If Blackest Night doesn't deliver some Hal vs. Guy fisticuffs, it has failed.

I recently picked up the Guy Gardner DC Infinite Heroes figure, at a substantial markdown: for $6.99 or more, you'd feel taken, but for $3.50 it's a lot more reasonable. It's in the three and three-quarter inch scale (or in that neighborhood) and not terrible, but certainly not amazing; but it has the virtue of being the first Guy Gardner figure for me.

Then, while reading some posts over at the ever-entertaining Green Lanterns' Butts Forever, I got to thinking about some old school Guy Gardner appearances. Not the oldest, but his return while Steve Englehart was writing the book. I've lost several of those issues, but to the best of my recollection, Englehart didn't give Guy a single redeeming, or endearing, characteristic. (Certainly not for a while, anyway; I don't think we saw other sides of Guy until his Justice League days.) While Guy may have had the excuse of being (quite literally) brain-damaged, he was a single-minded psychopath, willing to do anything in the service of the Guardians, in order to prove he was the greatest Green Lantern. And "anything" included working with super-villains, and attempting to murder Hal Jordan.

Sod, now I have to find that one: prior to becoming a Green Lantern again, Hal was using a power ring but not the costume. During the Crisis, Hal, Guy, and an army of super-villains attempt to destroy the positive matter spot on the moon of Qward in the anti-matter universe...yeah, that sounds more insane here. Doing so was supposed to destroy the Anti-Matter, but instead would've blown up reality or something. At one point, when Hal dissents, Guy takes his power ring, and leaves him to die in space. I don't remember it coming up much after that, and Hal was a lot less maverick in those issues, so it's not like he'd just let it slide; Englehart may have realized he went too far there.

Well, maybe we'll dig those up again sometime. These figures are all from the DC Infinite Heroes line, and as such are smaller than I usually work with. None of them are quite as poseable, either; and you can judge for yourself on the paint. But, I have been thinking about how these smaller figures are going to look as a group, and how they might look with other figures; which we might get to Friday. If we're lucky.

Oh, and Ollie socking Hawkman in the kisser? It's traditional. I don't know if they ever actually came to blows in the classic satellite era Justice League of America, but they did not get along. Carter was a conservative voice of reason, or a fascist just-following-orders tool; and Ollie was a liberal dreamer fighting for change, or a blowhard asshole. Depending on who was writing them, I suppose. We may come back to that, as well.