Alpha Flight #1 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
ALPHA FLIGHT vol 5 #1
Writer: Ed Brisson
Artist: Scott Godliewski
Colour artist: Matt Milla
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Mark Basso
ALPHA FLIGHT. Canada’s government-sponsored superhero team – an X-Men spin-off in the sense that they debuted in X-Men but not normally viewed as X-characters. I wouldn’t normally do Alpha Flight, and I might not do the whole of this run, but it is coming from the X-office, and it is a “Fall of X” tie-in, so let’s at least do the first issue.
COVER / PAGE 1. The official Alpha Flight team in the foreground, with the rest of the cast looming in the background, foreshadowing the twist. The logo is the one used on Alpha Flight vol 1 #1-17, though with the addition of a distressed background to fit the Fall of X theming.
PAGE 2. John Romita tribute.
PAGES 3-4. Alpha Flight go into action.
The official Alpha Flight team seen here are all classic Alpha Flight members. Alpha Flight really haven’t done much in recent years, with the name being reassigned to the orbiting space station programme led by Carol Danvers. As best as I can tell, the last time we saw a regular old Alpha Flight team may have been Old Man Logan #47 (2018), which did indeed feature this line-up.
Guardian was last seen in S.W.O.R.D., where he briefly joined Orchis because of his concerns about the mutants seizing Mars, and because he thought it was a more legitimate outfit than it was. Obviously, that’s part of the angle for why he might be taking the anti-mutant line here. Puck was also working for Gyrich as part of Gamma Flight in Immortal Hulk, though they walked out on Gyrich during the storyline. Snowbird and Shaman haven’t done much of note in quite a while, although Shaman has shown up in minor instructor roles in Strange Academy – along with virtually every prominent magical hero in the Marvel Universe, even Magik.
The dialogue here is, obviously, designed to be read in a different light once you reach the twist – particularly Guardian’s direction to “put on a show.”
The guy they’re about to fight seems to be Janus of the Derangers, who died in Alpha Flight #53-54. But his origin story is consistent with him being a mutant, so perhaps he was resurrected.
PAGES 5-6. Alpha Flight attend a press conference.
Erika Doiron is a new character. Honestly, “the Canadian government is infiltrated by fascists” seems like it’s the plot of an awful lot of Alpha Flight stories, rather more than Canada might seem to warrant.
The sign reading “True North Strong and Free” is quoting from the Canadian national anthem.
PAGE 7. Recap and credits.
“On guard for thee” is another line from the Canadian national anthem. (It was also the name of a documentary series about the Canadian security services.)
PAGES 8-10. Alpha Flight meet Roger Bochs Jr.
The Canadians are apparently relying on their own homegrown Sentinels, with the support of Orchis. These ones are based on Box from the original Alpha Flight. Instead of the original Box, we have his son Roger Bochs Jr, who is in fact a pre-existing character – he appeared as a student of the Braddock Academy in the miniseries Infinity: The Hunt. He’s basically a younger version of his father, with the same congenital condition regarding his legs and the same robotic talent.
Roger sarcastically says that he hasn’t met Guardian since his father’s funeral. However, that can’t be right, because Guardian was dead between Alpha Flight #10 and #88, and Box died in issue #49. Perhaps Roger just assumes that he must have been there and has better things to do than keep track of Guardian’s status quo.
Roger Bochs Jr is clearly wildly anti-mutant, which is odd for a Braddock Academy student, but he also seems to be trying to build something saner and less destructive than the Stark Sentinels. (Is it possible he’s putting it on for Doiron’s benefit?)
PAGE 11. Data page on Roger Bochs Jr. The art of his father is by John Byrne, and it’s reprinted from Alpha Flight #16.
PAGES 12-14. “Lucas Peterson” is exposed as a mutant.
This guy is identified later as Feedback, who debuted in Alpha Flight #118 and was briefly a member of Beta Flight in the dying days of the original series. More of that later.
PAGES 15-19. Alpha Flight fail to capture Argent.
Argent is a new character; the only previous Argent in the Marvel Universe was one of the Clan Destine.
He gets rescued – and Alpha Flight are publicly defeated – by Daken (still going by Fang as per Marauders), Northstar and someone claiming to be Nemesis.
