Does Alpha Flight have good runs?

Remember the character on the team who had a long arc about recovering from breast cancer, and then Craig and Yost just snapped her neck just cause?

No co doesn't read comics.

>>90413874

The vast majority of Alpha Flight appearances have been utter shit.

You might or might not enjoy Byrne's introductory run, AF v1 #1-24. It might not be your cup of tea but IMO its the only run even potentially interesting.

>>90414084
surely not all of it is shit?

>>90413874
The Byrne run is decent & not the usual stuff you might expect since the team is together at the beginning then spends the next several issues on solo stories including the infamous 'Snowblind' issue.

The Mantlo run sucked, I dropped it in 3 issues.

I skimmed vol 4 a few years ago and liked it a lot more than I expected.

>>90413874
most is good, especially early stuff. But I enjoyed what I read of Pak's run too.

>>90415714
>most is good
Don't lie.

>>90415003

I can't think of a single storyline in post-Byrne v1 that was good. The art was awful, the writing was awful.

v2 was mostly new characters and I don't really consider it true-AF. Doesn't help that it wasn't any good, either.

v3 simply wasn't AF at all. Only 6 issues so ignorable. Also, bad.

There was an Omega Flight miniseries that tried to make them into the Canadian branch of the Avengers. BRB serving as their Thor, Vindicator as their IM, the Julie Spider-Woman, and US Agent as their Cap (yeah, thats not a canadian avengers team, thats just an avengers team with guardian Vindicator tagging along). Not good.

v4 is a return to the classical AF team. It was... ok. Something like 5 issues s easily enough absorbed.

And now AF is Captain Marvel's space cops team for some reason.

If I were recommending AF reads, I'd say find a collection of Byrnes v1 run, the v4 mini-series, and you're done.

Fuck the haters that shit talk Mantlo's run.

Mantlo's Alpha Flight run was the closest Marvel had to Morrison's Doom Patrol AND predated a lot of the shit Morrison ended up doing in DP.

Mantlo unlike Byrne gave a shit about the characters and made the team work as a family, whereas Byrne was trying to kill the team off slowly but surely

>>90418019
PUCK

>>90417706
that's all fucking wrong cunt face.

V2 basically ripped off the X-Files. It's half classic members half new ones. Really shitty, with a ton of dropped plotlines (Box being kidnapped and brainwashed evil, who the teen version of James Hudson was, Diamond Lil being taken prisoner/forcibly experimented) that ended up having to be resolved in other books)

>>90418365
>>continued

V3 ran TWELVE issues and basically was a huge fucking attempt to turn Alpha Flight into JLI. Sasquatch was the leader and the bulk of the team were either new characters or legacies (female Puck, new Sgt Mapleleaf) and sometimes good guy sometimes villain Nemesis. First arc was pretty shitty but the final arc resolved the dangling plotline involving Flashback (time traveler who's future self was killed in Byrne's last issue) that involved Sasquatch's team time traveling and changing history to various degrees before they fix shit, save Flashback, but end up with TWO versions of classic Alpha Flight roster in the present (the regulars and a version from around Alpha Flight #1-9(

V4 was dog shit: edgy versions of James Hudson and Marina, Heather Hudson turned evil so they could justify keeping James as Guardian/team leader, and a god-awful storyline where Canada elects a Tea Party type government which went about arresting all of the liberals, putting them in concentration camps so that they could be brainwashed into turning into right wing assholes.

(for context for how bad it was, Alpha Flight v4 started out as a mini series but was bumped to ongoing before the first issue came out. When fans abandoned the book in droves due to the overall shittiness of it, Marvel resolicited it as a mini-series and canceled it with issue #8

Also you fucking lie about what Omega Flight was about. Basically Sasquatch (declared as surviving Bendis slaughtering Alpha Flight) and Talisman are summoned to form a new Alpha Flight team with Spider-Woman (Julia Carpenter), USAgent, and Weapon Omega (the guy who killed Alpha Flight) to be a new team to stop American Super villains now flooding into Canada following Civil War. The first arc had the new team team up with Beta Ray Bill, to stop the Wrecking Crew and the Ancient Beasts, with the book retconning a half-assed connection between BRB and the Ancient Beasts.

>>90415714
Pak's run had a lot of total bullshit in it, though.
Like turning Marina into some kind of "Alien Pride" punker, or making Heather a murderer.

>>90418102
Byrne treated Puck like a worthless midget.

Mantlo gave Puck his backstory and pathos via retconning his shortness as a curse of hubris and making him fucking Indiana Jones

>>90418365
All those storylines were orphaned because the book got cancelled though.

>>90418019
>>90418365
>>90418394
>>90418414

Holy crap, someone getting this defensive over *Alpha Fight* is hilarious.

