Guardian (Jim Harper)

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Guardian (James Jacob "Jim" Harper) is a comic book fictional character, a DC Comics superhero, created by Jack Kirby and Joe Simon. He first appeared in Star-Spangled Comics #7 (April 1942). Guardian resembles an earlier Kirby and Simon character Captain America (first published in March 1941 by Marvel Comics) in that he had no super powers and carried an indestructible shield.

Jim Harper is a police officer in Metropolis' Suicide Slum who became a vigilante to catch crooks that the law could not prosecute, describing himself as guarding society from criminals. He was trained to fighting condition by ex-boxer Joe Morgan (the same man who trained two other mystery men, Wildcat and the first Atom). He was aided by a group of boys known as the Newsboy Legion, to whom he was, literally, a guardian, having volunteered to take them in rather than allowing them to be sent to prison; he did so on the grounds that they were basically good kids who just needed a chance. The Legion grew up to become the heads of the Cadmus Project, subsequently saving Harper's life by transferring his mind from his old, dying body into a younger clone of himself.

It was later revealed that Jim Harper was the great-uncle of Roy Harper, who became Green Arrow's sidekick under the name of "Speedy"