Three characters have used this name and costume before. The first and third versions are both dead, but the second Nemesis, Jane Thorne, seems to be available. She led a government-sponsored Gamma Flight that was meant to be Alpha Flight’s replacement. She was still around at the end of the first Alpha Flight series and doesn’t appear to have been seen since.
Nemesis is not a teleporter, which begs the question of who’s actually in the costume here. It’s apparently not Magik, who’s in the cast of Realm of X (and that book doesn’t take place on Earth).
Again, the last two lines of dialogue in this scene read differently in light of the twist – this whole fight is a set-up and Alpha Flight want to look bad.
PAGES 20-22. Feedback tells his wife that he’s a mutant.
According to Feedback, he’s a mutant who hasn’t used his powers in years, and has been living an ordinary life in California. Unfortunately, this flatly contradicts Marauders #11 (2023), where he was a prisoner being used to power the nation of Santo Marco, and died. Even allowing for the fact that he could have been resurrected, that story doesn’t square with his claim to have been living peacefully in California for years, particularly when his wife and child would presumably have noticed him being kidnapped for any extended period.
The wife and child are new characters.
PAGE 23. Data page on Feedback.
PAGE 24. Doiron yells at Alpha Flight.
Obviously, the point here is that Alpha Flight are going to get saddled with the Box Sentinels, which won’t want to throw the fight.
PAGES 25-26. Krakoa North is introduced.
This is not a true outpost of Krakoa, but a refuge for the mutants that are being rescued in Canada. The plan, apparently, is to take all of these mutants to the Shi’ar empire, which seems a bit drastic. At any rate, the official Alpha Flight team are in on the whole scheme.
PAGE 27. Trailers. The Krakoan just reads DIVIDED WE STAND PART TWO.
“We Stand On Guard” was also title of BKV’s Image book about a future war between the US and Canada.
Minor correction: Puck was working under Gyrich in Immortal Hulk, not Immortal X-Men.
Thanks, I’ve fixed that.
Very “original X-Factor” setup, which seems fine as a starting point even if it’s not going to set the world on fire.
I’m glad Brisson is pulling from established Alpha Flight history. It would be nice if he could build a rich enough world that AF could inhabit it on a semi-regular basis instead of restarting with a new status quo every few years.
I have to agree that “rebelling from the fascist Canadian government” is a tired AF trope at this point. It probably stems from a lack of thematically resonant AF villains. They certainly have a full gallery of weird and varied recurring villains, but no one who really stands out as the anti-AF. Maybe Omega Flight? The Great Beasts? But standing up to the latest government liaison is incredibly boring.
Re: Bochs’s motivation for hating mutants- his father was murdered by a mutant, Scramble- Madison Jeffries’s brother. And Scramble had gained Alpha Flight’s and the world’s trust by running a clinic where he used his powers to help people- and gained Bochs’s Sr.’s trust by curing him of the bends and promising him new legs. No wonder he was susceptible to Orchis’s propaganda about mutants promising miracle drugs and poisoning them.
Nice job Pietro sending the mutants in danger in Uncanny Avengers 1 to Canada.
Thom H. said: I have to agree that “rebelling from the fascist Canadian government” is a tired AF trope at this point. It probably stems from a lack of thematically resonant AF villains. They certainly have a full gallery of weird and varied recurring villains, but no one who really stands out as the anti-AF. Maybe Omega Flight? The Great Beasts? But standing up to the latest government liaison is incredibly boring.
There’s the Master of the World, probably their single most recurring, mostly widely used villain. He’d actually be interesting as an Orchis affiliate: a primordial human-turned-posthuman vs. the mutant singularity future.
But Alpha Flight under its first two regular writers, Byrne and Mantlo, always struck me as a horror book disguised as a superhero book.
As a consequence, they didn’t have recurring villains so much as the members tended to tangle with some sort of creepy or body horror threat, and someone on the team suffered death, emotional damage, or body horror as a result.
More broadly, they weren’t really written as a team until Mantlo came along. They were more of a loosely affiliated set of people who encountered things mostly on their own and gathered only when a really big threat came along.
