We Stand On Guard with Jay McKiernan
We’re back with another episode of Trade School! This time, we’re talking about We Stand on Guard! Our host this week is Jay McKiernan!
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Edited by Case Aiken
Scored by Bret Eagleston
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Outline
️ Introduction to Certain Point of View's Trade School Podcast and Host (00:00 - 00:30)
Overview of podcast's theme: spotlight on comic book trade paperbacks.
Host introduction: Jay McKiernan, also host of Long Live the Legion podcast.
Choice of We Stand On Guard (00:30 - 01:20)
Jay’s intention to cover a non-DC, more contemporary comic.
Book is 10 years old; appreciated as a shift from his usual subjects.
Story and Premise Overview of We Stand On Guard (01:20 - 04:07)
Setting: year 2124, future war between Canada and the United States.
Catalyst incident: Drone attack on White House killing President and cabinet.
Creative Team and Artistic Merit (04:07 - 06:56)
Writer: Brian K. Vaughan, acclaimed for series like Y: The Last Man, Runaways, Saga.
Artist: Steve Skroci, Canadian, known for work on Matrix and V for Vendetta, compared to Jeff Darrow and Moebius.
🇨🇦 Cultural Significance & Canadian Perspective (06:56 - 10:06)
Book features Canadian characters and setting, addressing the rarity of Canadian representation in comics.
Explores Canadian-American relationship – likened to a 'little brother' relationship with the U.S.
️ Themes and Final Recommendation (10:06 - 12:47)
Exploration of resistance against a more powerful foe.
Ethical and existential questions around sacrifice and truth.
Transcription
00:00
Welcome to Certain Point of View's Trade School, where each episode a different host talks about a comic book trade paperback that they loved and why they love it.
00:08
Welcome to the latest episode of trade school, certain POV's podcast all about trade paperbacks. And for today's episode, I'm going to take a look at one of my favorite trade paperbacks. It's called We Stand on Guard. It came out from Image Comics. The writer is Brian K. Vaughan, the artist Steve Scroci, and the colorist is Matt Hollingsworth. The series was Originally published in 2015, and the trade that I'm going to be working off of came out in 2017. Now, you may ask, who am I and why do you care about my opinion? Well, my name is Jay McKiernan and I'm the host of the Long Live the Legion podcast where myself and my co host Jim Fetters take a deep dive into the world of the Legion of Superheroes.
00:50
Now, when I was asked to pick a trade paperback and talk about it, my initial thought was, I talk about the Legion way too much, and I talk about DC Comics way too much. I wanted to pick something different. I also wanted to get out of the Silver Age or the Bronze Age and talk about a book that was a little bit more recently published. And in the case of We Stand on guard, it's now 10 years old, which I can't believe it's that old, but that's how time flies. And I wanted to pick something that didn't have any superheroes in it. I wanted to pick something a little bit different.
01:26
So let's give you a little bit of background of what is the story of We Stand On Guard, and then we'll talk about why I'm a fan of this, why you should give it a try, and we'll wrap that up with a nice bow by the end. So the premise of the book is that Canada and the United States have gone to war, and it's happened 100 years in the future. So this book is set in 2124, and what happened was there was a drone attack on the White House and it killed the president and it killed most of his cabinet. And all evidence pointed towards Canada being the attackers. So the United States retaliated.
02:03
And for anybody who knows anything about the Canadian military and the American military, let's be honest, the Canadian military really isn't strong enough to stand up to the US Military. We have amazingly well trained soldiers, but we don't have the armaments and we don't have the numbers, and we're not spending the kind of money that the United States is spending. And even if you extrapolate this 100 years into the future, that's still going to be true. So the Americans basically roll over Canada, take over, they occupy the country. So now we have this group of rebels, these guerrillas that are fighting out of the Northwest Territories, which is one of the very furthest north areas of Canada. And they're engaging in hit and run attacks and they're trying their best to destroy whatever military that they can.
02:51
But of course, they're dramatically outnumbered and out armed, and they're essentially fighting a losing battle. So the star of this book is a woman named Amber Roos. And we're first introduced to her in her family home in Ottawa when the United States first retaliates and they drop the bombs on Ottawa as revenge for the attack on the White House. So she watches her parents get killed and her brother try to escape. They flee across the country to try to get somewhere where the Americans can't reach them. She ends up in Yellowknife, which is a city and a very small city far up north. And she meets up with this resistance group called the 2 4. Now it's called the 2 4. For anybody who doesn't know Canadian slang, the 24 means a case of beer, because we have 24 bottles of beer.
03:41
So in Canada, we call that a 2 4. She's part of this group. She assists them, she joins them, and she ends up being part of this group that's fighting off this attack as the Americans are trying to get as much fresh water as they can, because Canada, again, for those of you who don't know, has more than half the fresh water lakes in the entire world. One of Canada's greatest resources is this fresh water. The Americans are trying to get it. Her group is trying to stop this. And what the book is really sort of focusing on is how do you fight back against a group when you know you're going to lose? How do you fight back against an army that is so much bigger, so much stronger, so much more powerful, that it's almost suicide just to begin?
04:30
And that's what this book is really dealing with. How do we deal with this battle? How do we get ready for it and get excited about it? So it's a really fascinating book for me, and when I first heard about this, I had to give it a try. And there's a couple of reasons why. And let's start with, you know, a Very simple one. The creative team, I mean, Brian K. Vaughan, the writer, has written some of my favorite books, why the Last man and his run on Runaways and Ex Machina and Saga. And he writes really good comics. And he writes really good comics about these sort of very difficult situations. And so I really was interested in that. And then artistically, Steve Skorsky is a Canadian.
