The Global Guardians are a spinoff of the Super Friends, as it happens.
How they came about is that back in the day, there was a Super Friends comic book that tied into the cartoon show. Since it was aimed at a more literate audience than the TV version, it was actually pretty good. At one point there's a global threat requiring the Super Friends to split up, but to bolster their numbers, they teamed with a never before mentioned international superteam, the Global Guardians.
They popped up a couple of times more in Super Friends, then Post-Crisis On Infinite Earths, the team was brought into the main DC Universe. Green Flame and Icemaiden were co-opted for the Justice League under the names Fire and Ice, and the rest of the team made appearances various places, mostly to be Worfed.
Eventually, most of the team was killed or heel turned, only to be reformed two or three times. Last few years, it's pretty much been ignored.
Actually, the Global Guardians didn't form a team until they guest-starred (with Superman) in an issue of DC Comics Presents; this was also their first canonical appearance in the DC Universe.
Oh, and Green Flame was originally Furia Verde (Green Fury), the embodiment of the Amazon Jungle, and had more powers than just the facsimile Human Torch she was made into years later. But all that was Pre Crisis.
Some of the heroes, like the Israeli Seraph and the Irish Jack O' Lantern, even had their own backup series in the Super Friends comic. Several of them (not just Fire and Ice) were co-opted by JLI (in fact basically they broke up the Guardians to form the JLI, a kind of dick move on DC's part, instead of just giving them their own title. The implicit message: our American heroes are more important than the rest of the world's.) Dr. Mist and Jack o' Lantern did star in the (short lived) Primal Force series.
These characters always had great potential. I hope the new JLI will use them well.
edited 7th Oct '11 9:13:03 AM by Sijo
Let's start a petition on Petition Online to prove DC that they should either try the Global Guardians out in their own ongoing, of featue them in DC Universe Presents !
Jeremy Aron Patterson.
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I think it was less of a "our heroes are more important than the rest of the world's" move so much as a "let's put the focus on characters our main audience is likely to be familiar with rather than some seriously obscure ones." And let's be accurate here; the Global Guardians aren't international heroes, they're characters created by Americans to represent other nations and cultures.
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The message the audience gets is the same: a team with several American heroes but only a few foreign ones. Plus if some need to be sacrificed for a story eg. killed to show how badass a villain is, guess which ones it will be?
And honestly, I found The Guardians a LOT more interesting than say, Guy Gardner.
edited 15th Oct '11 6:21:51 PM by Sijo
Yeah, but the British member deserves to be hung drawn and quartered for so far being useless- we once ruled a third of the world and have over 2000 years of rich history and mythology, but our dc comic representative has PREHENSILE HAIR and has decided to be the teams LOAD! Where's the justice in that?
As for global guardians, meh, I suppose it would be okay, but we have JLI, whose first issue promised to add more superheroes as time went on.
Dont get me started on the UK. If you're having this debate being motivated by Nationalism you have no place here. Take that to OTT.
Let's make a TCG!I think when the Guardians were invented they wanted to avoid the cliche of having a Knight as the British hero (there were already several in comics eg. The Shining Knight). Also each was a counterpart to a Justice Leaguer (eg. Jack O' Lantern and Green Lantern) so maybe Godiva was Elongated Man's equivalent.
As for how she's now, I blame the same "heroines must be sexpots" attitude the New DC has been showing so far. XP
DC has a thread regarding the Global Guardians in the context of the D Cn U CHECK IT OUT NOW!
edited 22nd Oct '11 10:18:47 PM by jeremypatterson
I sent another letter to the editors of DC Universe Presents, telling them that I would love to see the Global Guardians to show up in that book!
Anybody agree with me?
Jeremy.
The problem is that as long as they publish Justice League International they won't let the Guardians get their own series, because they took over their niche. But they could at least spotlight some of the characters.
...I'm seriously considering on making a TV Tropes page for the team. Should I? Opinions welcome.
JM, if you check my Troper page you might see that I have a bit of experience making pages here.
The thing is, the Global Guardians never actually had their own series, so I'm not sure if it would be justified. (Then again, some villains have their own pages too.)
I've yet to see a work page cut, i assumed it would be good opt just sue those Villain pages as precedent.
Let's make a TCG!

I am a fairly annoyed comic book fan that was hoping to see the Global Guardians get a decent presence in the D Cn U. (They are the only DC property I support anymore since they screwed over the Mighty Crusaders. )
But when the books came out, all of them told us that the Global Guardians have NEVER EXISTED AT ALL in the context of the D Cn U!
The only way DC will make amends to that dismal situation is either to add a GLOBAL GUARDIANS ONGOING SERIES AS PART OF THE SECOND BIG D Cn U WAVE, or SPOTLIGHT THEM IN THE PAGES OF 'DC UNIVERSE PRESENTS'!
If they DO NOT do any of these two options, I will BOYCOTT DC FOR ALL ETERNITY!
You can help my ideals by SENDING DC LETTERS TELLING THEM THAT WE WANT THE GLOBAL GUARDIANS, as they are the BEST THERE IS, the BEST THERE WAS, and the BEST THERE EVER WILL BE!
Jeremy.