They had a few arc villains — Delphine Courtney and the Great Beasts under Byrne, Scramble and the Dreamqueen under Mantlo, and Llan the Sorcerer under Hudnall — but most of their foes were more like one-off horrible things they had to deal with that left them with scars.
The other memorable villain from the early era is Pink Pearl. Is she a viable villain in 2023? Not sure when she was last used.
I loved the original Gamma Flight
Yes. It’s nice to see someone else who appreciates the direction of Mantlo’s run on Alpha Flight. Most people say they dislike the title after Byrne left, but I continued to greatly enjoy the book until after Mantlo left. Mantlo’s run on AF was very weird and disturbing, featuring body horror and explorations of gender. It was quite an unique comic for Marvel at the time.
As a Canadian, this definitely read like a riff on Canada’s role in the Underground Railroad – officially aligned with US policy, most government officials being 100% on board with it, but some people on the ground secretly smuggling people to freedom/safety.
It does strike me that, as always in Alpha Flight stories, the Canadian federal government is far more powerful and unchallenged than it is in real life. Especially given that the two most prominent ex-Alpha Flight mutants, Northstar and Aurora, are from Quebec. Would the Quebec government side with Ottawa on the mutant issue?
Was Northstar tied to the Separatists early on? Maybe in the issue with the aforementioned Pink Pearl?
Imagine if 616 Canada was actually run by Doug Ford? Then you could understand AF fighting against them.
I believe it was Marvel Fanfare #28, written by Bill Mantlo, which first revealed that Northstar was involved with the Separatists. I don’t remember if it was ever mentioned by Byrne, maybe it was, but that story is where the issue was most directly addressed. An ex-general involved with the Canadian military at the time when the war measures act was declared by the federal government is hunting down Northstar’s old comrades.
Byrne sets up the Marvel Fanfare story in Alpha Flight #22 (the one with the Pink Pearl) and follows up on it later, but Mantlo’s the one who ties Northstar to the FLQ specifically. Pretty early.
It’s a very odd story, though. Northstar is unrepentant in his separatist views throughout, and only rejects the FLQ’s use of violence. But the FLQ was a real terrorist organization whose actions triggered the only peacetime use of the War Measures Act, which was more or less invoking martial law. It’s probably the most consequential terrorist organization in Canadian history and Northstar being a member is largely breezed over.
The Byrne run was classic, and he really maintained the concept of Alpha Flight as a team which simply didn’t like each other or want to be a team. Solo or small group adventures most of the time, a big get-together once a year, and otherwise, they lacked direction and cohesion. (Partly because Northstar, Aurora, and Sasquatch were an extremely dysfunctional trio, and partly because half the time, someone was missing and/or dead…)
Mantlo kept the weirdness and ramped up the dysfunction, but also forced them to act as more of a team.
After Mantlo left, things got, for the most part, pretty dreadful. (The final years, as it hit the ’90s, were not kind in my opinion…)
And of course subsequent attempts to relaunch the team have been quite mixed indeed. I feel like most Alpha Flight fans only exist because they remember the Byrne and Mantlo years.
The Janus appearance is -definitely- a deep cut, and it’s bizarre to think that Krakoa brought him back, given the kind of backlog they were operating with.
I am relieved that Alpha Flight’s not -totally- pawns of the establishment this time, even though we all know Guardian’s a bit of a tool. I’ve seen speculation that Nemesis might be Heather in disguise, which might be an interesting twist.
The war measures act was also very controversially declared by Justin Trudeau during the truckers convoy blockade in early-2022.
Alpha Flight has the recurring thing about conflict with the government, and so did 90s X-Factor and I think every other team connected with the US government (or such team was themselves a bunch of villains). With the possible exception of the UN-sponsored Avengers era it’s a pretty consistent trope. It would be interesting see a series where the government oversight was in good faith and understood to have democratic value, within the context of an ongoing shared superhero universe.
“I have to agree that ‘rebelling from the fascist Canadian government’ is a tired AF trope at this point.”
It is the oddest thing that Wolverine’s evolving backstory (which includes Alpha Flight) has basically meant that the Canadian government is responsible for decades of clandestine assassinations and torturous human experimentation. They always seemed so polite!
