Revamp One Alpha Flight Hero & One Villain.

[Tawmis]

Ideally focus on Alpha Flight centric characters (I get, for example, the Wrecking Crew fought Alpha Flight; but I wouldn't consider them "Alpha Flight Villains" for example).

If you could change/fix one thing - anything - the way they look, their origin, a specific story - what is one Alpha Flight hero and one Alpha Flight villain you'd change - and what would you change?

[Garry/Al-Fan]

I'd make "Yukon Jack" an adversary of Alpha Flight, enthralled by the DreamQueen.

[Tawmis]

I'd make "Yukon Jack" an adversary of Alpha Flight, enthralled by the DreamQueen.


Two things cool about that idea - seeing Yukon Jack again (didn't he have some weird connection to Snowbird or am I misremembering?) and seeing DreamQueen again. I thought she was one of the coolest designed villains (visually) - reminded me very much of Lady Sphinix from New Warriors - just a great looking concept for a character. And adding the aspect that DreamQueen was tied to Nightmare was a nice little touch.

[Garry/Al-Fan]

You are misremembering correctly what happened in volume 3: apparently, Yukon Jack had a weird connection with Snowbird. But I never really got the attraction between them. If---early-on (in volume 1)---Narya was a bit confused/conflicted about her human-side, I kinda get her relationship with Doug Thompson. When most of her friends were (presumed) dead following the infamous NEW AVENGERS # 16, I really kinda get Nadya's relationship with Hercules in The Incredible Hercules.

I just don't get what Narya sees in Yukon Jack.

BTW, over on Byrne Robotics in Fan-fic, a writer named Brendan T. Deneen has posted a revamped ALPHA FLIGHT # 29. I think he is much closer to the finish line than I am.

[Caliber]

Gilded Lily in a Delphine Courtney robot body, still looking to possess Aurora. Alchemy + robots = awesome.

That or Smart Alec returning as an AI. Perhaps his mind was copied electronically to his encephalo-helmet before he lost it peering into Shaman's bag.

For heroes, I would love to see Pathway at Alpha HQ teleporting Alphans all over. Canada is so huge and the team so spread out - it would solve a lot of problems if they had a quick, reliable way for everyone to be in one place. Really, I'd love a dedicated HQ team who just deal with logistics. Manikin is the doctor. A reformed Flashback using his duplicates as general staff and grunt work. Hell, bring back Sean Bernard (Groundhog) as Head of Security. Lots of possibilities!

[Le Messor]

Those are some great ideas there, Caliber!

[Phil]

Had it not been for the line in Incredible Hercules about her marriage being over I'd have chalked YK's wedding to Snowbird up to the temporal copy, but alas it was the true Narya now...

[Garry/Al-Fan]

Did Incredible Hercules specifically say it was her marriage to Yukon Jack or Doug Thompson?

[-K-M-]

No name was given she just said “my marriage is over”. Likely her marriage was the reason she wasn’t present during the battle with the collective and when it failed she also felt worse then her existing survivor guilt

[Garry/Al-Fan]

Okay.

[Phil]

From the OHOTMU#10 HC:

[Le Messor]

Well, that says what went wrong between her and Doug.

Did we actually see that? Was it about the time of Pestilence?

Also, this just makes me laugh:
"Tamer of Kolomaq, Slayer of Tanaraq, Scourge of the Realm of Beasts; formerly Anne McKenzie-Thompson."

I guess it reminds me of this bit from Good Omens:
"We'll call the first baby Baby A; we'll call the second Baby B, and we'll call the third baby the Adversary, Destroyer of Kings, Angel of the Bottomless Pit, Great Beast that is called Dragon, Prince of This World, Father of Lies, Spawn of Satan, and Lord of Darkness"

[Garry/Al-Fan]

Hasn't Kolomaq escaped Snowbird's confinent? Hasn't Tanaraq returned...again and again and again? Doesn't Snowbird run the risk of being subsumed by the very beast(s) she sometimes transforms into? Didn't Incredible Hercules (mis)identify Hodiak as Snowbird's uncle?

[Garry/Al-Fan]

Hasn't Kolomaq escaped Snowbird's confinement? Hasn't Tanaraq returned...again and again and again? Doesn't Snowbird run the risk of being subsumed by the very beast(s) she sometimes transforms into? Didn't Incredible Hercules (mis)identify Hodiak as Snowbird's uncle?

[Caliber]

Doug was killed trying to track down Pestilence to save his son. A fairly noble end for a fairly sketchy character.

Snowbird has terrible taste in dudes.

[Garry/Al-Fan]

Not so sure about that because Snowbird's father went bonkers after relations with Nelvanna. As much as I dislike the Mantlo era, it would seem plausible that Doug Thompson went bonkers after relations with Narya/Snowbird. I don't like the extent it was taken because Thompson had a snowball's chance of saving his son considering Pestilence crapped on Alpha Flight AND "The Great Beasts".

