by Josh Powell, Editor-at-Large

Official Description:
For years, Alpha Flight has stood as the premier super-team for handling superhuman threats to their native Canada. Recently, the anti-mutant organization Orchis has banished mutants from Earth, garnering support from nations all over the world, including the Great White North. That makes the many mutants who have served on Alpha Flight over the years fugitives, leaving their human teammates to enforce the new law of the land…

Alpha Flight was my favorite book for a while in the 80’s in the middle of John Byrne’s heyday, right before his defection from Marvel to DC for the post-Crisis (the first one) relaunch of Superman.

Alpha Flight were originally created mainly to be a complication from Wolverine’s shadowy past as a… Canadian government operative? (in which capacity Logan appeared for the first time in 1974 throwing down in Hulk #180- then 25 cents, now about $30K, if you can find it).  As Byrne put it, Alpha Flight were just supposed to be a one-shot team “capable of surviving a fight with the X-Men” when they showed up in Westchester looking to extradite Wolvie back to Canada so he could continue making the world safe for hockey and maple syrup.

As it turned out, ‘surviving’ was exactly what many of Alpha Flight couldn’t do, but they did turn out to be nearly as capable as the X-Men in the key superhero skill of getting killed but not being unduly discomfited thereby.  Team centerpiece Guardian kicked off the fun when he got taken out early (in their own annual, no less) despite having won the fight of which the aftermath led to his demise.  The founder and leader of the team not making it through their first twelve issues anticipated the modern GoT-esque “anyone can die” trend where merely being a main character doesn’t mean you’ll make it out of any given episode.  In fact, Mahershala Ali’s Cottonmouth getting killed off unexpectedly in the first season of Luke Cage on Netflix was supposed to be a tip of the cap to the end of that issue.  

Byrne didn’t intend to bring him back either- in fact a later plot point was the introduction of a villain masquerading as him, whose preposterous explanation of the manner of his alleged survival was supposed to tip readers off that something was not kosher.  

Of course, it actually blended right in with the general tone of comic-book happenings, and indeed, here is Guardian alive and well in this latest Alpha Flight relaunch, the actual manner of his resurrection having been more convoluted and even less plausible than the one previously offered.  Joining him are Snowbird (the rare demigod who is younger than she looks), Shaman (First Nations magic-user), and Puck (short badass, not available for tossing, much less slap-shotting into goals, despite the name).

Alpha Flight team muscle Sasquatch also got killed (by his own teammate, Snowbird, who is ruthless like that) shortly thereafter, but briefly managed to hold on to corporeal existence in a robot body created by another member of the team who is likewise dead, but has been seen alive and well recently by readers of the Immortal Hulk, but since the whole point of that run dealt with the fungibility of death for gamma mutates, I suppose that’s only to be expected.

But that’s all water (or, this being Canada, ice) under the bridge.  Alpha Flight have got bigger problems these days, the team down to just four members with ‘squatch off fooling around Behind the Green Door and the balance of the team being unavailable due to persecution because… they were MUTANTS and the Marvel Universe public has decided that powers and maybe a freaky look are all well and good (the occasional Civil War aside) but the origin of said powers better not be being born that way and having them bust out round puberty because that sort of thing is just too fifth-column for comfort.  Any honest young lad might run into a radioactive critter or get bathed by cosmic rays trying to beat the Russkies to the moon.  That sort of thing is just bad luck.

As a matter of fact, since they are government-funded, directly under the control of “Department H”, sort of the S.W.O.R.D. and S.H.I.E.L.D. of Canada, the remains of the team is currently earning their Loonies by hunting down Krakoa-fugees who for whatever reason were unable to decamp to Mars when Professor X rather forcefully post-hypnotic-suggested it would be a good idea to do so.  They don’t feel great about it.  Feels a bit jackboot-y to do so, y’know?  But a non-mutant metahuman’s got to take orders when the government is paying the bills, even when the new department director is obviously evil and a bitch besides.  They’re used to it.  Government teams frequently clash with their attaches (see: Gyrich, Henry Peter, and for that matter Hill, Maria); it was their original disgraced ex-boss that Guardian died fighting to begin with. Naturally, their new duties bring them into direct conflict with past allies, leading to socially awkward moments that they process through violence, in approved super fashion.

That first tussle does not go well for them, but not to worry, the new director is about to bring Sentinels to this mutant fight, but not gigantic Starktech sentinels, which may be fine for southland barbarians, but they cause too much collateral damage, and in Canada, even the android munitions are polite.  Besides, the Americans think too much of themselves anyway, so she has tapped some homegrown talent in the person of Roger Bochs Jr., son of the guy who invented the robot body for Sasquatch, but who, not being either a main character of gamma freak himself, has yet to be resurrected, and may never.  Alas.  

Anyway, junior is such a chip off the ol’ Bochs that he has inherited every bit of his dad’s techno-genius as well as the congenital leglessness which was what drove Sr. into robotics in the first place.  Junior has settled for some fancy understated robe-legs to see him through.  Guardian and co have some concerns about the Bochs-tinels going berserk as AI tends to turn out poorly in the Marvel Universe (stay tuned for the World Outside Your Door) but Junior has thought of everything and has a helmet, see, that will allow him to monitor their actions from the safety of the lab and step in to shut them down if they show even a hint of going off the rails.  Everything.  Will be.  Fine.

The northern branch of Fall of X seems to be shaping up well with “On Guard For Thee”.  Ed Brisson and Scott Godlewski have a handle on the history and are integrating the characters well into the current X-Event. Tune in again next issue to see if Alpha can recover their moral compass and what the real reasons are that they hope the Sentinel program will stay (heh-heh) on ice.

Rating:
ComicsOnline gives Alpha Flight (Vol. 5) #1 “Divided We Stand” 4/5 stars (keep the stripes, eh?)

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