Global Guardians #7 - Final Fight

For the next few weeks, I'm going to be running through the DCU appearances of the Global Guardians post-Crisis and pre-Flashpoint (or at least all the appearances I have) and try to find out where they are now. Or were, pre-Flashpoint.

Having been used as little more than cameo guest stars in the end of the Red Winter storyline as seen last week, the Guardians next appearance was in Justice League Quarterly #17. In a couple of issues prior to that, a new Jack O'Lantern was seen, one Liam McHugh, the cousin of the original but as his were solo stories, I'm not dwelling on them.

Instead, we rejoin the Guardians at their HQ in the Pacific where Tuatara has been having visions of the future, mostly about his friends being in danger.

The visions come true all too quickly as members of the Guardians are attacked by an armoured mystic called Fain Y'onia who derides them for being lackeys of Joab M'staki, his apparent enemy. Though they claim never to have heard of this M'staki, the mystic fights and defeats Impala, Godiva, Olympian and Bushmaster. This last battle takes place as Bushmaster is attempting to stop a bank robbery and while distracted by Y'onia, falls victim to the robbers' guns.

Eventually, Fain attacks Owlwoman but she is forewarned and acts as bait, allowing the remaining Guardians to attack en masse.

Unfortunately, this proves no more effective than the individual attacks had as first Tuatara is rendered comatose and then Thunderlord is killed.

While they discover M'staki is the still-missing Dr Mist, the information is of no interest to Y'onia who is stopped only by being beaten by Wild Huntsman. Though defeated, Y'onia retreats to his original time from millennia ago, taking the Huntsman with him.

Back at the Dome, a memorial is raised to the fallen heroes:

and you can't help but notice that Little Mermaid is back among the dead after being briefly resurrected in the Red Winter storyline. The retcon has been retconned.

To wrap up, Owlwoman insists that the Guardians can overcome their losses and has had help from the Martian Manhunter who has rounded up some likely candidates for her and the team to consider:

They're so delightfully 90s, aren't they, particularly the two on the left, Centrix of Canada and Tundra of Russia.

Despite the optimism of the final panel, as far as I'm aware, this is pretty much the end of the classic / original line-up of the Global Guardians. From here on, it's all pretty much downhill.