Alpha Flight vol. I, issue #106

For those of you who don’t know, Alpha Flight is a Marvel Comics Canadian superhero team created by writer/artist John Byrne, who, along with writer Chris Claremont, popularized the character of Wolverine during their early 80’s collaboration on Uncanny X-Men. Alpha Flight first appeared in the pages of that book, their mission to take Wolverine back to Canada, since the Canadian government was miffed at Wolverine, in whom they had invested much time and money turning into an operative of their intelligence service. Despite that initial hostile encounter, the team eventually graduated to its own title, written and drawn initially by Byrne. Among Alpha Flight’s members was a French Canadian speedster named Jean-Paul Beaubier, codenamed Northstar, about whom various hints had been dropped that he was gay. This sort of thing could not be addressed in the Marvel Comics of the mid-80’s, when their title first debuted, but in 1992, writer Scott Lobdell decided to have Northstar explicitly out himself, in an issue that received quite a bit of mainstream media attention.

Scott Lobdell was the first comic book creator I had ever met (My mom agreed to take me to the Marvel Comics offices after my art school admission interview when I was 17, and he was in the elevator), and naturally, with the unusual amount of light on it, I decided to pick it up, despite not being a regular reader.

It’s one of the worst issues of a comic book ever written, and ever drawn.

The issue starts off with an elderly but very fit-looking guy (in comics all the major male characters look like body builders) watching a television retrospective on WWII superheroes, one of which is a ridiculously-named Major Mapleleaf, a name that started as merely a derisive nickname with which one of the X-Men addressed Alpha Flight’s leader, Guardian, during their initial encounter with him. But now, as we made to understand, this was actually a Canadian superhero, dressed as a Canadian Mountie. You have to read it to believe it. The elderly guy does his best Elvis impression by destroying the TV set. If you’re asking what the connection is between the old guy and this Major Mapleleaf (try saying or typing that superhero name without laughing), maybe this comic book will be too complex for you. Meanwhile, Northstar, finds an infant in a garbage can, takes it to the hospital, and tests reveal it has AIDS. Northstar is shown leaning against the tyke’s incubator, his face in shadow, as we’re supposed to understand that he’s devastated by this revelation. The news of the baby’s condition is spread, and as a result, the aforementioned TV-abuser shows up at the hospital in his Major Mapleleaf (snigger, snigger) costume to kill the baby, and ends up in a typical superhero vs. superhero slugfest with Northstar. It’s during this slugfest where the two heroes bear their souls (which is the customary way comic book superheroes make such revelations), with Mapleleaf (chuckle, chuckle) revealing his rage over the media’s fawning over this baby because his own son, who died from AIDS, “didn’t rate” because he was gay, and Northstar revealing that he himself is gay.

Now I don’t mean to slam Scott Lobdell, not alone because I met him, but also because I’ve genuinely enjoyed his work on titles like X-Men and Excalibur. But if I have to explain to you what’s wrong with the writing in this issue, maybe I didn’t describe it well enough. Maybe Lobdell was hampered by editorial censorship, or at least in part by some of the limits inherent to the medium. I think, for example, that establishing Northstar’s devastation over the baby’s condition would’ve been more believable if they had the baby found apparently healthy, perhaps on Northstar’s or Alpha Flight’s HQ doorstep, ala Three Men and a Baby, had Northstar become attached to it over the course of several issues as a background arc, and discover, after the baby showed signs of illness, that it had HIV (not AIDS, since it would’ve lent credence to the notion of it initially appearing healthy). I’m not trying to minimize the tragedy of finding a sick baby, but in terms of characterization and reader emotion, I simply do not buy the portrayal of Northstar being as crushed by this kid’s plight one bit. The story never really seemed to care about this kid as anything other than an inanimate plot device. I mean, did we even find out at the end of the story if the kid died? If we did, it was so forgettable that I don’t remember. Then we have the idea of this Mapleleaf guy (heh, heh) deciding to attack the baby for the ridiculous reasons he gives, the stereotypically contrived hero vs. hero battle, and Northstars’ utterly contrived outing of himself, and the issue comes off as a complete waste.

