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Option38.com > Comics > 80s : You Is HERE
Alpha Flight #10 (1983) In 1983, Alpha Flight looked like a sure hit. Spinning out of the red-hot "Uncanny X-men" with strong connections to the increasingly popular Wolverine and piloted by John Byrne, it looked like Marvel's newest franchise. Sure, some of the characters appeared ridiculous...but from afar the X-men also appeared ridiculous in their v-neck costumes. Alpha loked like a different type of superhero team. Alpha Flight was a different type of superhero team...a really bad one. "John Byrne: writer" is a phrase that usually strikes fear into comic fans. Having Byrne write your book was similar to having Galactus land on your planet. But the guy was an accomplished artist and these were his characters with no history to manipulate or mangle. Alpha Flight was his sandbox. The title got off to a decent start, but subsequent issues began to focus on individual characters. Instead of seeing this new group of superheroes teaming up and beating up villains, fans got solo stories of unknown characters running into lame villains and forgettable action. Typically, a team book would go for a few years before a certain character got his/her "solo" issue. Career comic team members the Vision, Wolverine, Hawkeye and even the Thing went YEARS before their "solo" issues. A team character would have to prove popular with fans before the creative team spotlighted them. Alpha Flight didn't give fans that chance... it went ahead and forced fans to follow solo stories, no matter how weak they might be. This issue is one of those forced solo's, as it focuses on Sasquatch, the big hairy orange man-ape. In his civilian guise of Dr. Walter Langkowski, Sasquatch is being pursued by the Super-Skrull in the wilderness of Canada's Mount Logan. Ahab vs. Moby Dick, it ain't. In flashback, we're told how Langkowski and some colleagues were conducting energy research, when they unknowingly plucked the Super-Skrull from an energy field, believing he was the Fantastic Four's Thing. Super-Skrull killed the other scientists and chased Langkowski into the mountains. Walt changes into Sasquatch so the fisticuffs can ensue.
The "hypnotized" Sasquatch works with Super-Skrull to build an energy transmitter. Sasquatch tricks him and manages to disperse the Super-Skrull across the skies, once again. Sasquatch leaps away, but worried that he unleashed his "savage" side. Back in his home in Vancouver, Langkowski is startled to find hotsy-totsy team member Aurora there. Bookending the Sasquatch/Super-Skrull are two mini-features. The first four pages of the issue include team leader James Hudson (Guardian) moving into a New York apartment, with a brief cameo by Captain America as Steve Rogers. Guardian daydreams about finally being in New York and possibly rubbing elbows with Spidey, the Avengers and the Fantastic Four. Hudson was transferred to New York as part of a scheme by his nemesis Jerry Jaxon and Marvel's standard "evil corporate punching bag" Roxxon Oil. Two issues later, Guardian accidentally blew up... The back-up story is another part of the "Origins of Alpha Flight" series, focussing on Northstar. Northstar is recruited by Hudson and the Canadian government, but he's a weenie and insists on speaking French. At least Guy Gardner was a funny prick. Hudson recounts Northstar's early days and how he used his mutant super-flight powers to become a ski champion. Hudson mentions: "you had it all: fame, money and women...although you didn't seem too interested in the women". A dangling plot thread that was left open until Northstar was revealed to be gay in the early 90's..although fans had speculated for years. Judd Winnick is jealous. Someone thought of a gay storyline 20 years before his crappola hits the stands. Northstar meets his long-lost sister Aurora as the story ends. As the "main event" of this story, the Super-Skrull/Sasquatch fight is insipid. How they're able to suddenly build a mechanical energy construct in the middle of nowhere is reasonably funny. If I remember correctly, Byrne was tickled pink at having his own creations mingle with the rest of the Marvel Universe. That'd explain the incongruous Cap cameo and the sudden appearance of the Super-Skrull. Byrne had a trademark of always including "inner turmoil" in his characters. That's included in Sasquatch's "savage" uncomfort, and Aurora's flirty actions at the conclusion (she basically walks out of Walt's bedroom and jumps onto him). Like later artists who tried to be "writers", John Byrne made the mistake of thinking he could write the words that surrounded his pictures. I've always been a big fan of Byrne's old Marvel art and he was an inspiration to me. I would try to draw the "Byrne arm pose"-- one of his typical poses, where a character's forearm would be raised at a certain angle above the waist. I also consider him to be the distinctive Skrull artist. That may not seem like much, but nobody else drew the lumpy-chinned Skrulls like Byrne did. He's still bumping around today...only he's become more noted for his writing rather than artistic style. For all the work he put into it, Byrne left Alpha Flight within a year and the book deteriorated even more. Over the years, characters would constantly die, be redeveloped, modified, switched back, re-animated, then die again (example: Guardian returned from the 'dead' years later and proceeded to die TWO MORE TIMES). I think Byrne wanted to establish Alpha as a separate, viable entry into Marvel's superhero world, and deliberately distanced the book from any X-men coattails. An admirable idea for a creator, but it flopped. If Alpha Flight had debutted 10 years later, the team's X-men connections would have been amplified. The book went into the direct-only market around 1986 and finally died in early 1994. Marvel has resurrected the idea twice, since. Both have been greeted with...mild aloofness.
Summary: A big hairy, hippie-looking ape vs. a green alien in a pink jumpsuit. Flaky
elf-chick jumps hairy ape at end.
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Sasquatch becomes pissed off and slips into "savage" mode. Super-Skrull
uses his "hypno-power" to bring Sasq under his control. "Savage" mode
prevents Sasq from being controlled, but he plays along with the Skrull.
Being a reliable supervillain, Super-Skrull elaborates on how he managed to come back
to Earth. After being trounced by Spider-Man and Ms. Marvel in an old
issue of "Marvel Team-Up" (coincedentally or not, pencilled by John Byrne),
Super-Skrull was turned into energy and zapped back to the Skrull throneworld.
It took him awhile, and before he arrived, Galactus had arrived to eat the Skrull
throneworld (which occured in an issue of "Fanastic Four", also pencilled
and written by Byrne. Hmmm). Since then, Super-Skrull had bounced around the galaxy until
another energy force grabbed him.