Guardians of the Universe
Guardians of the Universe is a comic book team that first appeared in Green Lantern Vol. 2 #1
The Guardians of the Universe are a race of immensely powerful blue immortals living on Oa, the planet at the center of the universe, who founded and run the Green Lantern Corps.
An immortal race as ancient as life itself, the benevolent Guardians of the Universe desire a peaceful, orderly existence for all living beings, as well the pursuit of their own enigmatic agendas. They never allow emotions to infect their thoughts and actions. The Guardians created the Green Lantern Corps, an interstellar police force that now patrols the universe's 3600 space sectors. Each sector is designated two Green Lanterns on average, totaling 7200 officers. There are currently nine guardians on the council, four male and five females. One female has been left scarred by her recent encounter with the Anti-Monitor.
As a result of his arrogant disobedience, Krona unleashed an explosion of anti-matter which wiped out billions of years of time and created evil throughout the universe. Krona's rash act further resulted in the creation of the Anti-Matter universe and the Multiverse, the fracturing of time resulting in countless alternate dimensions. Feeling responsible for their brother’s actions, the Maltusians banished Krona, turning the madman into a being of pure energy sent on a wandering course throughout the cosmos. More seriously, the Maltusians knew that, as it had in the past, the universe would one day contract upon itself to be reborn by a new "big bang". Due to the anti-matter unleashed by Krona, the universe was deprived of sufficient matter necessary to ignite a new "big bang". As a result of the actions of one of their own, the universe and all existence would one day simply die out, never to be reborn.
The Maltusians decided to dedicate their species to policing the universe. By keeping evil and chaos in check they calculated that they would be able to preserve a sufficient amount of the existing universe to ignite the next "big bang". Through order and conservation the universe would be saved from extinction. Calling themselves the Guardians of the Universe, a group of Maltusians left Maltus and settled on the planet Oa, located at the center of the universe. The Guardians believed that emotion had clouded Krona's mind and was at the root of his evil. Emotion, they reasoned, was a fatal flaw of lesser creatures that lacked the vision and foresight of immortals such as the Guardians. While a creature with a lifespan measured in years could afford to act on concepts of love, honor, and duty, the Guardians must measure their actions against the fate of an entire universe over billions of years. Emotion was therefore a luxury they could not tolerate and, if they were to successfully steward the universe, the Guardians would need to forgo emotion all together.
OFFSHOOTS OF MALTUS
The Maltusian women vehemently disagreed with this plan resulting in a split of Maltusian society. The women left Maltus and eventually colonized Zamaron. In the future, the Zamarons would create the Star Sapphires and harness the violet light of love.A second group of Maltusians believed that direct control over the universe was the only option in protecting the cosmos. This group came to be known as the Controllers, a faction responsible for the Darkstars and for later attempting to harness the orange light of avarice.
Another group of Maltusians would leave before the incident with Krona and eventually settle down on Earth in Great Britain becoming the Leprechauns of legend.
NOTABLE PERIODS IN GUARDIANS HISTORY
- Many eons ago the Guardians discovered how to manipulate a form of energy which they called "the Glow". They forged the Central Power Battery to store this energy, which was comprised of the collective willpower of the inhabitants of the universe. The discovery and control of this energy provided the Guardians with the means to combat evil and chaos in the universe.
- In one of their earliest acts the Guardians hunted and captured the fear elemental, Parallax. They imprisoned Parallax in a box that was stolen. After its retrieval, Parallax was moved to the Central Power Battery,
resulting in the yellow impurity that originally plagued the Green Lantern Corps power rings.
Parallax: A disastrous secret
- In one of their earliest acts the Guardians hunted and captured the fear elemental, Parallax. They imprisoned Parallax in a box that was stolen. After its retrieval, Parallax was moved to the Central Power Battery,
- On Mars, the Guardians engaged the destructive race known as "The Burning" and split the race into two new species: the Green Martians and the White Martians. The Guardians altered their reproductive cycle, and instilled an inherent fear of fire to prevent this conquering species from ravaging the universe.
LEGION desired vengeance against the Guardians
- Threatened by its innate need for expansion and conquest the Guardians confined the locust-like race of Tchkk-Tchkki to their homeworld under an emerald force field. Without the ability to expand and conquer the Tchkk-Tchkki died off, forcing them to preserve their last life spark in the yellow armored behemoth, LEGION. LEGION killed many Lanterns in its quest for revenge against the Guardians.
