My favorite issue of my favorite comic by my favorite creator.

This was the moment where I woke up, where I had the 'talk' with myself about mortality.

I missed Mac like a brother.

Closure didn't come until Jeffries shows back up later on down the run.

I was 13.

JB, I was wondering how long in the series was it before you decided to kill Guardian?

I disagree with the notion that AF was doomed or creatively crippled or whatever simply because Guardian died.  There were still plenty of interesting characters and seeds of fascinating stories. 

HOWEVER, Guardian was undoubtedly a popular character, and fans were looking forward to seeing more of him.  Let's face it, his costume is GREAT.  You want to read more about him.  His death after only a year, and a year of mainly solo stories at that, was clearly disappointing.  A much better break would have been at #25 or #50 to give the fans a chance to enjoy Guardian in action.

However, JB has stated that he was quite bored with the characters and didn't know what to do with them.  Even if he agreed that it may have been better to delay the death, JB already knew he might not make it to #25 (which he actually did) or #50 (which he did not).

AF #12 was one of those iconic comics I missed by about a year before I started collecting comics.  This was one of the holy grails like FF #232, Thor #337, and ASM # 238.  Even though I knew what was coming, it was still painful.  In my opinion, this is the highlight of the series and an iconic issue of the genre.

This Box design and the one later are just great examples of the JB "graceful metal" figure.  Strength, speed, and agility showing through a character made of metal is classic Byrne.

Was there a reason for the pepto-pink color?  I don't care for it.

I heard nothing about this issue back in the day, but saw the HUGE stack of them at the comic shop.  It was probably my 2nd visit to a comic shop.  Picked it up because of the cool cover art, and thought Northstar or Snowbird were the "obvious" choices to be dispatched.  I guess they were two of my least favorite characters at that time.  Shocked the heck out of me that it was Guardian.