Blame Canada : more Alpha Flight Monday !

We will be continuing things from where we left off with the second part of issue 24 of ALPHA FLIGHT but as usual there are my useless musings about my life, comics and where both intersect. And since I have not written much about the creation of this team I should probably do so for all the people out there who only know the MCU and are wondering what the heck is an Alpha Flight ? And can I get frequent flyer miles with it ?

Now for that we have to go back, go back, go back to the beginning. We have to go back to the first appearance of a certain canadian superhero who is the best at what he does which happened long before he joined a certain group of mutants assembled from all over the world for a new beginning that should invigorate the book for decades to come and make it Marvel's greatest bestseller undergoing a let's call it a second genesis.

I am talking of course about Wolverine and the uncanny X - Men because when Logan joined the X - Men he had already appeared in another book but aside from that he didn't have much of a backstory, in fact he didn't even have the name Logan. So we have to go back even further, go back, go back, all the way to THE INCREDIBLE HULK and I won't say to which issue because until this day there are heated debates in which issue he made his first appearance. Let's just say that Wolverine's first bout on the scene was in issues 180 and 181 co - created by comicbook legends Len Wein and Herb Trimpe where he went up against none other than Hulk and the Wendigo in a triple threat free for all where he boldly stood his ground against those two main event creature feature heavyweights.

That was one hell of an introduction but as far as continuing with the Wolverine saga that was supposed to be it. There really were no plans to use him any further as he was only created to be a done in one foil for the Hulk. But then the second genesis of the X - Men happened in GIANT SIZED X - MEN 1 with artist Dave Cockrum - best known for his work on DC Comics LEGION OF SUPER - HEROES - and writer Len Wein who then remembered a certain canadian super hero from his INCREDIBLE HULK days and decided to add him to the international roster of this newest mutant team. On the ongoing X - MEN series Chris Claremont became the regular writer and since he was not that popular - at least back then - he thought about dropping Wolverine from the team roster but John Byrne who replaced Dave Cockrum as the ongoing penciler threatened to leave the book if he nixed the only canadian super hero on the team being canadian himself. Yes, with all the blame americans place at the feet of Canada they often forget that we have to thank them for such great comicbook creators like Hal Foster, Joe Shuster, Tom Grummett , Dale Eaglesham, Stuart Immonen ( the last four all worked on Superman ), Geof Isherwood, Dave Sim, Darwyn Cooke, Gene Day, Todd McFarlane, Dale Keown and John Byrne ( the last three all had seminal runs on HULK ) without whom the comicbook industry would not be what it is.

I mean to take just three random names of the bunch ( and there are many more names I have not listed here ) Hal Foster created what is still considered the best newspaper comic strip of all times and influenced countless creators to get into comics until this day. Joe Shuster basically created the super hero comic genre together with his collaborator Jerry Siegel and John Byrne gave comics a giant boost in the 80s that lasted well into the 90s. The list of comicbooks he worked on is too long to list here ( thankfully there are plenty of posts about these series on this very blog ) and you can't underestimate how many new readers John Byrne brought in with his great storytelling, great artwork and sheer excitement as he often did two titles a month. But back to Wolverine.

As he was now a fixed member of the X - Men they began developing his backstory and one big problem that hadn't been addressed was that it was stated in his first appearance that Logan worked for the canadian military. And while he had semi officially joined the X - Men he never quit the canadian military in any official manner so technically he was absent without leave the whole time he worked with Marvel's merry mutants. And while the canadians can be nice they still had invested a lot of money in Logan and so decided to sent their best super soldier - or at least the second best soldier after Wolverine - to retrieve weapon x.

they are fake

Blame Canada : Mellow Alpha Flight Monday

Since we are already deep in John Byrne territory and it is still MARVEL COMICS MONTH I thought we could continue a topic I last toppled almost 11 years ago : John Byrne's unconventional super team from the great white north, Alpha Flight. I seems he really likes those underdog teams.

Now this is going to be a two - parter because as regular blog visitors know it is very seldom that I find the complete original art to an entire issue ( although I have managed to post a few of those ) and I prefer to have original art from the same issue in the same post but the issue in question is number 24 which is an oversized issue with 37 pages of story.

Which I could possibly cram into one post but as longtime followers of TALES FROM THE KRYPTONIAN know my posts tend to get out of hand when it comes to length as I include only the best for my readers and I'm always trying to make my posts shorter. So with this one I am splitting the original art into two posts and as a special bonus feature I am going to include the letters pages for a more immersive reading experience.

But that will be in our next post because I am doing those back to back.

And before we get to the good part you may ask yourself why it took me almost 11 years to write about Alpha Flight again. Or better said write another spotlight post about Alpha Flight since I did write about them a few times here and there. Now since I don't expect my visitors to have a memory like an elephant ( I mean even I had to go back and read what I had written back then again ) let's just say that I did a - very brief - summary of the team's history or more accurately my personal history with the team since issue 20 was the very first US comicbook that I bought at an international press newsstand at a german railway station.

Speaking of which, I don't know if it was fate that the very first issue of the book was the one where John Byrne changed Aurora's look from a more traditional super heroine costume to a more sexy 80s punk style.

That's one thing John Byrne always excelled at : redesigning the women's looks and outfit to a more modern vibe. And he really knocked it out of the park with Aurora. The only bad thing about all of this was that it took me several months to figure out where to get more US comics - I found the issue while visiting an aunt and it was too far to go to every month just to get some comics ( I wasn't that obsessed with them yet ) - and when I finally started to get my regular fix at the international press newsstand at Stuttgart Central Station they were already way past the next issue and so it took me a few years until I could find out how the story continues in issue 21. But back to my last Alpha Flight spotlight.

At the end of the post I promised to continue the topic of Alpha Flight in an upcoming DEATH IN COMICS spotlight which as my longtime followers know never came. One of the reasons is that after a while I decided to scrap the whole series about the most memorable stories about death.

Because you young people out there may not realize it but as you get older and you start to have more days behind you than ahead of you the concept of death stops being something hypothetical and starts being something very real. Also with the number of great comicbook creators that have passed away over the years since I started the blog the whole thing can get a bit too morbid for my taste. As readers who have visited the blog over decades can attest I have always preferred to spotlight the positive instead of the negative so like a wise man once said when asked to recount how a man died : I will tell you instead how he lived. So there will be posts that involve death - those of comicbook characters as well as comicbook creators - but that will not be the main focus. That said issue 24 does involve the death of a member of Alpha Flight but also not really. And further down the line it will lead to one of the most hilarious moments in all Marvel Comics history which I've already written about.

Last but not least, as my regular readers know only too well finding the coloured pages that correspond to the original art pages can be very difficult sometimes. So while the coloured pages for issue 24 are smaller than what I usually post in my blog at least they have the original muted colouring which I prefer to the glossy and shiny pages that are so popular with kids Today where the colour oftentimes overpowers the artwork.

to be continued

it's not even a real country after all