We Stand On Guard Borders on Greatness

Being Canadian, the premise of Brian K. Vaughan and Steve Skroce’s collaboration for Image Comics, We Stand On Guard, piqued my interest. We have an American writer (Vaughan) and Canadian artist (Skroce) teaming to tell a futuristic tale set north of the 49th Parallel.

Our story starts in 2112, with the White House ablaze. Shortly thereafter, our nation’s capital of Ottawa is bombed back to the stone age by the Americans in retaliation for the attack on Washington. A pair of siblings, Tommy and Amber, survive the attack while their parents do not. Flash forward 12 years, and Amber, now 18, is alone in the Canadian wilderness. She runs into a rag tag band of Canadian freedom fighters, and her story takes off from there.

Before the issue concludes, we find out that Amber is no mere snow princess. The girl is as tough as vulcanized rubber and as mean as voracious as a wolverine. In just one 40 page issue, she’s become one of my favourite new characters of the year.

There are many references to Canadiana in the first issue, from one of our leading retailers to homegrown superhero Superman to one of our national TV broadcasters. All those references showed me that Vaughan did a ton (or is that tonne?) of research for this book. As great as Vaughan’s story was, the real star of the book for me was the art. Skroce’s pencils and Matt Hollingsworth’s colours paired perfectly, like fries, gravy and cheese curds (yes, we eat that here).

The Can-Am dream team of Vaughan and Skroce delivered a fantastic first issue in this six-issue series, and I expect more of the same going forward. I give issue one of We Stand On Guard four maple leaves out of five.