The Physical Prowess of Guy Gardner

Doesn't THAT sound pretentious? Or at least portentious. I was originally going to use "athleticism", but I'm not sure if that is the way that it is spelled, and although my actual blog entries are probably riddled with spelling and grammatical errors, I do at least try and keep the titles fairly legible.

Why do I always end up rambling off in a tangent?

Anyway, getting back to the thrust of my argument. It has always been interesting to me, that Guy was presented as being an athlete right from the beginning...except that originally he was a gymnast and gym teacher, and then suddenly became a footplayer. And not JUST a football player but a defensive linebacker!

The two...don't really mesh that well.



There are quite a number of pictures of Guy using gymnastic equipment. He's on the rings here, and I remember some other stuff as well. Later on, after he had run away from Maltus back to Earth, he trapped all of the other Green Lanterns in a green glowing construct of bars and stuff. Hal was pissed, and yet strangely impressed, as I recall. It wasn't really until Beau Smith came along that the college football career seemed to come into effect. At least that's how I remember it. Otherwise, you would have thought that he and Booster would have had a lot to talk about in the old JLI.

Nothing wrong with being a brilliant college football player of course, and I always liked that Guy ended up being the star player instead of Mace, and that it STILL wasn't enough to win any attention from his miserable old goat of a Father. But a Linebacker? Those guys are built like TANKS!

In Green Lantern, and in the old JLI, Guy WASN'T built like a tank. He was listed as being 6' tall, which is the same as Hal, but Hal usually looked a bit broader in the chest. John was bigger, Kyle was smaller. The way that Guy was drawn by Joe Staton, or Kevin Maguire or Adam Hughes or Ty Templeton, was as a man in tip-top physical condition, muscular without being freakish. I rather liked that.

In the 90's of course, EVERYONE was presented as being bizzarely muscled! So suddenly, Guy went from being long and lean to having the physique of the Hulk.



Oh well. It WAS the 90's. Even the women looked like the Hulk. But in my mind, he may have played college football, but NOT as a linebacker.

He would have been a tight end.



Oh yeah.