#superguy

Now, let's look at the details.

Guy and Clark both grew up relatively poor, but Guy grew up in a city and Clark in the country.

Clark has wonderful parents, is part of the community and accepted and loved. He plays football well enough to be the star of his school and almost gets picked up for the pros - except he's only that good because of his superpowers, so playing sports is unfair and he has to stop. He finishes school with amazing grades and chooses to move away from home with the full support of his parents to self-actualize.

Guy had a brother he was constantly pitted against, a father who hated him and a mother who only cares as long as she can use him. He's in a bad and underfunded school, works hard for good grades so he can get a single scrap of affection from his dad and gets shot down. He doesn't finish high school, gets involved in juvenile criminality. He doesn't have friends in his childhood that are important enough to get mentioned in any of his comics. His brother beats him up and gives him 60 bucks, and that's the most help Guy ever gets.

He gets shitty jobs in restaurants and works through the night to finish his GED, gets into college on a sports scholarship. His family doesn't care.

He moves out after his brother kills himself and doesn't see his family again for decades.

Clark's parents offer to help pay for his college. Clark doesn't take the offer because he wants to be self-sufficent. He gets a job in a restaurant and uses his superpowers to make it easier on himself. He's late for his college admission test and uses his superpowers to complete it in time. He makes friends with his coworkers, even dating one of them for a while. He calls his parents often, visits them multiple times a year.

He helps people because he cares and he has the power and he can't chose not to help - that's not how his parents raised him. When he gets overwhelmed by the public response to him, who almost worship him like a god at first sight, he goes home to his parents and they help him become Superman, so he can keep his true self seperate from the world.

He gets his first job by bringing in a story on himself. His boss sees him like a son, everyone in the office likes him, even if they don't know him that well, can't know him that well.

Guy plays football in college. He's good enough to get picked up for the pros, but gets hurt and has to quit after losing his temper. He works very hard on himself to become better, to be calmer, to control himself. He gets a job councling prisoners to help people who struggle like he did. He gets a job as a gym teacher to help disabled and disadvantaged kids. He tries to help Hal by taking over as Green Lantern for a day when Hal needs him, after meeting him once, and lands in a coma for six years after a brain injury.

He gets hand picked to be a Green Lantern to do a specific job - but turns out that would've destroyed the universe. Oops. Hal wants him depowered and imprisoned, but he gets put under house arrest instead. The entire corps hates him. Is some of that his fault? Sure, he did team up to kill Hal with some villains. That's bad.

But... Guy has worked so hard to get where he was in life before Hal came along. Sure, it wasn't Hal's intention to hurt him, but he *did*. He ruined Guy's life and Guy is justified in being upset at him.

No one cares though. Everyone Guy meets hates him on sight, because he's loud (controlling your volume is difficult for many neurodivergent people), he's rude (he doesn't have a filter anymore and everything he says gets interpreted in the worst way possible), he's aggresive and bad tempered (he worked *so hard* to unlearn it, to control himself, and now it's all gone, destroyed in a single moment that lasted six years). He builds walls up around himself, several meters thick, pretends to care for no one and nothing but himself. (No one else will.) (The last person he opened himself up to says she doesn't even recognize him anymore.) (When he's forced to be open and vulnerable, there's only one person who doesn't think it's funny that he has feelings.)

Superman goes through a lot. He has villains that mess with his head, he finds out his entire hometown got possessed by aliens who want to kill him, he's forced to kill the only other Kryptonians he ever met for destroying Earth in a pocket universe. He doesn't have it easy, but at the end of the day, Superman goes home to Clark's parents and friends and knows they will always be there for him.

Who is Guy Gardner, apart from Green Lantern? He doesn't have a family. He doesn't have a life - he was in a coma for six years, is he supposed to go to his old school and ask them to rehire him, even though he has a permanent disability now that makes it almost impossible for him to work with children daily? Is he supposed to try going into councling while he's too disturbed to function in his own life? They only family he had was Kari, who says she doesn't know him anymore.

