Intimate Knowledge: Alpha Flight 1983 Marvel (Tragedy in the Twin Towers)

Alpha Flight was, of course, the second spin-off from the best-selling Uncanny X-Men series at Marvel Comics Group. 1983 first brought The New Mutants, written by the Chris Claremont half of the classic X-Men team that took those characters to the top. A lot of attention went into making these titles unique from their parent series. New Mutants told stories of the new teen recruits, whose existence as a team grew organically out of an X-storyline: the Brood-possessed Professor Xavier would bring fresh blood to his academy, candidates for Brood egg-implantation. (Promise I’ll be back for New Mutants, especially for you fans of Legion X!)

New Mutants’ origin grew out of one of Marvel’s earliest graphic novels; distinct from the original team, yet costumed and trained similarly, they weren’t intended to be a combat unit. The emphasis on dealing with their powers and place in the world reminds me a lot of Hero Duty, this creator-owned property I’m writing with artist Joe Phillips for IDW Publishing. He specifically wants not to take cues from any previous series for its identity, but concepts- even with the twist of a city government-recruited volunteer group meant to serve temporarily, like jury duty-bear echoes of their predecessors. Dr. Smith and Will Robinson once went inside The Robot for repairs, but you wouldn’t mistake that for Neal Adams’ fantastic voyage into the android Vision with Ant-Man. That’s the difference between Irwin Allen’s tv show and a Marvel Comic crafted by ambitious young Roy and Neal. There’s room for Twilight Zone AND The Outer Limits. Unless you’re veering off into truly experimental mode like Grant Morrison’s Doom Patrol or The Invisibles, just search your story’s mix of familiar elements and highlight the chemistry unique to its interpretation, in fresh language and characters that ring true. A flip through the art can grab a new reader; a compelling mix of characters’ stories can make a talked-about fan favorite read and re-read dozens of times. Heroes have been assembling since Homer’s Illiad.

Like in that classical Greek epic, the blend of Canadian traits and differing personalities in Alpha Flight also present an heroic assemblage for the honor of a county. It’s a well-known true life origin: the Alphans first appeared in X-Men #120 created as sparring partners with the mighty mutants over the fate of expatriate Wolverine. Like Alpha Flight, Phillips’ original idea for Hero Duty was to create the volunteers as cyphers that illustrate a distinct concept (and both are government-founded by a reluctant leader), though I stress Joe never mentioned Alpha or any other comic as a guiding light, and my dissection of story-telling principles in Creating Marvels simply recognizes general patterns.
Canada itself is a great inspiration to each original member’s powers and personal background. Readers instantly recognized them as a cool mix of abilities and a distinct visual presence. I always found their color scheme a different response to many fundamental approaches of the proliferation of characters to this point. When demand for their own series built over the next few years, only creator John Byrne had the answer. Yet, he confesses he had no idea what to do with them. I wonder if the announcement that Claremont was striking out with a second team of mutants did anything to stir him to push his new team out onto their alpha flight. We’re nations apart from the ‘training teens but not to be super-heroes’ approach over in New Mutants. With his run of Fantastic Four now securely moving along, it’s possible he simply had time, ideas, and a decent-enough royalties agreement. With Denny O’Neil editing, Alpha Flight #1, cover date August, 1983.

Perhaps another spur to the series’ creation was the handling of various team members in guest shots after their second appearance in X-Men #142 & 143. Sometimes you see what you don’t intend, spelled out, and grasp the proper reply. Those rough drafts, like Machine Man #18, get a very thoughtful response. Structurally, Byrne tries something that not only helps build the characters to last, but tells their first year in a way like nothing before in mainstream comics. After reliving it with a creator’s analysis, I would love for John Byrne to tell me how much of his doomed themes was a personal statement about the trials of working with people, and how much was a dramatist’s calculation to produce well-illustrated popular art through the Alphans’ suffering.

For issue one, the entire team’s called together for one of few full-unit field missions, to deal with one of the Great Beasts, related to Snowbird’s (and as we’ll chillingly see, Sasquatch’s) origins. It’s established soon that the Alphans don’t live together at a headquarters like most teams; in fact, their government funding’s cut, so they will only assemble on whole in times of great threat. This means they won’t be training to work together. They resemble another concept: the non-team, an idea sometimes successfully applied to The Defenders. Their relationships, however, bond various members closely- or not, in the case of mysterious newly-promoted Marrina. What they don’t know about one another- and themselves- becomes a fount of Drama.
From the start, danger comes from within: Snowbird’s tormented father, Richard Easton, calls forth the Great Beast, Tundra. The Great Beasts are part of the magical fount that provides powers to so much of the team. I also like how the one member who’d be nearly useless against a Great Beast on the scale of Tundra, Eugene Milton Judd, a.k.a. Puck, arrives at the end. Yet, he also nails down the identity of the team for which he’s trained to join: name change? No way! Government or no, “Alpha Flight’s the team I busted my buns to join!”
While Marrina’s the youngest at nineteen, presented as still a naive country girl (albeit, she discovers, from space), the relationships are between adults, half of whom are practically middle-aged! Each has their own life, and all have a fairly fine degree control over their abilities. What’s different is they are still inexperienced working alongside one another- not just unfamiliarity with abilities, but more crucially, only in the field do they, time and again, uncover weaknesses, abrasiveness, even madness, within each other’s personalities. Threat after threat arises, throughout Byrne’s 28 issues, from vulnerabilities and animosities of team members.