[Le Messor]

I dunno, it's not so much that she has terrible taste - Doug was okay - as they tend to get fridged around her.

[Le Messor]

I hadn't seen Garry's post when I wrote that.
Maybe he went a little mad at the end - we all go a little mad sometimes, haven't you? - but wasn't he driven so by a series of terrible circumstances?

Richard Eastman would've been different - he went mad because he was always small-minded, because he was taken out of this world for a night that turned into several years, and he had an experience nobody would've believed, AND he was under the direct influence of a mystical artifact, a metal circlet of some kind that held the power of the great villain. I knew he should've thrown it into that mountain!

~ Le Messor
"A consumer is a shopper who is sore about something."
~ Harold Coffin

[Caliber]

When you read the old Bryne-era Doug stuff, he comes across as kind of a possessive jerk. I actually love the idea that being with Snowbird made him crazy - it'd be a fun idea for a future writer to explore.

Really, Narya has such a unique life story that I've been surprised more writer don't deep dive into her psychology more. She is a demi-god raised by a foster father who grew to adulthood in what, like 5 years? She is an Inuit who looks like a blonde white lady, is a former RCMP officer, lost her husband and newborn son to an entity accidentally released by her foster-sister. She killed a teammate, then was killed by a teammate, then had her body possessed by the teammate she killed... I mean... that's a LOT of couch time is all I'm saying...

[Garry/Al-Fan]

Byrne-era Doug Thompson is a RCMP sergeant who is strongly infatuated and concerned about his mysterious coworker. He turned into an irrational, raving loon in the Mantlo-era...who had open (inexplicable) disdain for Alpha Flight.
The Mantlo-era is not an experience a comic book reader should put himself through: it got rid of original Alpha Flight in the most ludicrous ways. A writer who cared about what he was doing would have written the characters out in a way that the company/another creative team could do something (positive) with them.
That's what the old-school writers would do: new roster, not butchery and killing characters, willy-nilly.

[Caliber]

I can never forgive Mantlo for Black Razer.

[Garry/Al-Fan]

Neither can I.

[Tawmis]

I think Mantlo was better at things where he started the continuity from the ground up. For example, he did ROM and MICRONAUTS - both started as fun reads (and oddly, both got very, very, very strange near the end). So I feel like Mantlo came in with the intention - from the start - to remove Alpha Flight and make it his own "Alpha Flight" by introducing his own custom characters (Purple Girl, Pathway, etc).

There are many things he did in Alpha Flight that seemed to contradict what any Alpha Flight fan would want to see in the comics. In the interview with James Hudnall (RIP) that I was fortunate to have with him back in 2017 - he mentioned how the book was in tattered pieces when he took it over and he had to quickly find a way to try and save the book.

[Tawmis]

Here's the interview Maico and I had with James back in 2017: http://comicreliefpodcast.com/archives/1375

[Le Messor]

I don't think Mantlo had anything against Alpha Flight, he just wanted to do his own thing, and got AF instead.

Not to mention, he was suffering a terrible burn-out at the time he got the book. :(

[Garry/Al-Fan]

Maybe it's just me, but when somebody INVITES you to his house and let's you play with his toys in his backyard, and you promptly break the host's toys, then take a long and sustained dump in his backyard, and---as the coup de grace---BLOW UP the house (see AF # 53) is very bad form...especially when Bill Mantle declared in the AMAZING HEROES # 75 interview that ' "I feel that John laid the foundation. I'm going to try to build the house." '
This wasn't solely the writer's fault; the comic books are bad and have little-to-no story cohesion/consistency unto themselves. And the entire run STINKS of "MY characters are way better than YOUR characters."

[Garry/Al-Fan]

Correction: AMAZING HEROES # 76.

[Caliber]

Truth be told, the real reason I'm salty about his run is that Alpha Flight never squared off against Mantlo creation, the Hypno-Hustler.

[Le Messor]

I'm not defending Mantlo's run, just saying that he wasn't setting out to destroy Byrne's work.
Intention matters, but it doesn't absolve one of a crime. (Though it can change the nature of a crime.)

~ Le Messor
"It is not the employer who pays wages - he only handles the money. It is the product that pays wages."
~ Henry Ford

[Garry/Al-Fan]

Editorial. I think once 22 pages came in---no need to proofread it , no need to do any quality control--just slap a cover on that puppy, call it "Alpha Flight", and rake in the cash.

[Le Messor]

Editorial does need to, well, edit; it's a problem I've seen many times, many places. Though I don't remember a lot of it from early Alpha Flight. "Fool it now!" and "It was an alien named Ford Fairmont" happened in Byrne's day, of course. (And I swear I've seen JB saying somewhere somewhen that he scripted that last one properly, but somewhere along the line, the error crept in.)

~ Le Messor
"Time is an illusion; lunch-time doubly so."
~ Ford Prefect (quoting somebody else)

[Garry/Al-Fan]

Didn't MARVEL produce a "blooper" comic around that time?

[Le Messor]

Sounds familiar.