video ended up being?

QP: Probably something completely unmemorable.

TGH: No doubt. “Win” an unpaid gig as an extra!

QP: Winning the chance to not get paid for work was a big thing back then.

TGH: Tinstar is apparently one of the very few games for the SNES you can use the mouse on. I’ve never heard of it, but I’m sure I would’ve died of laughter playing it. It just seems so damn wacky.

QP: Yeah, the ad just oozes wackiness.

TGH: I don’t have the young person eyes to actually see the screenshots, but I’m sure it’s great.

QP: I can make out a covered wagon, but that’s about it.

TGH: DC Universe this month is an amazing time capsule.

QP: Oh my God they have to explain emoticons.

TGH: ROTFLOL

QP: Once upon a time, people didn’t know that a colon and a parentheses had greater purpose.

TGH: Nobody uses clown anymore. (Or ever?)

QP: No I don’t think so, not once kids figured out how to make a dong emoticon.

TGH: :+)

QP: ~~~ <===3

Next Time:

TGH: Next time, Guy has to mop his mom’s kitchen because SOMEBODY sure loves to stuff people in the fridge, but doesn’t bother to shut the door, letting the freezer thaw out.

QP: Major Force was trying to surprise Guy with a giant turkey for Christmas dinner, but forgot to put a pan underneath while it defrosted.

TGH: Major Force needs to stay the hell out of the kitchen.

QP: He’s kind of a disaster. He could burn water.

TGH: He signed up for Meals on Wheels just for everyone’s benefit.

QP: And then accidentally ends up dumping rat poison in all the meals. Good job, Major Force, you jackass.