so.......issue #8?

[varo]

that we are all finally back (thanks Ben!) what did everyone think of the final issue of the mini? got to be honest, thought it was a let down. although the team remained intact, the lack of explanation of Walter acting like dumb hulk drove me bonkers, it made no sense. why did mac and heather coordinate a attack against the master, when they had been at each others throats 5 minutes earlier? heather stayed a 4 toed unity member?

ughhhh.....

i loved fred, gregs and dales passion for this title, but this seemed very, very rushed.

not trying to be negative, just stating my opinion.

btw, good to be back!!

[rplass]

Quite frankly, I was so impressed by the art that I forgave the dangling plot threads you mention. DHS (Dumb Hulk Sasquatch) was simply bizarre - as if FREG intended to explain it at some point but forgot? The combo Mac/Heather attack on the Master seemed to make sense to me - he threatened to take away their daughter! The four toed thing was explained by FVL on twitter, "It was a sign the Master rebuilt everyone's bodies as his was, "perfecting" them--you only need 4toes for balance, 5th=vestigial" no explanation if the un-unity machine added back the toe - I assume it does - but since it doesn't appear Heather went into the machine, yeah she's out there with her four-toed cray cray mom thing going on.

[Flightpath07]

I agree with Varo. (btw, Happy St. Patricks' Day! It's snowing heavily here.)

Ddidn't understand why Hulk acted stupid, nor did I understand why Walter could not change into Hulk, then suddenly could again. Does this mean it is now canon that Sasquatch is stupid from Walter having too many concussions? Ugh.

Didn't understand the un-unity machine. I thought it was all a ruse, and that they just wanted to draw out the Master, and that by defeating him everyone would become 'normal' again...but the issue shot down that theory.

It DID seem rushed. It is one of the (many) reasons my reviews of volume 4 (on my own site) have been VERY SLOW in forthcoming. I wanted ot like it. I DID like many parts of it. I apprectiated having Flight around. But...too many unsatisfactory things. I'd have been willing to let them slide (as rplass did), if the mini had been an ongoing where Greg and Fred could have continued on and helped us all understand this new essence of Flight that they had left us with...but Marvel stole that from us. As such, it has no recourse but to feel fragmented and totally incomplete.

Which leaves me feeling sad and empty. Not a good place to try to write a review from, unless you are reviewing Gone With The Wind or something.

Sorry. Gonna stop now. Even typing this makes me want to throw up in my mouth more than a little. Doesn't feel like Flight anymore, no more than Volume 3 did.

[Le Messor]

I watched the original V mini-series the other day, and realised that it had a story about the aliens brain-washing people with an obvious physical sign (in this case, people suddenly became left-handed), and I wondered if Freg had been watching it before writing v4.

I didn't realise the 4-toed thing had so much thought behind it, and it makes a lot of twisted sense.

- Le Messor
Lt. Frank Drebin: Have you noticed anything different about him?
Jane Spencer: Well, only that he's a foot taller, and he seems to be left handed now... Frank, what are you trying to tell me? That Quentin has somehow found an exact double for Dr. Mainheimer and that tomorrow that double will give a fraudulent report to the president?
Lt. Frank Drebin: Why that's brilliant, that's a lot better than what I came up with.
~ Naked Gun 22½

[Legerd]

Have to agree with Flightpath that #8 felt rushed. What I liked was J-M/Aurora finally dealing with her split personalities herself. What I have to wonder though is what was the Wendigo busy doing while Squatch was choking the life out of Northstar? And if the Purple Woman's power was needed to cure the others how was she cured?
Obviously Freg had thrown in plot lines (Sas' low intelligence, Heather not undergoing the de-unity process, and going on the lam) which they were going to explore in future issues (which now isn't going to happen) but the lack of resolution doesn't bother me. It's something for other writers to deal with down the road. I just hope someone does explore these issues, and they aren't simply forgotten.

[Mokole]

Hopefully I'll get issues #5-8 within a month. I hope AF returns soon!!

[Jason Eberly]

Glad the site is back up!

I tend to echo the tones of others here. #8 was okay, but a bit of a letdown. It felt like the issue was originally supposed to be double-sized then at the last minute they were told it wasn't going to be. The "solution" to The Unity process was just a bit too simplistic and the various battles resolved a bit too easily.

Overall I enjoyed the mini, though.

[Flightpath07]

The 8-issue maxi series would have made a really nice 12-issue super-maxi series, and probably we would have had a lot more time for explanations and whatnot.

[Le Messor]

One thing I'll give #8... It mentioned this forum!

[Flightpath07]

One thing I'll give #8... It mentioned this forum!

Which directly contributed, perhaps, to the hacking and crashing of this site.

Not blaming Dale, Wolfie, Fred and Greg, of course.

[Phil]

The site was hacked two months before #8 even came out.

[Le Messor]

Yeah, I felt the sad irony of them publicising the site at a time when nobody could get to it. :(

- LM
"If looks could kill it would've been us instead of him!"

[-K-M-]

I thought it was a good issue, but the issue with Sasquatch was bizarre and Wendigo sort of vanished. Was he defeated or did he run away?

[Chris]

Yeah, where was Wered-He-Go (http://alphaflight.net/showwiki.php?title=Wendigo)? I'm going to assume he was lying somewhere unconscious after a smack down by Sasquatch that Dale didn't have room to draw.

[rplass]

Is that the new Alphanex wiki I see poking out there? Looks like it's germinating...

[Ben]

Is that the new Alphanex wiki I see poking out there? Looks like it's germinating...

Yes, I'm working on it...it's also going to be (as you see) automatically cross linking any refrences in the wiki throughout the site. Still have some tweaking ahead of me though :)

[Le Messor]

it's also going to be (as you see) automatically cross linking any refrences in the wiki throughout the site.

