As the heroes come to terms with finding out that the people in their lives are Manhunter spies, the soon-to-be New Guardians learn about the universe and their new role in it. The series ends with the final showdown between the heroes and the Manhunters, and the New Guardians receiving their superhuman powers.
 

Review

FIRST OF ALL, I'M STARTING TO WONDER what makes Earth so flippin' special. I mean, of the billions of planets in the universe, isn't it strange how ours is always the one at the centre of all the huge cosmic events? And now, here we are, the one planet to give birth to the Guardians of the Universe's successors. And if they're the best the Guardians can come up with, then we're all in big trouble.

"Millennium: Yes, it certainly read like it. This was a long haul.... If you like to see dozens of DC heroes drawn by Joe Staton in every panel then this one is for you, but both Staton and Steve Englehart have seen better days." - The Slings and Arrows Comic Guide

The creators deserve credit for hauling an obscure group of villains out of mothballs and turning them into a believable threat, and the idea of placing Manhunter spies in the heroes' lives has a lot of potential. The Superman subplot, in particular, does a nice job of introducing the Manhunters' evil machinations into what we once assumed was Superman's innocent past.

But oh, if a more embarrassing superhero group than the New Guardians has ever made it to print, I don't want to know. Ordinary humans at first, the chosen ones are endowed with powers that are almost insulting in their racial connotations: the Australian aborigine becomes a mystical Earth spirit, the Japanese man becomes a living computer, the gay man becomes an outrageously dressed sorcerer, and so on. (Naturally, their sworn enemy is a South African white man who was once one of the chosen, but couldn't accept non-whites as his equals. Ah, villains were so easy to come by when apartheid and Communism still stalked the land.)

Staton's art is strictly functional, and the mystical mumbo-jumbo irritates after a while, but all that might have been forgiven if the end result made it all worthwhile. Sadly, it doesn't. The New Guardians is a painful exercise in political correctness, and after only 12 issues, DC cut its losses by dumping the New Guardians on a desert island with a bunch of misshapen freaks. If only we could do the same to their creators.