He doesn't have any support network outside the League and even that is... he barely has a support network in the League. He has Tora. He has himself. He has no one else.

And he's still so good. When Guy gets his yellow ring, everyone's worried about what he's gonna do now - Unlimited power and no oversight! He could do anything! Become the villain they half think he is already! - and all Guy does is... do exactly the same thing as before, because he's good to his core. He doesn't want to rule the world, or become rich by stealing diamonds, or even do petty crime, really. He just wants to help and be loved and respected.

Like Superman.

Superman, who has it all - Everyone respects him, thinks well of him, is friends with him. People think the world of him! And well... so does Guy.

Guy says he doesn't care for him, but every other time they interact Guy makes a comment about how strong and powerful Superman is, even if he's saying it ironically. Why do you think about how strong Superman is so much, Guy. Do you want him to pick you up in his strong arms, Guy.

One of Guy's first meetings with Superman was during the Invasion! event, where Earth got invaded by a bunch of aliens. During the second part of the Invasion, Superman leads a group of heroes, including Guy, to retake Australia from the aliens. After that, Clark goes home to Metropolis and finds out he had been sleepwalking through Metropolis as the violent hero/anti-villain Gangbuster because Brainiac messed with his mind.

Clark has a small breakdown and decides to leave Earth forever. While the invasion is still going on. He runs into a group of heroes, including Guy, in space and comes with them to fight the invadors on their turf. Guy is... a tiny bit upset about it.

A comic panel showing Superman, Green Lanterns Hal Jordan and Guy Gardner, and the Martian Manhunter floating in space.

Superman says: "But I can't - won't - set foot on Earth again."

Guy yells: "Won't?! There are good people dying down there while you're joyriding through space! Why, you son of a -"

Hal and J'onn both call out "Guy!" to cut him off. End id.

I like to believe that half of Guy's anger at Clark comes from his disappointment in him. There's not much in canon to back that up, but I love the idea of Guy being disillusioned with Superman after seeing him run from Earth during the Invasion for no reason he could see.

But he still thinks very highly of him. This is gets very clear after Doomsday, where Guy honestly and sincerely grieves for Superman.

Four panels showing Guy looking down at a group of heroes all grieving Superman. Ice has built an ice statue of Clark.

Guy thinks: "Cut me with a knife, why don't you, Ice? Humph. We sure had our tussles, Blue. You were the world's ultimate boy scout - the kind of guy who embodies fairness and justice. Me, I'm a rouge... But that don't mean I can't see the truth."

Guy uses his ring to reach for a wristband with superman's symbol on it and puts it on.

He thinks: "Doomsday caved my head in, Blue, but you took him down. You won. Guess I can wear this for the service to honor that." End id.

He even goes to fight the Erradicator for his honor, and look at him once he becomes convinced he's really Clark!

Panel showing Guy Gardner, who says: "No lie, Blue - I thought we'd seen the last of you, after Doomsday! It's good to have you back, kicking butt! You really did a number on these creeps! I never knew you had it in you. I meam, you never used to be so... I dunno, aggressive? Were you holding back all those years?" End id.

There's a part of Guy that adores Superman, unabashedly.

There's also a part of Guy that hates Superman to death. There's a bigger part that is so jealous of him, and everything he has. Superman is everything Guy wants to be, but never will.

Well.

Unless their lives were different.

Because Clark has a dark side. He's not the perfect and strong inhuman being he pretends to be as Superman. He's good, sure, incredibly good and caring, the same way Guy is. But he does have a dark side. He struggles with his anger, with his powers, with his choices. He's so incredibly human.

And who would he be if his parents were like Guy's? If his life had been like Guy's?

Let's talk about Clark's dark side.

Gangbuster as Clark's alter ego is a violent, angry vigilante. He doesn't kill, but he does hurt people unproportionally. Clark isn't conciously aware of him for a long time - he was created when Brainiac tried to take over Clark's mind and Clark chose to show him his dark side to kick him out.

He gets compared to Batman a lot in story, but he's also a lot like Guy.

