Alpha Flight Villains

[Le Messor]

The thing with Alpha villains, the thing you have to remember, is that almost all of them have real personal ties to the team.
Not tacked-on retcon ties (like Apocalypse, Sinister, and every other 90's X-Men villain), but actuall ties to the origin (like Magneto).

Jaxon caused Mac's 'defection' (from AmCan to the government). Omega were once their apprentici.
The Master was part of Marrina's experiment.
Gilded Lily was an aunt of Sasquatch.
etc...

As to favourites:
The DreamQueen! Looks by the Joker, power and attitude by Freddy Krueger... Gotta love her!
The Master and the Great Beasts, of course.

Gilded Lily is underused.

I like Wendigo, but one of the things I like is that he's a major AF villain, somebody they've faced time and time again, but he's never appeared in their title.

- Le Messor
"Ambition is like a frog sitting on a Venus Flytrap. The flytrap can bite and bite, but it won't bother the frog because it only has tiny little plant teeth. But some other stuff could happen, and it would be like ambition."
- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey

[bigbloo]

My favorite AF villain of all time is Gilded Lily. *shiver* Cool name. Great back story. Incredible visual. Too bad she's dead. But wait, this is Marvel for chrissakes! No one is really really dead.



Of course i liked all the AF villains. Even the ones in vol 2 and 3.

[darc_light]

There's a new Alpha-related bio up at the Appendix, Chinook

http://www.marvunapp.com/Appendix3/chinookaf.htm

[Tawmis]

The Master: He, to me is the "Magneto" for Alpha Flight. He's the one foe who is intelligent and powerful - and sometimes, when well written - like Magneto - he almost sounds rational!

DreamQueen - While I hated most of Mantalo's run - the creation of Dreamqueen was pricely. And on top of that, who ever did the concept art for her did an amazing job. All around, visually, and power wise, a great, great character.

The Great Beasts: I liked their early appearances, but over all, seem very limited. But their early pop ups were pretty cool.

Now the one thing I have to disagree with - people stating Llan was a favorite villain!? I just don't see it. He seemed poorly written, and he looked like a complete... well, ... like a kid designed the concept. Llan, to me was one of Alpha's WORSE villains... (it just look like they wanted to have a lot of death and decay and murder...) I guess the way he was written... I just never got into Llan... couldn't believe he was as powerful as he was... You get those characters, that when they appear you know it's trouble (Magneto, Kang, etc) - Llan... never did it for me.

[Tawmis]

I wouldn't mind seeing the Wrecking Crew put in another appearence. I guess they have some tenuous connection to Beta Ray Bill and Loki and Loki would still seem to have a score to settle.

Does the entire crew have their power back, or is it still all combined in the Wrecker himself?

I believe his crew has it again... because Thunderball (during a VERY bad storyline in Avengers) was attacking Captain America (while he was defending a woman who would go on to become Captain Britian before adopting yet another name) - and Thunderball was citing Shakespear... *shakes head*

Who lets some of these people write these books!?!?

[kozzi24]

Calibre was a rotten, one-shot villain who had a second fifteen minutes of fame. He might be amusing to use as a lackey for a thinking villian, but again -- how much history are you looking to explore?

Calibre has appeared three times. The last was in the Vol 1 Brass Bishop story.

The first two appearances were both harbingers to Delphine Courtney's Omega Flight, and to me, that indicates there's a lot that can be done with the character. Who was he, and where did his armer come from? Were the timing of his appearances coincidence, or does he have ties to Delphine or Jaxxon? I see a lot of potential in the character, particularly if his armor originates from Hudson's creations.

[Northcott]

Calibre has appeared three times. The last was in the Vol 1 Brass Bishop story.

The first two appearances were both harbingers to Delphine Courtney's Omega Flight, and to me, that indicates there's a lot that can be done with the character. Who was he, and where did his armer come from? Were the timing of his appearances coincidence, or does he have ties to Delphine or Jaxxon? I see a lot of potential in the character, particularly if his armor originates from Hudson's creations.

Ooooh! Good catch! I missed the third. Man, I'm never going to forget how giddily happy I was to see Mac back, scrapping it out with calibre and acting more like the character we saw in the old X-Men issues.