Automatic? Cool.
How does that work?

- Le Messor
"Fashion is architecture: it is a matter of proportions."
~ Coco Chanel

[Ben]

Automatic? Cool.
How does that work?


Automatically

[Le Messor]

Of course!

[rplass]

Can that feature be disabled or made into an opt-out user setting? I find it extremely irritating on any site. It picks up "The four toed thing was explained..." from my post above and generates a link to.. The Thing from Fantastic Four? Come on.

This is how I've always seen this feature - just random links peppered all over the place that I didn't want in my post to bring people's attention away from my post. And when I'm reading someone else's post I have no idea if they are auto-generated or the person has a real hyperlink they intend for me to click on... It's so distracting with the hover-blurbs too, just ugh.

[Ben]

yes, it certainly can be dissabled if desired, and I can even ennable it in one part of the site, like in the articles, and dissable it in an other, like the forum

[Legerd]

The site was hacked two months before #8 even came out.

I suspect Marvel had a hand in this. Knowing how we'd react to the news of the ongoing returning to a mini, they hacked AF.net and silenced us before we could say anything.
1676
Oh the shenanigans!

[rplass]

I think the only place it would make sense to have it active would be in the Alphanex itself. Look above how it linked the word link to the link page. Silly, no?

[Ben]

Yah, with how comprehensive Alphanex could some day be, it would be more of an annoyance than a boon. I'm not mucking with any of the default values though until I am comofortable with the set up. I have the new software installed and very stable, but as of yet I'm not that comfortable with the importing of the data from the old software. Once I get all that worked out, I'll iron out the rest

[Flightpath07]

Hm. I was fairly disappointed that in Ben's post above, the word "iron" did not link to a site about laundry and how to properly do it, as that would have been useful.

I tend to agree with rplass (yeah, i know; weird, right?) about the annoyances of the automatic linkage. Also, although I believe Legerd was being facetious, I more than a little believe that to be true about Marvel; so far, nobody has proved to me that it ISN'T true. Ah well, life goes on, eh?

[Le Messor]

although I believe Legerd was being facetious... so far, nobody has proved to me that it ISN'T true.

This?

I suspect Marvel had a hand in this. Knowing how we'd react to the news of the ongoing returning to a mini, they hacked AF.net and silenced us before we could say anything.

No, that's not true at all.

We said stuff BEFORE we got hacked!
Actually, we were already pretty hacked when we got hacked...
Anyone for a game of hackey?

Rob: on the 'it could be worse' side, I know somebody who paid for a professional site, and when it went up the company she bought the site from added advertising links throughout, on any remotely applicable word. 8-S

- Le Messor
"If life had a vomit meter, we'd be off the scale."
~ Joe Bob Briggs

[Phil]

Marvel put a lot into their Marketing for Volume 4 and put a decent creative team onto it.
They gave it a go, and put their weight behind it.
You can't say they didn't try.

[Flightpath07]

"We said stuff BEFORE we got hacked!"

True. But the hacking certainly purloined our ability to KEEP saying it. And, since we got issue 8 telling folks who didn;t know about us all about us...and then the site gets hacked and crashes...I'm not into conspiracies for conspiracies sake, but it seems a little 'convenient', ne pensez-vous pas que?

"You can't say they didn't try."

No, i can't. But I can say they did not like the negative reaction to their making the mini an ongoing and then immediately cancelling it. Especially when the negativity is coming from a place that one of their comics just called people's attention to.

[Phil]

and then the site gets hacked and crashes...
The site was hacked two months before #8 was released, which is where the comic mentioned us.
Dale hadn't even written his editorial when the site went down.


But I can say they did not like the negative reaction to their making the mini an ongoing and then immediately cancelling it.
I can't say that any company would like negativity.
If AF were the only title to be cancelled I'd be in agreement with you, but we were one of at least a dozen comics that got canned, amidst at least a dozen members of staff that got laid off. At least we got a resolution (of sorts) unlike All Winners Squad which got finished half way through without a finishing issue.


Especially when the negativity is coming from a place that one of their comics just called people's attention to.
Again, we were hacked before Dale personally brought attention to us.

I honestly don't think Marvel had anything to do with us being hacked; to me that's just ridiculous. Even with the negativity this site created sales and they know that hence giving us interviews and exclusives and artwork. Hell, they ALLOW us to have the alphaflight domain name.

If they were going to hack us, surely they'd have done it before the de-ongoing announcement and we wouldn't be back now or ever again?

But again, all my opinion and just posted for the sake of devil's advocate friendly banter.

[Legerd]

Okay everyone, I was joking about Marvel hacking AF.net. The site had a big enough presence to have drawn attention from any hacker who might also frequent comic book forums... or read newspapers. Remember, we got a mention in a few articles both online and off, not to mention any links we may have posted on other forums ourselves.
Besides, it was probably China. They were hacking everyone and their grandmother last year. :p

[Flightpath07]

"The site was hacked two months before #8 was released, which is where the comic mentioned us."

But the site crashed AFTER Marvel's decision to un-make it an ongoing.

I have no proof, nor do i expect to find any; I'm just skeptical of how it all came about.

[Sasquatch17]

I also did not like the "Dumb Hulk-squatch"

I did like Heather as a villain.

The story seemed to drag out but, the art and the characterizations were terrific.

Loved the new Marrina!

[DaVeO]

It was ok. Art was nice, battle seemed rushed, Shaman and Marrina barely had page time. A double sized final issue would have been nice, it would have been the least Marvel could do after teasing the readers. I'm more sad that we'll never see the full potential of this series played out and soon the Marvrel U will just be Avenger and X-Men titles.