- The Guardians created the robotic Manhunters to patrol the universe. When the Manhunters artificial intelligence concluded that the only way to prevent chaos was to exterminate all life, it resulted in the "Massacre of Sector 666" an event still clouded in mystery. The Guardians decommissioned the Manhunters, who rebelled against their own extermination. After a protracted war, the Guardians and Manhunters entered into an uneasy truce with the Manhunters being exiled beyond Sector 3600.
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- The Guardians entered into a treaty with Agent Orange whereby they and their operatives would stay out of Vegan space. Due to this agreement the Omega Men have become the only peacekeepers in that planetary system.
- The demon sorcerers of the Empire of Tears were defeated and imprisoned by the Guardians on the Empire's throneworld of Ysmault.
- As a result of the engagement with the Empire of Tears, the Guardians resolved to remove magic from the universe. Although they were only partially successful, the magical energy which they did gather was forged into an orb called the Starheart. The Starheart was later the source of Alan Scott’s lantern ring.
- Reasoning that they needed sentient agents to exercise the judgment and compassion that the Manhunters failed to show, the Guardians formed the Halla, an intergalactic police corps wielding laser guns that fired the emerald energy. The first and most well known Halla was Kendotha Kr'nek who was murdered by Darkseid when she tried to liberate Apokolips.
- Millennia ago after a lengthy war with the alien race known as the Reach, the Guardians reached a truce. The Reach crafted the Blue Beetle scarab as a means of combating their enemies, should a weapon against the Guardians be needed in the future.
The Guardians failed experiment - Another of the Guardians early attempts at combating evil came with the invention of the Green Glob. The Green Glob was an advanced teaching device formed out of emerald energy. It was programmed to educate beings throughout the universe and had the ability to alter reality to convey its lessons.
- When the entire Sector 3600 was revealed to be a living and insane being of godlike power, the Guardians imprisoned the Sector in a matrix of their making, paralyzing the Sector with the knowledge that the Guardians were its superiors.
- After the creature eventually known as Doomsday killed the Green Lantern Zharan Pel and hundreds of his fellow corpsmen, the Guardians of the Universe battled the monster on Oa where one Guardian sacrificed himself in battle, forcing Doomsday through a tear in space.
- The Guardians guided Kal-El (Superman) on his journey to Earth after their agent Tomar-Re was unsuccessful in preventing Krypton’s destruction.
THE GREEN LANTERN CORPS
While on Oa the Guardians set about creating a police force that would stem the tides of evil in the universe. Over time the Guardians appearance evolved from their original humanoid form to the smaller more cerebral persona they now assume. Their first attempt was to create a race of machines called the Manhunters, but there was a rebellion by the robot enforcers after their artificial programming concluded that order could be better maintained if they exterminated all life. Their second attempt was the formation of the Green Lantern Corps. Combining the energy from their own bodies, the Guardians constructed the Central Power Battery. The Battery resembled an enormous lantern and was capable of harnessing sentient willpower as a source of energy along the green spectrum of light. The Guardians drafted "the Book of Oa", a tomb containing the laws and the history of the Corps and selected representatives from across the universe to be their new police force. Originally, the Corps was comprised of a small group of select individuals who worked directly with the Guardians, however after the Lantern Raker Quarrigat was easily defeated by Darkseid, the Guardians expanded the Corps to greater numbers.
Although they present a united front, the Guardians have not always agreed among themselves. During the Crisis on Infinite Earths, a faction of six Guardians disagreed with the majority opinion to remain out of the war with the Anti-Monitor. This group splintered off and formed their own Corps, reviving Guy Gardner from his coma. Outfitting Gardner with a unique uniform and his own power ring, these Guardians instructed the brain damaged Lantern to recruit his own strike force to attack the Anti-Monitor. When the Guardian Appa Ali Apsa took human form to travel alongside Hal Jordan and Oliver Queen, he was exiled from the Guardians and stripped of his immortality for succumbing to emotion, after he had rescued his "friend" Hal from certain death. The Guardian Dawlakispokpok left his brethren to raise a family with his Zamaron wife, and would later defy the Guardians by attempting to recreate Krona's disastrous experiment.