You know, a lot of people refer back to Byrne as their favourite Alpha writer -- and I did love those first 12 issues -- but he wrote an ongoing series like a mini-series. Characters that were perfectly designed to be iconic, powerful (in terms of symbolism and practical power both), and enduring were chopped up to make for a great 12 issue run instead of building them for the long haul. That's a damned big mistake.

The more I think about it, the more that Claremont stands out as my favourite Alpha writer. Sure, he only handled them in a very limited fashion, but it was in the X-Men that we saw Mac scrap it out with some of the X-Men's powerhouses alone. We saw Snowbird, Shaman, and Mac team up with Wolvie and Nightcrawler to take on the bloody Wendigo, of all creatures! We got to see Alpha actually act like a team in spite of their bickering; strong and competent, taking on the X-Men at the height of their power and fighting it out to a draw.


Getting back on topic: I agree there's story potential in Calibre, even if that's only because he's shown precious little before. He's mostly a blank slate. A goofball in armour with a big attitude. He doesn't seem the type to have created the tech himself, so that leaves us wondering where he got it -- and the story behind that alone has great potential.

What if it's the Master at work? Manipulating some socially-misaligned individual into wreaking havok at strategic times and places with technology that the Master considers inferior, while the rest of the world views it as high tech? Disguising his movements behind the scenes. A shoot up here, an explosion there: change real estate values, alter the net worth of companies, change public perception of certain regions, foster fear in the right time and the right place -- all in a game of grand manipulation behind the scenes. Have him be a true evil genius, manipulating society on many levels, accruing power in many forms, making him a genuine threat instead of just some bearded nutjob in dancing tights with an over-powered sentient tinkertoy at his disposal.

Some folks may have guessed that the ideas above aren't so off-the-cuff as they might seem.

[Powersurge]

I was once told by an Iron Man fan that Calibre had some history with good ol'Shellhead and wasn't some no-name in a second rate suit of armour.

I'm also glad to see that Claremont has began to get some credit for Alpha Flight and their initial success. IMO Byrne is over-rated as a stand alone of AF. Put him together with Claremont however and SHAZAM!! The stuff of legend is born.

[-K-M-]

Chinnok would be pretty cool, he still has some unsolved mysteries about him

http://alphanex.alphaflight.net/index.php/Chinook

[kozzi24]

I'm never going to forget how giddily happy I was to see Mac back, scrapping it out with calibre and acting more like the character we saw in the old X-Men issues.

Getting back on topic: I agree there's story potential in Calibre, even if that's only because he's shown precious little before. He's mostly a blank slate. A goofball in armour with a big attitude. He doesn't seem the type to have created the tech himself, so that leaves us wondering where he got it -- and the story behind that alone has great potential.

What if it's the Master at work? Manipulating some socially-misaligned individual into wreaking havok at strategic times and places with technology that the Master considers inferior, while the rest of the world views it as high tech? Disguising his movements behind the scenes. A shoot up here, an explosion there: change real estate values, alter the net worth of companies, change public perception of certain regions, foster fear in the right time and the right place -- all in a game of grand manipulation behind the scenes. Have him be a true evil genius, manipulating society on many levels, accruing power in many forms, making him a genuine threat instead of just some bearded nutjob in dancing tights with an over-powered sentient tinkertoy at his disposal.

Some folks may have guessed that the ideas above aren't so off-the-cuff as they might seem.

Sorry to disagree, Ed, but it does strike me as a bit off the cuff to link Calibre to the Master. Your Master's motivations can be applied to many other characters, including the Wizard, Doc Doom or even Machinesmith.

I guess I always saw a direct link between the Master and Calibre based on the timing of his appearances. The Mac that made you giddy was Delphine Courtney. I saw Calibre as a distraction to Alpha as Courtney advanced her plans.

There's also sublte design links between Calibre and the original "Groundhog" version of Mac's suit. Byrne is quite capable at subtlty...a lot of people never consciously noticed the uniformity in Alpha's stars and triangles costumes in the designs of NS, Aurora, Shaman and Snowbird, linking to the sharp angles in Guardianb's Maple Leaf.

I didn't come up with a tenuous Calibre-Delphine's Omega link just to link the character to someone, but because it makes sense according to the published stories.

