Friday Night Fights - A Guy can't catch a break

Guy Gardner, the "one true Green Lantern," makes the mistake of coming between an Element Man and his cub, and earns himself a 24-carat electroplated beatdown.
(from Justice League Europe #11, February 1990; by Giffen, Loebs, and Sears)
I have mixed feelings about the story arc in which this sequence appeared, as I do about most attempts to integrate Metamorpho and his supporting cast into the DC Universe proper. The original 60's stories bordered on outright parodies of the superhero genre, and few writers apart from creator Bob Haney have been able to capture the necessarily zany tone in regard to the character. The JLE two-parter, while enjoyable on a certain level, was positively grim, and featured creepy relationship issues, a tragically mutated child, and arms melting off.

It does prove that:

1. The Giffen Era Justice League was not a period of unbroken levity, as some fans misremember it as being.

2. The "dark" streak in DC's superheroic fare is not a new phenomenon that sprung fully formed from the collective mind of its current roster of creators.

There's a Year One miniseries slated for Metamorpho in the near future, but neither the creators involved nor the advance solicit ad copy for the series (which screams "unnecessary revision with nods to contemporary trends") fill me with confidence as to its potential quality.

(Bahlactus knows all, sees all.)