“It would be interesting see a series where the government oversight was in good faith and understood to have democratic value, within the context of an ongoing shared superhero universe.“
This was Jim Shooter’s intention in introducing Gyrich, to be the guy who butted heads with the team not out of antagonism but differing-yet-legitimate priorities (i.e., “the worst person you know just made an excellent point”), but everyone reading this site knows where that eventually ended up.
If I recall correctly, during the Project Wideawake storyline, Gyrich was opposed and Val Cooper was in favor!
In hindsight, was AF,s bickering meant to be a metaphor about the provinces not getting along? Wasn’t part of the gimmick supposed to be each person/duo represented one of them, since a lot of them are pretty stereotypical?
Well, based on Grant Morrison it was the US government funding the Weapon Plus project under the auspices of the CIA who were responsible for the Weapon X program. They just outsourced the experiments to a joint operation on Canadian soil with Department K. The director of the Weapon X program, Professor Thorton, was working under the cover of the US Dept. of Agriculture.
Of course (also per Morrison), the entire enterprise was a conspiracy being controlled by Sublime. Sublime had been working behind the scenes controlling Weapon Plus since its inception as Weapon I, which was the super-soldier serum leading to the creation of Captain America.
I’d say the Canadian government was a very junior partner in the experiments, although it wax Department K which created Deadpool after Weapon X split off from Department K.
Mark-Byrne said he wanted Alpha Flight to represent the different cultures representing Canada.
The Hudsons as educated, urban scientists from Ontario.
Aurora and Northstar from Quebec.
Puck a hoser from Alberta.
Sasquatch a nature oriented guy/being from British Columbia.
Shaman as a representative of Indigenous people. I’m pretty sure he was also from Alberta though.
Snowbird as a representative of the Inuit people.
There aren’t any representative of the Maritime provinces. Byrne needed an overly polite Newfie member. I’m not sure it was supposed to be representative specifically of the provinces, but just a mosaic of stereotypical Canadian identities.
Chris –
You’re forgetting Marinna, who was indeed the “representative” from Newfoundland…
You’re right: Shaman was from Calgary, Alberta.
The team really was constructed with some pretty broad archetypes and stereotypes in mind. Kind of like if the Avengers had members from New England, the South, the Midwest, California, the Southwest (the obligatory Indigenous character) the Northwest, and Alaska. 🙂
Puck’s from Saskatchewan. Shaman is indeed from Alberta, as is Talisman. Marrina’s an alien but raised in the Maritimes, so she’s the rep there. I think there’s something to Mark Coale’s point that AF never getting along was a metaphor but can’t find a quote to substantiate it. Anyone got anything?
@ Chris V: Pedantic point: Justin Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act, the replacement for the War Measures Act passed in 1988, to clear the convoys. I’d argue they’re notably different, but I think the point remains that FLQ is a weirdly specific and extreme bit for Northstar’s backstory.
(I’m from downtown Ottawa, so I lived through the convoy. It was… bad.)
@Joe I
Jim Shooter wanting to do a story where the asshole authority figure the heroes hated for bossing them around turned out to be right in the end? You don’t say.
@Chris V- it was Larry Hama who established Weapon X was a CIA operation in Canada in Wolverine 50.
@Allan M- wasn’t the FLQ Communist or at least extremely left-wing? I never thought of Northstar as an extreme left-winger.
Wasn’t Peter David’s X-Factor a sympathetic and honest government/superhero initiative? I can’t recall any secret evil agendas. Maybe that came later, with other writers.
I also absolutely love the Mantlo era of Alpha Flight, and feel like I have to defend him whenever the history of the comic comes up 🙂
And I wish one day we could get a return of the more settled era from the early nineties (full government support for Alpha Flight and the government AREN’T evil!) rather than this kind of thing…
Poor Feedback – you wait 29 years for so much as a mention in comics, and then two mutually exclusive ones come along, both at once!
The Feedback appearance in Marauders #11 didn’t fit at the time; Aurora’s dialogue implied that he joined Department H, and died, before she did. I can only presume that this was confused with St Elmo from the Alpha Flight Special oneshot, where Orlando also took Stitch from.
