Text of Marvel Age #31 interview with Bill Mantlo
Originally published in Marvel Age #31, October 1985
BILL MANTLO TALKS ABOUT
Alpha Flight
by Kurt Busiek
One of the biggest surprises of the year is that Bill Mantlo and Mike Mignola, the creative team on THE INCREDIBLE HULK, and John Byrne, writer / artist of ALPHA FLIGHT, are switching assignments. Starting with HULK #313 and ALPHA FLIGHT #28, John will be bringing you the adventures of Marvel's anti-social green goliath and Bill and Mike will be chronicling the exploits of Canada's greatest heroes. We collared Bill Mantlo in the offices one Monday afternoon shortly after we heard the news, to find out what's in store for the northern stars.
I know it's a little soon for you to have worked out all your plans, Bill, but can you tell us anything about what's coming up in ALPHA FLIGHT?
We have a lot of ideas. We're not sure exactly how soon eadh [sic] idea is going to be put into the process. Essentially, my feeling about ALPHA FLIGHT is that John did a spectacular job. That's straight from the shoulder - I think it's some of the finest writing I've read in a long time. But I think you had to read it consecutively. You had to sit down as I did, and read ALPHA FLIGHT #1-20, in order to get a grasp on the organic maturation of his characters. It was extremely difficult to follow what he was doing on ALPHA FLIGHT from issue to issue, because he never really concentrated on the team. He concentrated on individual members and their problems. And after awhile, even I, who read it religiously, lost track completely of who was in the book and who was a member of ALPHA FLIGHT, and what the team was.
Our first job is going to be to pull the team together, to give them a reason for existence, a location, a headquarters. Probably they will be funded by the government. Whether that is a generous gesture on the part of the government, or whether there is some subterfuge involved in forming this team again, is something that we're going to develop.
Once they're held together as a team, they will act as a team. If one of them has a problem, that problem will involve the whole team, instead of specific individual adventures as you've seen in the first two years of ALPHA FLIGHT. The whole team will go solve Snowbird's problem, or find out what Snowbird's problem is. The whole team will go on a Puck adventure, instead of Puck going off and leaving the team at home.
Some characters will remain, some charcters [sic] will go. I think John has already dealt with Sasquatch - he will not be returning. Northstar will probably meet his demise, as something from his past surfaces. Snowbird is going to think that she's dying, but that's actually a prelude to some major changes in her life and character. A major villain, tentatively called Pestilence at this point, is going to be introduced. I don't think the book has had a major villain except for the Master. We're not sure what to do bout Marrina. We've got a lot for plans for Box, the robotic member of Beta Flight. He's going to be reintroduced.
I want to deal with Beta and Gamma Flight, and Omega Flight, find out who these people are, and . . . Where is the government raising these people with bizarre powers, and what is it raising them for, and what does it mean that now they're re-funding Alpha Flight? Is it because they're using Alpha Flight as a control group, or do they want to study Alpha Flight and find the secret to their powers and create new super heroes, or what? We don't know. That's all stuff we want to find out.
They will become more closely linked to the Marvel Universe, in that there will be a few cross-overs. There's already an ALPHA FLIGHT / X-MEN project in the works that Chris Claremont and John Byrne did. We will pick up on elements of that, and may have them meet other Marvel heroes, although not too many.
There'll be an international sense. The book has been predominantly located in Canada so far, with one or two trips to the United States. But Canada is closer to, say, the Soviet Union or Greenland or Europe than we are, in many ways. You go right over the top of Canada to shoot an ICBM from the United States to the Soviet Union. We'll probably do stories that deal with that notion of pan-globalism, and how Canada's tied up with the international scene.
So there's a lot of ideas - we just haven't put them into specific stories yet. Guardian will be back, in some form. Not the Guardian you know and love, but . . .
That'll be a big development certainly.
I think that's where we're going. In fact, we're here today to discuss the nuts and bolts of what happens now, to discuss the cross-over where John and Mike and I will actually switch titles, our first issue of ALPHA FLIGHT will hit. Apparently the book is doing remarkably well, and has a loyal following. I'd like to win back people who bought a team book, and then saw it devolve into indivdual [sic] stories, and I'd like to win new readers who might not like super hero books, but are going to find that this is a different kind of super-team book. It's not THE AVENGERS or THE FANTASTIC FOUR or THE X-MEN. It's a completely different slant towards telling super hero stories.
Love,
rplass
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