confirmation that marvel hates omega/alpha

[Flightpath07]

Le Messor wrote - True. It's human nature. So why should AF fans be any different? I believe at least three members of this board are human.

Is this a researched conclusion? I was thinking more like 1 1/2, tops.

Barnacle 13 wrote - I fully support everyone's right to be disheartened by the recent news, in fact it's definitely taken me time to put my negative thoughts aside. But I'll give it a chance and hope that it leads to something more, though I'm not sure what that is with most of my favorites dead.

I agree. I will get the series. I will be happy that at least somebody out there wants to do something that has slightly to do with what I consider to be the team called Alpha Flight. It just seems a real travesty that some higher-ups had to decide to kill off my faves first.

( I don't think I will ever understand, or support, that decision ...)

[Le Messor]

Le Messor wrote - True. It's human nature. So why should AF fans be any different? I believe at least three members of this board are human.

Is this a researched conclusion? I was thinking more like 1 1/2, tops.

Okay, you caught me.
I made it up.

- Le Messor
"89.34934% of all statistics are made up on the spot."

[Flightpath07]

Ah, Le Messor...
How great it must be to live in Australia!

There, or so I have heard it said, everything that you throw away comes back to you.
That pretty much guarantees that you will see a resurfacing of Alpha Flight then, right?

[Canucklehead]

Ah, Le Messor...
How great it must be to live in Australia!

There, or so I have heard it said, everything that you throw away comes back to you.

Ex-girlfriend hell.....

[Le Messor]

There, or so I have heard it said, everything that you throw away comes back to you.
That pretty much guarantees that you will see a resurfacing of Alpha Flight then, right?

That was a lot of fun until I tried throwing away v3...

[Flightpath07]

There, or so I have heard it said, everything that you throw away comes back to you.
That pretty much guarantees that you will see a resurfacing of Alpha Flight then, right?

That was a lot of fun until I tried throwing away v3...

Ouch... you guys are making my surgery incision ache! Stop it, stop it...

[Garry/Al-Fan]

The bottom line is selling units. That's business, not personal. That said, I somehow don't think Marvel's anti-AF instances--of which there are many through the years--are strictly business...With Marvel and AF, I think the personal bias is anti-Byrne....Mantlo's respectful use of AF following Byrne's departure only seemed to last as long as Byrne did with Marvel. The gutting of AF seemed to coincide with the Byrne/Shooter blow-out centered around FF....

I would call the Mantlo era a lot of things, but respectful is not one of them.

Let's start with NORTHSTAR:

" 'So far the least interesting to me are Aurora and Northstar. John played them up the most, and really went heavily into their origins, but he made so many changes in them that it's almost impossible for me to say what the norm is any more.' " - Bill Mantlo quote from article "The Big Switch" by Peter Sanderson in Amazing Heroes # 76, page 29.

Mantlo's very first issue sets out to establish Alpha Flight as a team by having Gary Cody show up and refund the group at government expense. Not only doesn't Northstar object to being on the government's dole, he must have completely forgotten that (a) he has his own place, and (b) he has his own money, enough to finance AF if he wanted to. Second, Northstar stays with the team after finding out that he and Aurora cancel each other out only to make snarky remarks about Heather's leadership. Neither Northstar nor Aurora should have been so distraught or clumsy or stupid that they could not eventually see their effectiveness was severely limiting to their teammates.

AF# 31: Puck gives a recommendation on behalf of AF, Madison offers Lionel membership into AF even though he isn't even a member himself, and Northstar chimes in about Lionel resuming his medical career after he has attacked AF and turned the the hospital staff into monsters. What proof did any of them have that Lionel was a real doctor?

And Aurora didn't really do much except drive Roger Bochs insane (and survive getting slapped by a Sentinel) all the way up to the point she was written out of book. She wasn't even drawn that attractively either, IMO.

"About Mantlo's first issue, John Byrne says, 'I think it's great. I've only seen the one plot, but he has captured each and every character. He knows exactly who those people are.' " - "The Big Switch", pages 24 -25.

Puck. He didn't have consistency within the Mantlo run itself, let alone with what came before. If Puck is so non-powerful, how can he keep RAZER inside him, throughout his disembowlment and recuperation?

"PUCK - Eugene Judd, bouncer. A normal man, in the sense that he doesn't have any superpowers. Abnormal, in that he's three-foot-six and weighs about two hundred pounds...He is a super-fighter---trained in kung fu, savate, and anything else that comes along. He's real good at it." - John Byrne quote from "ALPHA FLIGHT" by Patrick O'Neill in Marvel Age #2, second and third pages of article.