FIRST DESTRUCTION
The Guardian Herupa Hando Hu expressed concern over how indecisive his brethren were during the Crisis. Alarmed that the splintering of the Guardians was a sign that the Guardians had lost their way, Herupa Hando Hu proposed that they reunite with their former paramours, the Zamarons, and retreat from this universe for an undetermined sabbatical. After defeating the Zamaron leader in combat and taking her as his consort, Herpua Hando Hu lead the Guardians and Zamarons beyond the universe.
After some debate, the Corps chose execution. No Lantern had been aware of the fail-safe in the Central Power Battery, but as a Korugarian male, Sinestro's death would trigger the battery’s meltdown. Although it appeared as if Sinestro was gone forever, turned into energy and placed into the battery, the battery’s fail safe was triggered and the Lanterns' power source heated up to critical mass. Only the intervention of Hal Jordan and Eddore of Tront prevented an explosion that would have killed all present. Eddore did not survive inside of the Central Power Battery, but emerged safely with one of the last working power ring in the universe. Without the Guardians present to restore the battery, the Corps disbanded. Oa was abandoned, leaving Appa Ali Apsa as its only steward.
APPA ALI APSA and THE RESTORATION OF THE CORPS
Over time, the solitude began to affect Appa Ali Apsa's mind, driving the Guardian into madness. He killed the former Green Lantern Priest when the Lantern resisted his attempts to meld their minds together. Appa then used his awesome power to lure a vulnerable and emotionally broken John Stewart back to Oa. There, Appa forced his mind into Stewart's while using his power to create a nightmarish world for him and Stewart to enjoy. Appa had recalled various cities which he had visited during his travels throughout the universe. He used his powers to rip these cities form their home worlds, resettling them on Oa into a mosaic world. Fighting the mad Guardian's control, Stewart was able to send a mental distress call to Hal. Jordan and Gardner responded to their friend’s distress and traveled to Oa, intent on stopping Appa’s insane plan. Knowing that the two Lanterns had little chance of defeating a fully powered and insane Guardian, Jordan sent his own distress signal to his former masters in the universe beyond our own. The Guardians returned and aided the heroes in destroying Appa Ali Apsa. Following their victory, the Guardians announced that they would be returning to this plane of existence and reforming the Green Lantern Corps.
The Guardians may have returned but had soon found that their secretive nature and lack of emotion were called into question by their new Corps. Hal had been appointed to recruit the first of many new Lanterns and his selection of independent minds differed from the Corps of old. The Lanterns more readily questioned the Guardians authority, and openly disagreed with the Guardians decision to maintain the Mosaic World on Oa for study, defying their masters and alerting the various home worlds to the location of their lost cities. When the renegade Guardian Krona returned to this plane of existence as Entropy he attacked Oa. Any being that attacked Entropy would lose years of its life. Hal was joined by other Lanterns who could not understand why the Guardians refused to engage Entropy in battle, given that they held immortal life spans compared to the faint years of the Lanterns. The Lanterns refused to fight for the Guardians until they explained themselves; resulting in the revelation that the universe would fail to be reborn should the Guardians not to live long enough to facilitate the next "big bang".
PARALLAX AND THE SECOND DESTRUCTION
However, the most damaging of the Guardians secrets was the concealment of Parallax, the living entity of fear which the Guardians had imprisoned in the Central Power Battery. Parallax was the true reason for the yellow weakness suffered by the Corps and has lingered within the battery for countless eons. When the Green Lanterns imprisoned Sinestro in the Central Power Battery the renegade Lantern made contact with Parallax, allowing Sinestro to use the fear entity as a weapon. During this time, Hal had suffered a terrible tragedy that would drive him to despair, weakening his resolve enough to allow Parallax to take hold of him through his power ring. Jordan’s hometown of Coast City as destroyed by Cyborg Superman and Mongul, and the hero who had worked so hard to rebuild his life had lost it all; his friends, his family, and his familiar memories.
Hal was devastated by this wholesale slaughter and attempted to use his power ring to recreate. Seizing on this weakened state, Parallax infected, twisting his mind so that Hal saw the Guardians as the reason why his home was destroyed. In his altered perception, the Guardians were cold and cruel. They possessed the power to remake but lacked the humanity to see that it was right to do so. Under this influence, he came to believe that the Guardians did not deserve the power they wielded and set of for Oa to take it for himself. He would use the power to restore and address all of the wrongs in his history that the selfish and unfeeling Guardians had not cared to correct.