Maybe Calibre's armor is largely low-tech...but couldn't it also contain some ulta-high tech linked to Courtney? I see the potential as going all the way to the possibility that the armor contained D.C.'s backups...it is through the Calibre armor that Delphine could restore herself despite Jeffries' thorough destruction. The Calibre software contains Courtney's essence while the hardware contains the raw materials.

[DelBubs]

I think it was stated that Caliber was busted out of prison after his first run in with Alpha. I always took it that he was probably broken out by the original Omega so Delphine could do her grand entrance as Mac.

I can see the similarities between the original Groundhog Armour and Calibers armour, but his was a poor rip off. I remember an Avengers story from many years ago where the Avengers where off to a meeting and an armoured villian was outside the mansion ranting and raving. She Hulk smacked him about a bit while the rest just walked on in. This villian immediately comes to mind when I think of Caliber.

As for the Iron Man connection, I wouldn't think so as I don't recall Calibers name being mentioned during the original ;Armour Wars'.

[Northcott]

Sorry to disagree, Ed, but it does strike me as a bit off the cuff to link Calibre to the Master.

Just so we're not tripping over communication lines here -- "off the cuff" generally refers to spontaneous thought. I'm pretty sure it wasn't. You can disagree if you want, but I don't think you're one of the other voices in my head.

But, yeah, I can see how it came off that way. It's not like I put much forethought into most of my posts, after all.

Your Master's motivations can be applied to many other characters, including the Wizard, Doc Doom or even Machinesmith.

And pretty much every other Machiavellian would-be world dictator. That's the point. Archetypes play the strongest when you play to their strengths.

I guess I always saw a direct link between the Master and Calibre based on the timing of his appearances. The Mac that made you giddy was Delphine Courtney. I saw Calibre as a distraction to Alpha as Courtney advanced her plans.

I'm aware of the "fake Mac" story. I think that was my first big disappointment as a comic reader. It was a Hell of a fake-out. Like you and many others, I was under the impression that his second appearance was Courtney's doing.

There's also sublte design links between Calibre and the original "Groundhog" version of Mac's suit. Byrne is quite capable at subtlty...a lot of people never consciously noticed the uniformity in Alpha's stars and triangles costumes in the designs of NS, Aurora, Shaman and Snowbird, linking to the sharp angles in Guardianb's Maple Leaf.

I think Byrne had moments of subtlety in his writing, and perhaps even a few in his art... but his artwork wasn't really given to subtlety. Byrne has two types of technology that he draws: sleek and shiny, or clunky and full of lines. That's a simplification, but you'll find that he uses similar visual patterns for his sleek tech and his clunky tech. What he did with Calibre is a standard. I really don't think he put more thought into the character's design than it took him to sharpen his pencil that day: after all, he was originally just a fill-in character. Anything we come up with after the fact in terms of story are just (hopefully) amusing rationalizations.

Maybe Calibre's armor is largely low-tech...but couldn't it also contain some ulta-high tech linked to Courtney? I see the potential as going all the way to the possibility that the armor contained D.C.'s backups...it is through the Calibre armor that Delphine could restore herself despite Jeffries' thorough destruction. The Calibre software contains Courtney's essence while the hardware contains the raw materials.

I think that's a very neat touch. As solid a rationalization as any for her/its return.

Out of curiosity -- I'm drawing a blank. Can anyone remember if it was stated precisely who designed and built Courtney's very smooth-looking tech and imbued her with a considerable AI?

[cmdrkoenig67]

Scientists at Roxxon, ed...That's all I know.

We're naming enemies of Alpha Flight, huh? Lets see...

Omega Flight...Oh wait...

Nevermind. :P

[Northcott]

Scientists at Roxxon, ed...That's all I know.

As much as I'm sick of big conspiracy theories dropped on the government, I still dig them with fictional corporations. That Roxxon had the resources and know-how to build something like Courtney tells me that they had someone of super-human intellect working behind the scenes. Regular Joes don't build super villain robots.

We're naming enemies of Alpha Flight, huh? Lets see...

Omega Flight...Oh wait...

Okay, that was funny.

[-K-M-]

How about the return of Lionel Jeffries? his resurrection can be easily explained due to his powers and I think he had untapped potential.

http://alphanex.alphaflight.net/index.php/Scramble