Sasquatch, brought back as a woman. Snowbird, killed! By Heather!!
Michael, runs off like a whiney ***** ("I can't trust my own instincts and I can't take orders from you.").

"Summing up what he intends to do with Alpha Flight, Bill Mantlo concludes, 'I feel that John laid the foundation. I'm going to try to build the house.' " - from "The Big Switch", page 29.

Respectful? I think not.

[Flightpath07]

Hey, those are some great quotes, Garry/Al-fan, thanks for those!
I am bust trying to dissect how Mantlo ruined AF myself right now on my blog, and it sure does seem that the further into it he went, the worse things got, doesn't it?

[cmdrkoenig67]

I agree, Garry. Even though Mantlo said he wanted to build a house on the foundation Byrne started...It's much more like Byrne built the foundation and the house of Alpha, but when Mantlo came along...He brought his wrecking ball with him. He started swinging at the house, smashing parts of it away, till there was not a lot left of Byrne's house.

Mantlo had done some amazing stories in Rom, Micronauts and other books, but his Alpha Flight run seemed to be nothing more than the ruination of what came before (the Byrne AF).

Dana

[Flightpath07]

I agree, Garry. Even though Mantlo said he wanted to build a house on the foundation Byrne started...It's much more like Byrne built the foundation and the house of Alpha, but when Mantlo came along...He brought his wrecking ball with him. He started swinging at the house, smashing parts of it away, till there was not a lot left of Byrne's house.

Mantlo had done some amazing stories in Rom, Micronauts and other books, but his Alpha Flight run seemed to be nothing more than the ruination of what came before (the Byrne AF).

Dana

In my opinion (for what it is worth), issue 50 of volume one was the worst AF comic ever conceived. In one fell swoop, Mantlo ruined pretty much every charcater. And things got worse from there, with his complicated love triangles (puck-heather-madison) - actually, you can almost throw Logan in there too, since mantlo made him out to be in love with Heather too! The way he treated (mis-treated) Puck was an outrage. For the most part, his Beta Flight was an abysmal failure - he tried so hard to make the comic a family feel, with Madison and Heather as the parents, Walter/Wanda as the gender-confused uncle/aunt, and then the kids all hanging around. Somewhere along the way, Mantlo lost sight of the fact that AF already was a family, Byrne originally created them that way, but Mantlo destroyed one family and tried to build his own warped idea of a family from their ashes. It didn't seem to work too well.

I guess the guy wsn't a total failure. he wrote some decent stories and all, and he tried to keep the comic alive. But his respect for John Byrne and John's creation, like that of the rest of Marvel, was not there. And it showed.

Nuff said.

[Ottawa Renegade]

yup, marvel is a corporation. Yup, marvel is interested in the bottom line. Yup, there has been a lot of fan boy/girl *****ing lately. However, Marvel thrives (both commercially and critically) on the attachment that readers feel to characters. As a result, it is in their best interest to treat fans with respect.

Exactly. Marvel doesn't hate OF/AF. They just don't have a clue as to what the fans want. Or if they do, they have no idea as to how to execute it.

[-K-M-]

Sadly it was recently released that Luke Cage is going to be getting an on-going in '07. So much for saturation.

[Flightpath07]

Sadly it was recently released that Luke Cage is going to be getting an on-going in '07. So much for saturation.

Luke Cage, in my opinion, was always nothing without Iron Fist.

I think Dolly freakin' Parton has a better chance of landing an ongoing comic book series than Alpha Flight does...
sigh...

I'm not disgruntled. I'm not. I'm just really seriously gruntled.

[Le Messor]

Every Marvel comic I've picked up in the last 2 weeks has had an advert for Omega Flight... that's more advertising than Volume 3 of Alpha Flight got.

I didn't see them. Which comics did you pick up? If I have the same ones, I'd like to look them up. (Or, when I get them later).

Okay, this week's batch had a couple;
Bullet Points #5,
Uncanny #484

a half-page ad, above that ridiculous anti-marijuana ad. (Like you need to smoke marijuana to not want to walk your dog!)

- Le Messor
"Did I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself."
- Walt Whitman

[Ottawa Renegade]

Oh yeah. Squadron Supreme: Hyperion vs Nighthawk has that one too.