Now fully under Parallax's sway, Hal carved a path of destruction through the ranks of the Green Lantern Corps. Taking rings as he defeated each Lantern Jordan arrived on Oa and confronted the Guardians. Their questionable leadership was only reinforced when the Guardians freed Sinestro from his imprisonment in the battery, and set him against Lantern Jordan. The villain secretly delighted in the chaos he had caused, and taunted Jordan into "killing" him. An action he knew would further denigrate the once noble hero. Hal defeated the Lanterns, killed Sinestro, and would kill his former friend Kilowog, all to confront his former masters. The Guardians did not resist; their edicts against direct intervention paralyzing them from acting. The Guardians watched as he entered the Central Power Battery and drained it of its power, knowing that doing so would destroy the Guardians. However before he could complete his task, the Guardians sacrificed their life force to preserve the life of one member of their order, Ganthet. Ganthet used this power to forge one ring unlike any other ring seen before. Traveling to Earth, Ganthet had little power to spare on finding a qualified candidate to wield this ring. A chance meeting with Kyle Ranyer in an alley outside a club led to Rayner becoming the last Green Lantern.
THE TORCHBEARER AND THE CORPS REBORN
Over time, Rayner distinguished himself as a Lantern working with Ganthet to slowly restore the Corps. Jordan’s own saga while possessed by Parallax would take the former hero on a journey from universal scourge, to martyrdom, to reluctant host of the Spirit of Vengeance, the Spectre. When Hal Jordan’s old friend, Tom Kalmaku was taken on a journey by an embodiment of Jordan’s will. Tom helped the former Lantern restore Oa, and some time after that, Kyle Rayner managed to resurrect the Guardians.
While patrolling into the farthest reaches of space, Kyle made contact with an ancient race which was gripped in fear over the return of something called Parallax. Learning the truth as to the nature of the fear entity Kyle Rayner confronted Ganthet regarding the true nature of Parallax. As Hal and the Spectre struggled with Parallax for possession of Hal's soul, Ganthet and Kyle recovered the once great Lantern's body entombed in the heart of the sun. During the battle against Parallax, the fear entity momentarily took hold of Ganthet, only to eventually be defeated by the combined might of Rayner and the Lanterns. Ganthet returned to Oa and matured the infant Guardians to their previous state. Fully in control of their power once more, the Guardians set about rebuilding the Corps, expanding its ranks to 7200 Lanterns; two for every known sector of space. Oa was repopulated to its earlier glory and the Corps began reasserting its place as the law in the universe.
THE WAR OF LIGHT AND THE NEW LAWS
The Guardians ordeal did not change their approach on dealing with the Green Lanterns. Often cold and inflexible the Guardians sequestered themselves for long stretches of time, rarely communicating with their Lanterns directly. The protocol Lantern Salakk has been entrusted with managing the day to day affairs of the Corps. The Guardians now issue the majority of their orders through Salakk and their gatekeeper and quartermaster Shorm. Recent events have called into question the wisdom of the Guardians actions. During the Sinestro Corps War, they rewrote the Book of Oa to allow for lethal force to be used, but later exiled one of the Corps finest officers, Laira, for killing Amon Sur. When the war moved to earth, the Guardians engaged the Anti-Monitor directly in combat partially in response to the Anti-Monitor's first attack against them during the first Crisis.
Following the Sinestro Corps, the Guardians, at the lead of the increasingly militant Scarred Guardian, decided to take steps to prevent the War of Light from coming to pass. They created a new division called the Alpha Lanterns.
In Other Media
DCAU
They first appear in Superman TAS where they ask Superman to help Kyle battle Sinestro. Strangley the wear GLC uniforms in this appearence.They next appear in Justice League episode "In Blackest Night" where they attend John's trial and later defend OA from attack. They appear briefly in JLU episode "The Return" where they deny John's request to leave earth and take a tour of duty on OA.
Other
They appear briefly at the end of Batman the Brave and the Bold episode "The Eyes of Despero".Film
They appear in Justice League the Final Frontier..They will probably appear in Green Lantern live action movie and Green Lantern First Flight.
| Team Name: | Guardians of the Universe |
| Publisher: | DC Comics |
| 1st Appearance: | Green Lantern Vol. 2 #1 |
| Appears in: | 236 issues |
| Disbanded in: |
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Green Lantern First Flight
Animated Green Lantern Movie.
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Justice League : The New Frontier
Adaption of the acclaimed graphic novel
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