Perhaps it was ever meant to be thus. At the risk of Flanderization- that venerable trope where an early distinguishing characteristic forever more defines the handling of a character-from the original appearance of James McDonald Hudson as Weapon Alpha in X-Men #109, Alphans were set against their own heroic kind. Weapon Alpha blows a mission to bring back Logan, a.k.a. Wolverine, as a Canadian special services agent, and in the process, nearly accidentally kills Storm, too! The storm manipulated by Dr. Michael Twoyoungmen as the Sarcee Shaman threatens to annihilate Calgary in the first showdown of the two teams in X-Men #121. The second issue of Alpha Flight nearly features Puck’s demise, when a training get-together ends in the triggering of Marrina’s hitherto unknown Plodex heritage, manipulated by The Master. In the process of the follow-up rescue mystery, mutant Jeane-Marie Beaubier, Aurora, panics and slips into her subliminated second personality brought out by torturing nuns after her mutant powers first appeared. Her twin brother Jean-Paul’s lifelong ignorance of Aurora’s existence and chauvinistic attitudes produce an Achille’s Heel that breaks up their partnership in #8, depriving them of a valuable incandescence power, too, generated only by their hands joining. Snowbird’s life force, bound in her birth to Canada, as depicted in Alpha Flight’s origins back-up, shrivels up in the middle of the fight of their lives in #12. Shaman’s daughter Talisman discovers the tiara he produces in conjunction with her implicit powers cannot be removed, and she thereafter rebuffs a man she already blamed for not saving her mother. What becomes of Walter Langkowski, Sasquatch, as the true nature of his powers becomes apparent will be the last blow Byrne deals the team, with, initially, his shocking death in #23.

As the back-up origin stories had carefully uncovered at five to seven pages nearly each month, Hudson was the closest thing to a man with the answers. The Alpha Flight story binds a year of mostly solo adventures that give Byrne room to spotlight powers and personalities, none of which are more straight-forward than leader Guardian. He doles out what he knows of each member to the others-often regrettably too late to avoid dangers. Hudson’s story is also Alpha’s origin, in #2 & 3- not superhero battles, but character development, the focus of Year One. He’s dedicated to science first, then to his helpmate, Heather. His college loans cover him as a retro-active Canadian employee; James assumes the duty of founding the program, then sees the emergence of the Fantastic Four as inspiration. If the most respected scientist in the world becomes leader of a band of adventurers, maybe that approach can shape Hudson and company too!

Each origin’s tied to others as Hudson finds his recruits, starting with a Logan cameo. Marrina’s origin folds into the actual adventure in #2, unveiled in layers during her captivity by The Master. The Invisible Woman and Prince Namor team up to answer a call crossing over in FF #257 and essentially save AF’s hash in the cataclysmic #4. The Shaman origin in #5 leads out of his medical treatment of Puck at the start of Puck’s solo in #5; part two becomes the birth of Snowbird, born of Hodiak and Nelvanna- star of the experimental “snowblind” #6- which also returns Kolomaq from perennial nemeses The Great Beasts. Heather figures into the Shaman origin as baby-sitter to little Talisman and family friend to the Twoyoungments. The twins become main feature and origin back-up stars next, complete with a past and friends. Next we get Sasquatch in a two parter that seems to guest star The Thing (with a plot that nods to the sci fi suspense movie of that name). He ends up in a revealing battle with Super Skrull, whose story continues from John’s stint years before on Marvel Team-Up.

“The Beast Unleashed” in #11 also underscores Langkowski’s friendship in college with Bruce Banner, ties Snowbird into his salvation after the initial transformation, and foreshadows ominously troubles to come. All along, we’re led to their common thread in Guardian, the likeable maverick scientist, shown putting together and working with Alphans, their differing personalities contrasting beside James, grounded by his relationship with his feisty wife.
In a very layered presentation, subplots link independent adventures. We get a mix of two or three Alphans every issue, original enemies in Deadly Earnest and Nemesis, and yes, the emergence of Omega Flight. From issue two’s opening training session in the Alberta wilds, a very real danger from one teammate to another’s present, as Northstar and Aurora’s attack cripples Hudson’s forcefield, and the throw from Sasquatch comes close to totaling their leader! Like Omega Flight, Marrina’s explained to have been the very first Gamma Flight recruit, promoted to Beta in months-and this explanation comes only moments after she’s nearly disemboweled fellow Betan Puck and escaped! The others demand any explanation; how, Walt of all people asks, could such behavior slip past psychological testing? Hudson’s destined to be endangered from the start by the programs, the suit, the friendships he’s forged. He gets a big job offer that will finally land him in New York City. But like the polar space ship headquarters of The Master in #4, beneath appearances, our heroes discover ever-deeper levels full of menace. Like that ship, their paths shift and grow organically, changing subtly in ways that leave them lost. Intimate knowledge backfires: when Walt tries to approach Jeannne-Marie gently and tells her of his romantic relationship with her as Aurora, she’s repulsed. After all, the personality within hates the person she is as a superheroine- hates her disregard of inhibition and cold discretion.
An enemy lurks within.

