Summary
- Stan Lee's collaboration with the National Hockey League on the Guardian Project was a strange and misguided venture.
- The low-quality Guardians failed to resonate with hockey or comic fans.
- The project was criticized for its unoriginal and lazy character designs that borrowed from existing Marvel heroes.
The start of the 2000s was an interesting time for Stan Lee. The godfather of Marvel had cemented his reputation as an immortal of the comic book medium with a legacy that, at the time, overshadowed that of the struggling company. As Marvel was nearly escaping bankruptcy at the end of the 90s, the creator of its greatest characters decided the time had come to branch out. Whether he was searching for greener pastures or just stretching his creative muscles, Lee took on several non-Marvel projects in the 2000s that ranged from campy to downright regrettable. But from this eclectic collection of strange tales, nothing was more bizarre than the Guardian Project, a superhero-focused collaboration with the National Hockey League.
Launched prior to the 2010-11 NHL season, the Guardian Project sought to capture an audience that never actually seemed to exist. Stan Lee created 30 superheroes based on the NHL’s then-active teams, with NBC Universal partnering to create comics and animated spin-offs for the new characters. Unfortunately, the low-quality Guardians failed to resonate with hockey or comic fans. They were an instant flop, and their early demise led to lawsuits, company closures and an everlasting point of mockery for a professional sports league. While the NHL is no stranger to PR failures or out-of-touch marketing gimmicks, the venture was an uncharacteristic miss for the eternally influential Stan Lee that stands as possibly the strangest work in his overall legacy.
Stan Lee and the NHL Were Perfectly Mismatched
Stan Lee’s work with Marvel Comics is legendary. As the co-creator of characters like Spider-Man, the Incredible Hulk, Black Panther, and the Avengers, his work shines as a beacon of ultimate success in the comics world. However, the light dulls slightly when considering the works Lee has produced outside his flagship company. He partnered with TV network Spike to launch the raunchy Striperella, which lasted for one season with its Lee-written tie-in comic going unreleased. The author’s Just Imagine… series saw Lee create strange new versions of DC’s most notable characters. In 2008, he even penned a political humor book titled Stan Lee Presents Election Daze: What Are They Really Saying? When it was announced in 2010 he would collaborate with the NHL, it hardly seemed out of place for the eclectic creative.
The Guardian Project, as it was known, was meant to create superheroes based on the NHL's 30 teams. While strange, it was hardly the league's most questionable venture. The modern NHL has frequently been criticized as being out-of-touch, both socially and commercially. While hockey has crossed over with comics before, the project seemed to aim for an audience that didn’t exist. The Guardian Project didn’t help create that niche, either. When the characters were revealed, they received instant derision and were quickly forgotten. Marvel’s proverbial godfather has created and appeared in countless fictional worlds, but the NHL may have been a bridge too far to cross. Lee himself may not have been immune from blame, though, as the Guardians were far from his most esteemed output.
Stan Lee’s Guardians Were Rip-offs at Best, Fodder at Worst
The Guardian Project was meant to create a new universe of exciting heroes that superhero fans and those loyal to the sport that inspired the characters could enjoy. Unfortunately, Lee and the project’s creative staff came up short on both the characters and the world they inhabited. The Guardians weren’t superheroes that existed organically in their own world, they were instead drawings from a 15-year-old boy brought to life to fight evil. Lee’s come up short before in his mostly stellar career, but the Saturday morning cartoon-styled simplicity of the Guardians was neither marvelous nor memorable. While the flimsy premise certainly didn’t help, it was the designs of the Guardians that were seen as truly unforgivable.
The NHL’s Guardians were a patchwork of half-baked ideas and recolors of existing Marvel heroes. The Pittsburgh Penguins’ hero, the Penguin, was Cyclops with Ice Man’s powers. The Coyote of the Phoenix Coyotes resembled Wolverine’s brown and gold suit a little too strongly, and Toronto’s Maple Leaf could politely be described as a buff Groot in a tight t-shirt. Most glaringly obvious is the Panther, who’s just Black Panther with a Florida Panthers logo on his chest. It didn’t help that these lifted characters were supported by less-than-stellar original ideas like the Canadien, a man wearing a suit of armor with Montreal Canadiens branding. Seen as cynical at best and lazy at worst, the Guardians were doomed from the beginning.
The Guardians Couldn’t Even Protect Their Creators
Beginning on January 1, 2011, the NHL began revealing one Guardian each day leading up to the league’s All-Star Game in Carolina. By the time that day came, however, there was little love left for the final reveal. The Guardians debuted in a poorly animated CGI short that saw instant criticism from fans and the media. Its flimsy premise was torn to shreds, and while Marvel’s seen its ideas stolen before, its own creator doing it so haphazardly was a point of universal derision. The Guardian Project crashed before even taking off, and future plans for comics, films and television series in collaboration with NBC Universal were quickly canceled.
Almost as ridiculous as the product itself was that its most notable impact wasn’t anything on the screen, but a half-million dollar lawsuit resulting from its failure. One year after the Guardian Project’s collapse, producer Aldo LaPietra convinced Filmula into investing in a future that didn’t exist, erroneously telling the company NBC Universal was still funding a $10 million animated film project. The resulting legal battle wouldn’t be settled until 2017, when a judge ordered LaPietra to return the funds provided by Filmula. It’s hardly the strangest, or largest lawsuit Stan Lee has ever been a part of, but it’s another detail that emphasizes the strange and tortured history of the misguided Guardians Project.
The legacy of Stan Lee includes beloved characters, beloved cameos and a trailblazing creative spirit in comics that may never be matched. His collaboration with the National Hockey League, however, embodied none of those positive and everlasting traits. While certainly not the most profane or outlandish work by Lee, the Guardian Project stands as one of the strangest opportunities the near-mythical man ever took on. Lee's activities outside of Marvel slowed down by start of the 2010s, and his final years saw him take on a role that made him almost exclusively synonymous with the Marvel brand. The NHL, for its part, has never tried anything as ambitious or strange as the Guardian Project, and likely will never do so again.