I'll just offer this as the typical Mantlo page. Way way too many speech and thought balloons, with pointless angst cranked up to 11. If this is one's cup of tea so be it but IMO it was poor comicbook storytelling in the 80s and it hasn't improved with age. Alpha Flight after Byrne was filler material, a book that didnt know what to do with itself, helmed by hacks phoning it in.

>>90418019
Oh yeah, because making Puck some guy in constant pain because his dwarfism is caused by some evil ancient curse or whatever the fuck instead of just being, you know, a plain old dwarf was fucking genius, wasn't it?

>>90413874
It doesn't matter, they're only a prop for Carol Danvers now.

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>>90418476

>Asks for good Alpha Flight comics
>Apparently there hasn't really a good one, only less shitty ones that OP might like depending on his taste and mood.

No wonder they are Carol Danvers puppets now.

Volume 1 of Alpha Flight had a lot of good stuff to it. Byrne's run, Mantlo's run (as mentioned, is kind of Dom Patrol-like in a good way, plus has early Mignola and Lee artwork), and Hundell's runs are all worth reading. Stop reading around #87, as it goes downhill from there.

V2 is hit or miss. Plot never amounts to anything but there are some neat twists (Sasquatch is an actual Sasquatch filling in for the real Sasquatch) but Steve Seagle basically never pays anything off and as mentioned, you'll have to track down issues of Wolverine and the Weapon X series by Frank Tierra to get any closure on the dangling plotlines.

V3 I will defend as underrated. Pretty funny and probably would have been better received had they used the core cast.

Omega Flight is also good for what it is. A shame it ended up being a mini-series, as it had a lot of potential.

V4 is just horrible but has pretty artwork.

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Puck's daughter was cute! CUTE!

Fuck you Bendis for killing her off, I swear on me mum I'll do the same to your waifu one day

>>90418874
You can't kill Jessica Jones or Kitty Pryde. Their power is too great! Cullen Bunn tried to bring her back, but was shot down.

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Great Beasts were the coolest thing to come from Alpha Flight. I think they'd be good as a supernatural focused team. Marvel has always been weak on the supernatural side of things compared to DC. They've tried in the past with Ellis' Hellstorm and Druid books, and with Mystic Arcana, but in Marvel "Magic" is just treated as another source of power and not a theme for stories.

God Cops. When some cult is trying to resurrect an ancient evil, you call Alpha Flight. After all they have a Shaman, a Sasquatch (functionally a Wendigo), and an Inuit demi-goddess on their team. Puck for moxie. Can do without the Wonder Twins and whichever one of the Hudsons is not currently dead or evil.

>>90419069
That basically was the whole gist of the Mantlo run.

Pretty much 99% of the big bads from the Mantlo run were supernatural villains (Deadly Ernest, Pestilence, The Great Beast, Black Razor) and body horror themed (Scrambler, Goblyn, Marina's alien husband and the pod creatures that nearly killed Heather's dad, and also Black Razor and Deadly Ernest)

Just read Mighty Captain Marvel, the Yaas Queen made Alpha Flight great again

>>90418562
>>90419958
Carolfags should be put in concentration camps and gassed.

>>90414084
thanks

>>90419958
Yaas!

But read ANAD Captain Marvel first.

>>90413874
Byrne's run was the best thing he ever did and after that it just kind of coasted in the same basic manner, not great but not bad. One of those eighties books that got me into comics...

>>90418915
>Cullen Bunn tried to bring her back, but was shot down.
That sucks. I'd really love a mini series of Puck and Puck II being an ass-kicker father/daughter adventurer team that fight monsters and villains and get in wild bar brawls and shit.

The Byrne omnibus just came out and is on sale for 50 bucks online.

It's not bad but anything post Byrne is pretty bad.

>>90418521
lol at Heather explaining what the H in Dept H stands for mid sentence

Mantlos run was way ahead of its time. His problem wasnt that he had ideas for the team. It was he had so many ideas and spent very little time doing anything interesting with those ideas. And, as someone showed, he mustve been paud by the word because EVERY panel on EVERY page had EVERY characters thought and word balloons filled with them. It was so much you couldnt even see the art for the most part. If he had slowed things down, pacing-wise and cut out half, (or more) of his text his run could have been the best. Instead its the most frustrating and controversial. Walter as Wanda? Almost Admitted Gay Northstar? And more. It couldve been good but the writer ruined it when he began to write.

>>90418019
Mantlo wrote some fucking AMAZING comics.

Alpha Flight was not one of them though....

>>90418439
>Byrne treated Puck like a worthless midget.

The fuck are you talking about?!? Byrne made him Marvel's Bruce Wayne, a guy who went around the world learning everything & everything he could in spite of his dwarfism.

Mantlo made him a cursed Highlander...