87 – IMPERIAL GUARD

Subject: Imperial Guard
Roster: Gladiator (leader), Starbolt, Smasher, Titan, Oracle, Tempest, Earthquake
First Appearance: Uncanny X-Men #107, October 1977

Whereas I took pride in being able to recall the majority of the Starjammers, I don’t know if I would ever remember the members of the Imperial Guard. Hell, I have trouble remembering Gladiator (I  get him mixed up with Guardian and Vindicator, of Alpha Flight* fame).

A running theme on this blog is clearly my bias against the space opera storylines. I give Claremont credit for being able to juggle such a large cast of characters, but many of the stories play derivative (Brood of Ridley Scott’s Alien, and apparently the Imperial Guard of DC’s Legion of Superheroes).

Lee’s posing and composition of the card is relatively strong, though Titan (the big one on the top right, apparently) looks more like Lee hadn’t thought out the scale quite right. Also Gladiator looks like a vampire and there’s a lot of that arbitrary cross-hatching especially on his abs.

The card’s side B features a pretty cool drawing of the Imperial Guard’s ship. I’m of two minds on Lee’s spaceship art. His perspective and sense of scale is cool, and in general I like his sense of style. That said, I also like my technical art to be clean, and Lee just can’t keep his cross-hatching and squiggle shading off of them, and it mucks up the design.

By the way, the card says “the Imperial Guard has come into contact with the X-Men on numerous occasions, sometimes as allies, but often as deadly adversaries!” I dunno about you, but that sounds almost more appropriate a description for a villain (or anti-villain, Magneto-style), not an ally!

*speaking of which, where is Alpha Flight on this card set? Given Lee’s history drawing Alpha Flight and the X-Men’s history with them, especially with goldenboy Wolverine, it’s weird they would spotlight, say, the Imperial Guard, and not Alpha Flight, several of whose members are mutants as well.