05:12
And for those of you who don't know who he is, I think he first reached his acclaim working on the Matrix movies, but he's worked on almost every Wachowski Sisters movie from that to Vita for Vendetta. He was the storyboard artist. He's drawn some Wolverine comics. I'm a big fan of his because his style is so. I compare it to, like Jeff Darrow or Moebius. Very European, very technical, but just beautiful stuff. So I knew the artwork was going to look great. And Matt Hollingsworth is an amazingly good colorist. So even if the story maybe fell a little bit flat, which I will just tell you it does not, I knew the art was going to move me through this.
05:51
And the fact that it's got everything that leans into Scrosi's wheelhouse, big robots and sci fi and big action sequences, it makes a book beautiful. The other reason why I was so interested in this book and why I really wanted to check it out is very simply because I'm Canadian, and this is a book that takes place in Canada with Canadian characters. And as a Canadian, we don't see that very much. We see, you know, American TV shows and movies filmed in Canada, and we see my hometown, Vancouver, pretend to be almost every other city you can think of. And we see Canadian actors and actresses, I don't want to say pretending to be American but not wearing the maple leaf on their sleeves as much as you would like. So this was a nice. This was a nice change.
06:38
And I'm always one to support any comic books that are Canadian, whether it be Alpha Flight or Wolverine or Deadpool or even Scott Pilgrim, who I don't know if I'd call a hero, but at least the story takes place in Toronto, and it's obviously Toronto, so I. I will support that. So I was really fascinated in this. It kind of hit all of these things for me and. And the book really delivers. It's a really good study about the Canadian American relationship and also how Canadians view America to a certain degree. And I think the other reason why I wanted to pick this trade and really talk about it is I think it's really important, especially now in 2025, to look at how Canadians view America.
07:25
And I've always said as a comparison, I've always said Canada is like the little brother to the United States, where we know that if there's ever a fight, America's got our back. But at the same time, America could beat the crap out of us if they really wanted to. And in this book, we've kind of realizing, like, yes, they can beat the crap out of us. They. They're gonna win. And as much as Canadians like to brag about being one of the only two countries to beat the United States in a war, we like to claim the War of 1812, even though it wasn't a Canada, it was England. But we still like to brag about that. We like to brag about the fact that we originally lit the White House on fire.
08:11
But we know in our heart of hearts, like, we're not gonna win this. So how do we handle this? How do we handle living beside somebody who has always been our friend and has always been our ally and who we are so close to culturally that there's a bunch of people who automatically assumed I'm Canadian and automatically assumed most people I know are Canadian or automatically assumed I'm American. Sorry. Because there is so little difference. I mean, if I was to start listing off famous Canadians who I think most Americans don't know are Canadian, you'd be surprised. And I think it's the same with a lot of creative talent. I mean, the fact that Superman is co created by a Canadian and we like to brag about that, shows that we're kind of part of the culture of America as well.
09:04
And in this series, I think Vaughn did a really good job of getting to the heart of a lot of, I'll say, Canadian fears or concerns. And I think one of it is what happens if an invasion happens, how would we fight back? But I think the whole focus, and I mentioned this earlier on the Fresh Water, this is actually been a serious conversation in Canada. Like, what would we do if America just decided, we want your resources, right? We want to take over. We want. I mean, I hate to use this phrase, we want you to be our. The 51st state. And when I first read this book back probably in 2017, 2018, it was an interesting thought experiment.
09:47
And unfortunately, in 2025, it's becoming less of a thought experiment, which is the other reason why I would recommend this book to all the readers to get a sense of this, of what is this fear or how do we view America. One fascinating thing in 2025, when there first started being all this talk of the 51st state, this book sold more copies in a month than it had sold in the previous year as people started to realize maybe this relationship isn't as good as we think it is. So look, on a very surface level, high level, this is a really great action book about giant robots and people fighting back and guerrilla warfare and what is the nature of reality? A big question of the book is what do we present as true, which is also really effective today.
10:43
But at the second one, it's the second level. I think this book is really about what happens when you go up against an undefeatable foe. How do you fight back? Right. What are you willing to give up? What are you willing to sacrifice? And I think that's where this book really shines and really gets into it. So, again, I can't recommend this enough. I think it's definitely worth checking out. It's definitely worth reading. And I said this with full Canadian bias on display. And I love the fact that Vaughan actually got the French translated into Quebecois French. So French from Quebec, not Parisian French, because those are actually very different. So he's actually put that much focus and that much effort. And as a Canadian, I really appreciate that. There's a lot of.
11:33
There's a lot of books starring Canadians where you can tell the writer isn't Canadian and doesn't quite get it. He did a really good job of getting it. So I would just recommend this book. Give it a check out. I think you'll really enjoy it. And even if you're just on a very, you just want to see big robots shoot stuff and people get blown up. You're really going to enjoy this book. So thank you very much for listening. Again, we stand on guard. Highly recommended. My name is Jay McKiernan, so check out the Long and Live the Legion podcast and happy reading.
12:12
Hey, Jay.
12:12
Hey, Jim.
12:14
You're a fan of the Legion of Superheroes, right?
12:16
Yeah, I've been reading their adventures for decades.
12:19
Me too. It was tough at first with all the characters, but now I think I'm an expert.
12:22
It's not too hard to get into the Legion. And to make it even easier, we have a podcast called Long Live the Legion. We talk about different aspects of all its history to help you out.
12:32
So whether you're a new reader in the Legion Academy or. Or have your own flight ring or anywhere in between along live, the Legion podcast should be on your playlist. CPOV certainpov.com.