Thinking Of Alpha Flight On Canada Day

Even though I’m an American, I owe a great debt of gratitude to a pair of editors for giving me my start in pop culture journalism online. Since both of them are comic book fans, it’s only fitting that I commemorate Canada Day with a few words about a super hero team Canada can truly call its own, Alpha Flight.

(Note: DC came ever so close to joining Marvel in giving Canada its due, but it changed its mind on Justice League Canada and went with the title Justice League United instead. The book is written by Canadian Jeff Lemire and features the Cree heroine Equinox, though, so we’ll call it a partial victory.)

The Wikipedia entry for Alpha Flight calls the team “Canada’s answer to the Avengers,” but that’s really selling it short. While the classic lineup certainly perpetuated its share of stereotypes — having a short hero named Puck was just one example — it was also ahead of its time in terms of diversity. The original heroes in Alpha Flight were from all over Canada, plus Shaman was of First Nations descent and Snowbird was Inuit. Northstar was also the first openly gay Marvel super hero, though that revelation didn’t come until 13 years after he made his debut.

John Byrne (a non-Canadian, for what it’s worth), who created the team, also gave it a strong, capable female leader in the form of Heather MacNeil Hudson, who took command after her husband, the original Guardian, was assumed dead. He was actually teleported to one of Jupiter’s moons and had his battlesuit fused to him by aliens who were trying to save his life, because comics.

I was never a regular reader during the team’s longest run in the 80s and early 90s, but one thing I remember is that Alpha Flight always had unique, sometimes bizarre enemies. There was the Master of the World, who was really a caveman evolved by the alien Plodex. Madison Jeffries’ brother Lionel became Scramble the Mixed-Up Man (a name you would only find in an 80s comic book), and had the fairly horrific power to rearrange organic matter. Deadly Ernest was a really great if strange name for a villain too.

The idea of having Beta Flight and Gamma Flight around as back-up and training teams was also very logical, and one that I’m surprised never caught on elsewhere in the world of super hero comics. For instance, the Avengers have always had reservists, but you’d think someone as prepared and training-focused as Captain America would have found it pretty useful to have a formal “bench” from which to call up other heroes when the roster got shorthanded, or to oversee younger heroes with thoughts that they could prove themselves and graduate to the main roster. Most other super hero teams have only toyed around with this concept.

Alas, once the initial 130-issue first volume wrapped up in 1994, Alpha Flight has never proven itself able to sustain an ongoing series for very long. Volumes 2 and 3 totaled only 32 issues combined, and if memory serves, Volume 4 was downgraded from ongoing to limited series status before it even got started. The absolute low point for the team came in the pages of New Avengers, when the entire roster was killed by a rogue postman, albeit one pumped up with all of the lost mutant powers from Decimation. Did I mention that the deaths occurred off-panel?

Fear not, though, because that wasn’t the real Alpha Flight, or the members who got killed got better, or something to that effect. The point is that even though there don’t seem to be enough Canadian readers and Americans with love for their nieghbors to the north to keep a series alive, Marvel only ever seems able to leave the team dormant for about five or six years tops before giving it another shot. All it’ll take is a writer with the right pitch, and in about 2016 or 2017, I’m sure we’ll be talking about the new Alpha Flight book here on Bam Smack Pow.

So happy Canada Day to our Canadian friends, and may your super hero team return to new adventures sooner rather than later. Here’s to Alpha Flight!