Article: WTF Wednesdays #001

You can view the page at http://alphaflight.net/content.php?8...Wednesdays-001

Uuuuuuuh yeah I hated Austen's run. Even his other alpha flight appearance prior to this I loath......actually more then this story.

Yah, I have no idea how Austen ever got a comics writing job.

I liked the armor. AF's allowed to be badass for once. I also liked Austen's run because there was so much Northstar in it. I said this once in a private email to a little bird but here it is in public:

" At the time, I had not really been following the X-Men titles closely, only picking them up to snag the Northstar appearances around that time, so I really didn't understand why everyone was hating Chuck Austen so much. See, I was coming from a completely different direction, that of collecting Alpha Flight appearances, so I was really thrilled with Chuck Austen, maybe I was the only one??!? Here's why.

Look at New X-Men: Northstar appeared in three of his books from that series, #'s 157,163 and 164. Let's see, he did pretty well... Austen picked up on Xavier's invitation to Northstar in Uncanny #414 to join the X-Men staff in #157, then had Northstar kick some real butt in #163 when he fought Sabretooth and won, then had Northstar join up with the X-Men on an unspecified X-team. He also remembered the correct continuity with Aurora, who was last seen in Weapon X#22, and left Northstar looking for clues to his sister's whereabouts and also remembered to bring up the unpleasant incident earlier in the Weapon X series where Sabretooth attacked Aurora. So overall, Chuck Austen did a great job with Northstar in his X-Men run, got things right factually with Aurora, portrayed Northstar in a very positive light, so I was happy with the guy.

Look at Uncanny X-Men; Austen included Northstar in 15 issues!!! Plus he brought back Earthmover from the pages of Wolverine, put Heather back into Alpha Flight, and restored Alpha Flight as the anti-X-Men team that they were supposed to be when Byrne created them, when they fought the X-Men over Sammy Pare in #422. Now not every line and every page was pro-Alpha Flight in those 15 issues, but they sure got a lot of pages and I was very happy to have so many issues with Alpha Flight. Jeez, that's 18 issues Austen wrote, pretty significant. I rank him fairly high actually when it comes to Alpha Flight."

haha WTF = What The Flight .... nice!

I kind of like the armors too. Doesn't Batman have a ton of different gear? Doesn't Iron Man too? I've always thought it was weird that Alpha Flight was up in the Artic several times in just their spandex suits. I live in Toronto, which is no where near the Artic, and I'm always freezing. I can't imagine running around in spandex from September to May haha

With regards to Austen generally, I didn't mind him as much as most people.
His (adjective) X-Men run was a lot better than his Uncanny X-Men run so I wonder if there was editorial involvement or if it just took him a while to find his groove.
Some stuff he wrote was pretty bad but I definitely don't get all the venom and hatred to him.

I still don't like the armour though. Though I *think* it's more Tan's design of it rather than Austen's concept.

I had Battle Armor He-Man and Skeletor when I was a kid. Would love Marvel to make some Battle Armor Alpha Flight figures. And this little bird remembers that conversation from 2009 :)