@Si: X-Factor was sympathetic, but the government was still shady (it was building another generation of Sentinels), which led to the team turning away from Val. Though that might have happened after David left the book.
Did nobody ever try to update Alpha Flight’s costumes in that Bryan Hitch/John Cassaday mold of detailing realistic fabrics and contours?
I don’t hate the costume designs themselves (the ones in the above cover there), but I feel like this image could’ve come straight out of the ’80s. We already have dozens of ’80s Alpha Flight comics. Give me something at least somewhat visually distinct.
@Phil – St Elmo would have made a lot more sense there. But hey, since we’re rolling with “Roger Box Junior”, maybe Al Louis had a previously unmentioned FATHER of the same name, who joined Department H in the early days, died, got a plaque on the wall and was generally forgotten by everyone!
Is Argent a renamed Silver from Alpha Flight #76? https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Jimon_Tang_(Earth-616)
If Alpha Flight is sending mutants off-planet, which is what Orchis wants, why hide it?
Alpha Flight has probably figured that Orchis isn’t trustworthy. Northstar and Aurora may have told them, for instance.
That creates the opportunity to take advantage of Orchis’ own efforts at presenting a respectable public front to diminish the damage they cause.
Orchis can’t muscle into Canada without causing diplomatic tension inconvenient to its plans. Someone – Canada’s own government, perhaps – decided to create the MU mutant version of the underground railroad, which takes advantage of Orchis’ own duplicity to present the superficial appearance of cooperation with Orchis in order to justify enough independence to allow more respect towards mutants, even if much of it is covert.
Far as either Alpha Flight or us readers know, the Shiar Empire is beyond Orchis’ manipulations and currently a safer haven than anything on Earth or Arakko. It is also a convenient place to organize a resistance and to avoid Orchis vigilance. It is possible that whatever Destiny planned with Manifold in the Rogue and Gambit book will factor into that plot point.
Far as mutant rights are concerned, that is a lot more attractive than being under Orchis’ oppressive watch on Earth (confused as their threat’s terms are) or on Arakko, where they have to deal with a civil war between Omega mutants and there is even less opportunity to contain Orchis.
I think that the plot is deliberately giving us uncertainty about the true goals and loyalties of people, even taking the revelation of the last page into account. For instance, we don’t know yet who exactly is into Alpha Flight’s secret. For all we know it may be the whole Canadian government. One hypothetical advantage of having their own homemade Sentinels, particularly when their own creation comes from Bosch Jr – a mutant himself if I am not mistaken – is that there is a lot more opportunity to make them easier to defeat or even deactivate outright when the time comes. Even before that, Canada can simply manage them in more diplomatic, less destructive ways. There is also an element of soft power involved. Orchis can only do so much before it becomes too evident that Canada, right there up north from the USA, simply isn’t finding any need to be so forceful. By simply being openly less vindictive Canada becomes attractive as a potential haven for the mutants still openly in the USA.
This is a true diplomatic dilemma that Orchis can’t remove until and unless they infiltrate Canada to a significant extent. Both acceptance and open conflict go against Orchis’ true ultimate goals, albeit in different ways.
For the time being, open conflict with Canada is particularly inconvenient for Orchis, since it would divert their attention and resources from dealing with the current abundance of rebel groups of some sort or another while also creating a very public reason to question their facade. Their best course of action is to play along and wait for a more convenient time to make questions about what is happening to all those mutants who have crossed the border North or were captured by Alpha Flight.
Meanwhile, logically Orchis will also be attempting to covertly infiltrate the relevant Canadian groups. It is reasonable to expect that there will be at least one mole of some sort in or around Alpha Flight if Orchis finds the means to put one there. Alpha may even have prepared some convenient candidate as bait to work as a double agent and give them better info on Orchis’ goals and priorities. Perhaps whoever is the current Nemesis. Perhaps Bosch Jr or Erika Doiron.
This setup allows for some interesting situations that approach the complexities of real world politics and diplomacy. Who knows if this book (and others) will take advantage of that opportunity? Not me.
