ROCKET REDS vs GUARDSMAN: WHO YA GOT?

If you have a superhero universe, you pretty much have to have a group of disposable guys in power armor that heroes can beat on and bad guys can kill. It’s a rule.

The homogenous armored corps in the Marvel Universe are The Guardsmen, super-powered security for places like The Vault. In the DC Universe, the high-tech drones of choice are the Rocket Red Brigade, super-commies in big bulky suits of armor. Both admirably perform their primary role in their respective universes: to act as punching bags for superhumans.

The somber question before us today is, “Which group of armor-clad cannon fodder is better? Rocket Reds vs Guardsmen: Who ya got?”

Let’s start with the Rocket Reds. Originally these guys were created for the Soviet Union during the Cold War by the alien Green Lantern Kilowog. If memory serves, Kilowog briefly subscribed to the tenets of communism without grasping the whole totalitarian regime angle. He lived in the USSR for a while, where he used his technological know-how to create the Rocket Red Brigade.

What a total dumb ass.

Now, a comic blog is not the place to discuss the merits or lack thereof of international communism – nobody comes here looking for my take on geo-politics. Having said that, Kilowog is an utter tool for creating a corps of super-powered soldiers for the commies. You’d think a Green Lantern wouldn’t be such a naïve poozer, to use Kilowog’s term.

Anyway, Kilowog creates the Rocket Red Brigade using Soviet soldier “volunteers” who undergo a process called forced evolution and are slapped into red and white powered armor. The Rocket Reds have super-strength, resistance to injury, flight, and a vague power called “mecha-empathy” which presumably allows them to program VCRs with their minds. It was the Eighties, remember.

The Rocket Reds have kind of a spotty record, and by that I mean they usually end up getting the shit kicked out of them by any and all superhumans. Here’s Captain Marvel and the Martian Manhunter playing with some Rocket Reds, the same way my cat plays with a mouse before she kills it:

Embarassing.

Here’s the 1984 version of Black Canary, complete with headband and shoulder pads, giving a hapless Rocket Red a dose of her Canary Cry:

Ouch.

The Rocket Reds make an appearance during DC’s Invasion crossover. In the pages of Suicide Squad the Reds make a half-hearted attempt to take Moscow back from Khund invaders, but are repulsed by laser artillery and beat a quick retreat, earning the contempt of the macha villainess Duchess:

Not their finest hour.

Perhaps it’s the long Russian winters or the vodka or the tradition of existential despair inherent in Russian literature – for whatever reason the Rocket Red Brigade has adopted a fatalistic mind-set that doesn’t serve them well in combat:

The battle cry of the Rocket Red Brigade: “We are doomed.”

You need to have a more can-do attitude, guys. Who are in those suits anyway, Chekhov and Sholokhov? No wonder everybody beats the hell out of you with a gloomy outlook like that.

The Rocket Red Brigade do score major points with me for the original design of their armor. I really love the colors and the boxy, utilitarian aesthetic. They’re not exactly sleek, but they look cool as hell, particularly when drawn by Kevin Maguire. Plus, they wear mittens. Any armored figure that wears mittens is OK in my book.

Unfortunately, the Rocket Red Brigade updated their look in the early Nineties and cast aside their boxy first-generation armor in favor of unimaginative suits that look like utter crap. Not even Mike Parobeck’s art can make them look cool:

Enough picking on The Rocket Reds. Let’s turn the stink-eye on the 100% American Guardsmen and their emerald armor.

The Guardsman was originally Kevin O’Brien, an employee of Tony “Iron Man” Stark who was the first to wear the distinctive green powered armor. O’Brien got dead, but the Stark-designed armor he wore was mass-produced and provided to a small squad of guards at The Vault, the United States Maximum Security Installation for the Incarceration of Superhuman Criminals. If you’ve got a bunch of super-villains locked up in the same place, you’re going to need some pretty tough prison guards to watch over them. That’s the idea, anyway.

In practice, The Guardsmen got the living bejeezus kicked out of them EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. They are the 2000 San Diego Chargers of the superhero world.

I don’t know what the problem is. Tony Stark designed the basic Guardsman suits, so you can’t blame the hardware. Guardsmen can fly, shoot repulsor rays, electro-shock the hell out of people, and can bench press 40 tons. On paper they seem like formidable opponents. But when push comes to shove, Guardsmen are just super-tough cannon fodder.

If memory serves, the Guardsmen first got their asses handed to them in one of the great Avengers Annuals of the Eighties. Hey, there’s no shame in getting beat up by The Avengers. But when you start getting knocked around by a couple of The New Warriors, you are doing something wrong.

Humiliating! Cock punched at super-sonic speeds by Nova! If some nineteen year old punk can cock punch trained professionals in powered armor, you need to go back to your playbook and re-think your strategy.

Plus, the Guardsmen were responsible for making sure that nobody escaped from The Vault. Unfortunately, EVERYBODY escaped from The Vault. It had all the structural integrity of a wet cardboard box. The powers that be in the Marvel Universe have since closed down the porous Vault in favor of more secure facilities like The Raft, the super-prison just offshore of New York City. Good call; nobody is going to be breaking out of The Raft anytime soon! Yessir, that place is as tight as a drum…

But for a while there, The Vault was the only option for supervillain incarceration. And every single time somebody busted out of there, Guardsmen got killed. Makes you wonder why anybody would willingly sign up to be a Guardsman.

Here are a few unlucky Guardsmen during one of the weekly prison breaks in the aptly named Avengers graphic novel Death Trap: The Vault:

These guys are displaying one of the three possible behavioral modes that all Guardsmen operate under:

1) Unwarranted smugness
2) Blithering panic
3) Agony

Venom, of course, totally kills those three poor bastards:

Wow, they are totally dead. As you can see, The Guardsmen are about as effective in combat as the Rocket Red Brigade.

The deal-breaker for me are those horrible outfits. Two-toned green bodysuits with bucket helmets and leg/arm bands? Lame. What tips the scales from average lameness into utter uncoolness is the Guardsman halter top. Look at them: they are grown men wearing green halter tops and briefs. Tony Stark may have designed the circutitry and weapons systems, but it looks like his flamboyant houseboy Francis designed the look of The Guardsmen. Who cares if you can lift a semi-truck over your head if you have to wear an outfit like that? I mean, damn.

I guess when comparing the Rocket Reds to The Guardsmen, it all comes down to armor design. Both groups are equally ineffective as fighting units, so I have to make my choice based solely on shallow aesthetic bias. Based on that, I have to go with The Rocket Red Brigade over The Guardsmen.

WINNER: ROCKET RED BRIGADE!