And the artwork? Ugh.

Penciller Marc Pacella and inker Dan Panosian were probably, without exception, the WORST artists of the Jim Lee/Rob Liefeld/Todd McFarlane Stardom period of the early to mid 90’s, and the worst style-copiers ever. When doing portfolio review at conventions (talk about the blind leading the blind), Pacella’s only advice to aspiring artists was to simply ask them what every other previous reviewer had said, offering no original advice except to tell the artist to take artwork of their favorite artists and pin it up around their drawing board to copy what they were doing, arguing that by not doing so (as if there aren’t artists working whose style isn’t a direct imitation of another artist), the aspiring artist would “starve.”

Between Pacella’s and Panosian’s total ignorance of how to correctly apply cross-hatching (even the cross-hatching of their style emulatee, Jim Lee, while gratuitous and arbitrary in spots, is far better than these two), their insistence on drawing ever single character like a bodybuilder (even the dwarf PUCK, for crying out loud!), their lack of anatomical knowledge, and inability to convincingly illustrate a setting (Peter David noted in his dead-on column on the issue that the only furniture in the baby’s hospital room is the incubator he’s kept in, standing alone in an otherwise room large enough for a basketball game), or convey any sort of life in characters, the books was just awful. If we had gotten at least one well-rendered look at that baby, the reader might’ve been able to empathize with it. Perhaps the most ridiculous aspect of the art was the gratuitous pinup shot of Northstar, Puck and Wolverine in a bar at the end of the issue. No doubt meant to convey that “Hey, the gay guy’s okay in our book, because he’s chugging beer with a macho character like Wolverine,” the characters hold what look like entire pitchers of beer. I don’t know if this was Lodbell’s directive, but I mention under the art because it looks so profoundly silly.

To read Peter David’s examination of the media brouhaha over the issue, Marvel’s skittishness when the media tried to get a quote from them about it, and the opportunities that the issue presented that were totally wasted, you can read his archived column from 1992 at his site here. For a look at some of the artwork from the issue (and similar sentiments over it), you can read a short piece on it here.

I've heard about this issue. Seems like I've read a review of it before. Probably in an issue of The Comics Journal. At any rate, I haven't heard anything good about it.

Then again, I never really liked Alpha Flight. I think I read something like the first five or six issues of the original run of the series, then ditched it. There wasn't anything special about it or the characters. Not enough to justify me wasting my hard earneds on it, anyway.

But then again, I don't like Scott Lobdell's work. Admittedly, I haven't read much of it. Seems like he did a "Master of Kung Fu" story arc in Marvel Comics Presents that I really disliked. I definitely didn't like the two issues of X-Men I've got that he wrote. (And yeah, they were the two issues where Shang-Chi appeared.) I'm glad you like Lobdell, Luigi. I just don't. I mean, he's not Howard Mackie bad. (Mackie's among the worst comics writers I've ever encountered.) But Scott's work does nothing for me.

As for the artists, never heard of them. Are they even in the business anymore?

Nice review, though. Maybe we ought to have a thread for reviewing individual issues or arcs on these boards?

Excelsior!

Thanks, Benn.

In '92, it'd been a few years since I'd actively followed the Comics. When the news broke that a major superhero announced he was gay, I was surprised that all the hoopla was about Northstar; I could have sworn that I'd read a story years before where he was "outted." I suppose that it was just "strongly hinted" rather than stated, but I'd remembered it as being certain. So I wondered why the media was reacting so hysterically so many years later.

There is a website that lists which characters are gay, bi, lesbian, etc. You can find it here.

I remember reading somewhere that there was speculation that Killraven was gay. Apparently, no one's followed up on that idea.

Excelsior!

Anyone here read the "Omega Flight" miniseries?

I liked it. The USAgent is recruited by Tony Stark to head up this Canadian superteam after the tragic loss of most of the members of ALpha Flight.

I like Beta Ray Bill, he's a bit of a horse-like alien that is a "brother" of the mighty Thor!