@neutrino- According to Al Ewing, Orchis has plans to take over Mars and that’s why they have no problems with the mutants by sent there.
https://www.cbr.com/xmen-red-genesis-war-al-ewing-interview/
We saw in this week’s Dark X-Men that they want the Limbo Embassy gone as well. Presumably Orchis doesn’t have any way to conquer Limbo or Chandilar so they don’t want the mutants sent there where they can form an army and try to return home. (Remember, Stasis just needs the mutants out of the way long enough to become a Dominion but the other members of Orchis don’t know that.)
@Zoomy and Phil- the problem was St. Elmo wasn’t a mutant- his powers were magical in nature so you’d expect Dr. Strange to rescue him and not the Marauders.
And we’ve seen screwups like this before when writers try to resolve a plot point or bring back an obscure character.For example. the Eye Killers from Dr. Strange 38 who killed Sara Wolfe’s friend- Claremont suggested in Uncanny X-Men 222 they were working for the Adversary but an earlier Dr. Strange story suggested they were working for Dracula. And then there was a Black Goliath story where a mysterious individual hired Warhawk to kill the Atom- Smasher-when writers tried to resolve it years later, one story suggested it was a guy who worked at Cross Technological, another suggested it was the Atom-Smasher’s brother. (Maybe Warhawk was double billing for the same hit?)
@Luis Dantas- as I understand it, Bochs Jr isn’t a mutant.
My mistake.
Nice to see so much love for the Alpha Flight here. It warms this old man’s heart.
“There’s the Master of the World, probably their single most recurring, most widely used villain.”
True. He always struck me as generically evil, though, right down to his name. Nothing particularly Canadian or, frankly, interesting about him aside from his role in Marrina’s origin story. And the setting of his evil lair, I suppose.
“But Alpha Flight under its first two regular writers, Byrne and Mantlo, always struck me as a horror book disguised as a superhero book.”
I love this take. And a good writer could probably fit that sensibility into a series with a slightly revamped set of Great Beasts and Inuit gods. That would pull in Sasquatch, Snowbird, and Shaman in terms of backstory and theme. The Master of the World (Gilded Lily? Courtney Delphine?) could be conscripted to build the Beasts new bodies…
“More broadly, they weren’t really written as a team until Mantlo came along.”
I loved that about Byrne’s AF. The solo and duo adventures fleshed out the characters a little bit since they were mostly single-line concepts before they got their own book.
But the Byrne and Mantlo runs set up this weird dynamic for modern fandom. How do you tell classic AF stories without constantly killing and maiming the lead characters?
As it stands, most of the original AF members have had entire swaths of their histories waved away in order to use them as viable characters again. Mike Carey had the Children of the Vault simply “fix” everything wrong with Northstar and Aurora in a throwaway line during his X-run, for example.
There are lots of things about the original AF I’d like to see return, but killing off or radically altering team members on a regular basis is not one of them. It makes the characters seem disposable, even though there’s clearly interest in using them in their original forms from both writers and (at least some) fans.
And honestly, I think that trend started mostly because Byrne had no idea what to do with the team when he started writing the book. His approach — and Mantlo’s follow up — made for some interesting stories, but isn’t sustainable over the long-term. Not if you want to tell more stories with these characters.
When I started reading AF, I’d not start watching Doctor Who yet, so I didn’t know the whole thing about The Master and Master of the World.
Byrne killing off Mac was also a shocking plot point as a kid before that kind of thing became a staple of comics.
Mark Coale said: When I started reading AF, I’d not start watching Doctor Who yet, so I didn’t know the whole thing about The Master and Master of the World.
He’s rather odd, really: the Roger Delgado/Anthony Ainsley version of the Master from Doctor Who crossed with the DC villain Vandal Savage.
Thom H. said: True. He always struck me as generically evil, though, right down to his name. Nothing particularly Canadian or, frankly, interesting about him aside from his role in Marrina’s origin story. And the setting of his evil lair, I suppose.
He kind of has a gimmick of using creepy biologically-based technology based on aliens, but it’s never been used consistently enough to make him stand out from every other would-be-conqueror.
@Si, Krzysiek Ceran: Howard Mackie’s run leaned more into the shady government dealings and darker tone, but gun to head I could not tell you all the specifics cause that run was so horrible.
