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.
it's not even a real country after all
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