I've mentioned Clark's arrogant streak before, and that one goes even further sometimes. Clark thinks he's in the right a lot. This is because he often is in the right, but it can also make him very stubborn and heard headed, and even unsympathetic at times. This is something he mostly grows out of, but he never quite loses it completely - and if his parents were worse people, well... who's to say he wouldn't get worse?

Clark has a pretty good grip on his anger, most of the time, but he does have a temper and he loses it every once in a while. He loses it often at Guy, specifically.

Guy loves to needle Clark, trying to get under his skin - and it does work. Quite often, really, compared to other characters. Guy even manages to get Clark to start a fistfight with him in the streets. Guy brings out the side of Clark he tries to keep under control so hard every second of his life and I think that's good for him.

(Clark needs to be a little feral and fucked up. It fixes him.)

But I firmly believe that, if Clark had parents like Guy, he'd have turned out like Guy. They are the same, mirroring each other darkly, two sides of the same coin. Clark looks at Guy and thinks, Would I have been like him, if my life had been different. If my parents were worse, if my powers had come later -

Guy looks at Clark and thinks, If I had had my powers sooner, I'd have run to a new city and built a life like his for me, If my parents had loved me like his love him -

They are the same.

They also both have reasons to be jealous at each other - I think I've covered Guy enough, but Clark wants to be human so bad. He wants to be human and he wants to be normal, and he wants to be able to be free and out of control and not be scared to hurt people, always, to be able to just walk through life and be rude and short and have that be fine, like Guy does. He wants to be human, like Guy. And he can't be.

Except Guy isn't anymore human than he is, and Clark doesn't have as many friends as Guy thinks, and they are the same. They belong together. They are so good together. World's finest WHO?

Guy did also somehow manage to become one of the closer heroes to Clark, in the 90s. This is in part because of retcons distancing Clark from the original Leaguers in a way he wasn't before, and also because Post-Crisis Clark is just... kind of a loner?

He's friendly with everyone except a few people, but he doesn't really have many friends, especially not heroes. Batman is his friend, but they don't really hang out together anymore, and things are tense between them.

Diana is his friend again, and they do hang out sometimes. (Diana is also Guy's friend.)

No one really knows his secret identity anymore. People put him on a pedastol, and Clark lets them because getting close to them, actually close to them, would require letting Clark bleed through into Superman and be vulnerable with people on that level and Superman doesn't do that.

Clark makes friends and loves people. Superman is... untouchable and unreal. He's an act. (This is why it was so important to Clark that Lois loves him as Clark and not as Superman.)

Guy turns up in a few Superman stories though, even if he really doesn't have to. One time, Clark has magic/sci-fi induces nightmare visions of a version of his life where he's gone evil and hurt everyone he cares about. He accidentally kills Lois, for example.

And... he accidentally kills Guy.

Clark cares about Guy, more at eleven.

When Clark's on the League, Guy is one of the people he interacts with most - part of this is because Guy can't ever shut up, but still.

After Clark comes back to life, Guy asks him if he'll come back to the League.

Comic panel showing Guy talking to Superman while Maxima flies away in the background.

Guy says: "Big words, Supes. Does this mean you're coming back to the JLA?"

Superman replies: "Not yet, Gardner. But if you ever need me... just call."

Clark and Lois go on a christmas date in Warriors one time, too.

When Guy struggles with his new alien ancestry, he goes to Clark for help.

When Guy dies and is trapped in hell, he orchestrates a plan that involves Clark coming to help him. And then he takes him on a beach date to yell at him.

Panel showing Superman and Guy Gardner as Warrior talking on a beach. Superman is wearing just his red underwear and belt while Guy is in cargo shorts.

Guy says: "Until you mess up again, of course."

Clark says: "This isn't over."

Guy replies: "It never is for guy's like us. Here's to kicking your butt again soon. Hey, and one more thing - enough with all this moping and being worried about Zod and psycho lizards and whine whine whine! You're Superman! Act like it!" End id.