The offer to unemployed James Hudson looks like an opening to new intrigues and opportunities. It looks like the entire series is about to shift. For a team leader, he’s still somewhat a rookie superhero, starry-eyed at whom he’ll meet. Cap’s one-time artist adds one very nice touch when Steve Rogers and Bernie pass Hudson outside Steve’s apartment. He gets a sense of Hudson as “a man used to wielding power”-all the while, James daydreams of the heroes he’ll help, the excitement that’s changed his mind entirely about this superhero business. Love the moment- if Captain America could’ve known...alas, the two countries’ flag-wearing icons pass in civilian guise...more red herrings, memorably done differently. Once inside, the sinister maze shifts.

Moving Day: we get a cool glimpse back at their years together in sleepy Ottawa. She’s leaving behind their VW, hearing echoes of their voices from the Logan days, even her request they have no children. The word was out: that sales ingredient, Tragedy, closes Year One’s story. Depending on your sense of impending ironies, the offer from Roxxon- an industrial power known to regular Marvelites to engage in villainous power plays- either telegraphs his doom, or sets up shock surprise: surely, so much potential won’t be flushed away!

The theme’s well-established by now, but the most telling cut began with the origin of Guardian- Hudson’s eventually identity, by #2-and the man who cultivated his construction of the prototype exploratory suit for Am-Can, Jerry Jaxon, ruined by Hudson’s refusal to hand over the helmet design to the American military, secret sponsors of his four-year development of the cybernetic armor. Jaxon will manipulate the training program Beta Flight to become arch-rivals to Alpha, particularly for vengeance on Hudson. (Their motivation’s the story’s weakest point; that’s why Byrne reveals Courtney’s thoughts about her“Influencer” tech-another threat from within.) Jaxon uses a business card dropped deliberately by Delphine, then intimate knowledge-the helmet’s frequency- to lure Hudson to the World Trade Center. Marrina’s away being wooed by the Submariner; one match after another crosses over in chaos, taken one attack at a time by Byrne. Already divided by Northstar’s fight with Sasquatch over Aurora, the Alphans answer Mac’s call and teleport there to confront Omega Flight.

That Pyrrhic victory introduced me to Alpha Flight. I never forgot it. Sexually tantalizing Aurora, physically imposing Sasquatch, insightful Puck, subtle and dangerous Shaman-in a single episode, I became intrigued. In an exceedingly rare comics shop visit, the first dollar I spent on an actual comic book in Gordon Lee’s Amazing World of Fantasy, brought me the shocking double-sized conclusion.

The battle itself’s awesome- confined to a huge room, their powers clash dangerously. Aurora’s vulnerability after Wild Child’s attack leads to intended lethal force from Northstar. Smart Alec grabs the Shaman’s bag, peers within, and loses his mind; once again, someone’s destroyed by mysteries that lie within the source of an Alphan’s great power. Snowbird crumbles from the start, her life force severed from her homeland. Why? Her life from birth was bound to the land of Canada, by the man who delivered her, Shaman-to come to New York City is an isolation inviting death! A future version of Flashback’s killed in the melee, meaning his own demise awaits in a terrible moment that could arrive any moment.
Insinuated between arguing Northstar and Aurora, Sasquatch already went berserk; now he holds back against Box, setting up the critical moment where Box is free to isolate Guardian with a tackle that crashes through an empty shaft. Box: the remote-controlled robot Bochs credits to Hudson, who turned it “from a toy into a superhero!” The power made greater by Hudson now shorts his force field, smashes his suit to bits.

Box has the ultimate surprise- he’s not Robert Bochs, Jim’s personal recruit: he’s Jaxon. Once again, a mystery within a power fells another member of the program. Head to head, the leaders, the old friends, battle to the death. Heather’s entangled one last time in their machinations. Themes continue their haunting echoes.

Brutally beaten by Jaxon-controlling-Box, James shorts out the robot (killing Jaxon), then hurries to fix his damaged power supply, primed like a bomb now. A complication within the source of power itself- wrapped inside the symbol of his reluctant choice to play the leader the hero: the power pack is the source of doom. (Did some cheeky soul agree to run that silhouette advertisement on the letters page following, for Power Pack?)

Held hostage by Courtney-revealed as an android-Heather McNeil Hudson finds an opening left to freedom. The woman who discovered Logan berserk after his escape from Program: Weapon X, the awe-struck admirer who opened the door of the Prime Minister’s office to Hudson’s freedom after stealing back his suit- opens another door. She interrupts Mac in the countdown of frantically-depicted seconds as he frantically repairs his volatile suit. Before her very eyes, her husband’s incinerated.

A door opens. A door shuts forever.

Just like that...Jimmy Hudson’s gone.