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.
Which didn't work out as well as planned because surprisingly Wolverine liked living la vida loca at the Xavier mansion - which might have had something to do with a certain redhead Busenwunder on the team - and when James Hudson a.k.a. Weapon Alpha later called Vindicator and much later called Guardian had to take on the entire team of mutants his only option was a hasty retreat. But as anybody who has had to deal with government officials know they don't give up easily and when the X - Men found themselves in Canada again they had to face off against a whole team of canadian super heroes and that is how Alpha Flight made their first appearance in UNCANNY X - MEN. Soon the team got their own book written and drawn by John Byrne and the rest as they say is history.
If you want to read in more detail about all of this check out the link to my first Alpha Flight spotlight - which you can also find in the first part of this - and now let's get int medias res with ALPHA FLIGHT 24 part 2.
they are fake
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