—
I enjoyed this (I’ll take as many Northstar crumbles as I can get and I hope to see Talisman again) but at the same time, even if stuff like this and Dark X-men are fairly enjoyable they’re not justifying themselves as adding enough to the current status quo.
Like, if we were still exploring Krakoa a ower stakes book could still see some value in worldbuilding, but right now we’re in a “mutant striking back” familiar that these books goals start feeling a bit too similar.
@Omar Karindu- Weirdly, Byrne claims that he didn’t know about Vandal Savage until after he created the Master. (Savage was a minor DC villain with only 11 appearances when the Master was introduced, so I guess it’s possible.)
That’s a weird Vandal Savage stat. I guess maybe only a couple appearances in GL/All American and then All Star, then Silver Age Flash one or two times maybe.
I can believe that. Vandal Savage was a bit obscure before Mike Baron used him in the very first few issues of Wally West’s Flash book.
@ Michael Yep, the FLQ were also socialists. Which has not come up in subsequent Northstar stories that I recall.
More broadly, Paul once remarked that Alpha Flight is basically the Avengers in Canada and maybe don’t revive Alpha Flight if you don’t have something to say about Canada. Brisson’s set the table to do so. This echoes real Canadian history. Interested to see where he goes with this.
“Argent” would have made a good new name for Silver , tingi with “Auric” (if “Gold” sounded to the writers to be too stupid as a codename , then so should “Silver”, but what really sounded stupid was “Auric and Silver” , which sounds try-hard edgelord, instead of “Gold and Silver”, or “Argent and Auric”) . That said , this Argent is apparently a White male , while the original Silver was clearly a Chinese female, who anyway died and was resurrected as a non-humanoid gestalt entity fused with her brother (as is more often than not the case with fictional Heterosexual Boy-Girl Twins they always gave me twincestuous vibes) and an unrelated elderly scientist , which then departed Earth to go wandering the rest of the universe LOL
Master of the World has the most crossover appeal of AF villains A couple of Avengers appearance mainly.
Other then that I think the Great Beasts might have been in Champions.
The Purple Man’s Daughter was in Omega Flight but he is a DD foe.
@Chris V: the War Measures Act hasn’t existed since the 80s; the law invoked during the ‘trucker’ ‘protest’ was the Emergencies Act, which replaced it.
@Luis Dantas: But Department H is aiming for a mutant free Canada, which would rule out it being a mutant safe haven. Affiliated with Orchis or not, they should be happy to have mutants sent off planet. Orchis is relying on their tainted drugs to prevent mutants from returning.
@Michael: Looking at the article, Ewing is saying that Orchis will target Mars because they consider it part of Earth’s sphere and they want to economically exploit it. Mutants removed to another galaxy should be a positive to them.
Things like the trucker protest should be addressed here. One bureaucrat justified seizing protestors’ bank accounts without a court order because “sometimes democracy is too slow”. Would the Emergencies Act be used against protestors against anti-mutant policies? But I get the feeling Brisson would have been on the government side.
Chris V/Allan M: Newfoundland isn’t in the Maritimes. It’s part of Atlantic Canada.
@ Matthew Correct, thank you. I had misremembered that Marrina was from New Brunswick, not Newfoundland.
Then potentially stupid question: What’s the difference between the Maritimes and Atlantic Canada?
Taibak: The Maritimes consists of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island (PEI). Atlantic Canada consists of those three provinces plus Newfoundland and Labrador (one province).
I believe this difference comes from when these provinces joined Canada. Nova Scotia and New Brunswick (1867) and PEI (1873) joined earlier than Newfoundland (1949). This means that there are certain legal/political definitions that require them to be kept separate. For example, the Canadian Senate is defined as having 24 senators from the Maritime division; when Newfoundland joined Canada the Senate was expanded and the province was given six senators that were not in any specific division.
Also, to bring this slightly back to the topic of Alpha Flight, Marrina’s last name (Smallwood) comes from Joey Smallwood, the politician who campaigned for Newfoundland to join Canada in 1949 and acted as Premier of the province from 1949 until 1972.
Canadian regional politics!