Tom Brevoort-Alpha Flight news (or lack there of)

[Flightpath07]

MistressMerr, I respectfully disagree with pretty much everything you said. However, you are entitled to your opinions. Please respect my right to mine, despite the fact that they do not jive with yours. Thank you.

BTW, a vendetta is "a blood feud between families or other parties." That requires two parties. I do not recall Alpha Flight, in any of it's three volumes, or in Omega Flight either, taking any shots at Marvel head offices, or trying to kill anybody there...

[Phil]

People - let's play nicely or not at all.

[mreeez]

Okay, as frustrating as their treatment over the past few years has been, this "MARVEL HATES ALPHA FLIGHT AND IS OUT TO DESTROY THEM" vendetta theory is utterly ridiculous. Guess what? If Marvel doesn't want an Alpha series to ever happen? They just won't make one! They aren't going to go out of their way to specifically kill off a bunch of random C- and D-listers, that's just dumb. Marrina was killed off because someone wanted to tell a Namor story to tie him in further with the X-Men, and his Alphan ex-wife who's been a dangling plotline and as good as dead for years was a prime target. Lil was killed off because they needed a random mutant, you don't see fans of the younger generation of mutants up in arms with conspiracy theories because Onyxx died too, do you? And if possible, those kids have been treated even WORSE than Alpha Flight has, there just happens to be more of them! Madison's increased relevance made her an even better choice (and you conveniently ignore that, of course, because Marvel actually using an Alpha Flight character, one who's been relegated to limbo for YEARS, in a prominent role doesn't jive with this anti-Canada supervillain you've decided they are).

There will always be characters that aren't in the A-list, and those are the ones who get crap piled on them when writers need sacrificial lambs for their stories. Alpha Flight is firmly in that category. It sucks, but it's the way it is. Marvel has given Alpha Flight chances, rebooting the title THREE TIMES since its cancellation, but none of them took. Creatively, they screwed the pooch on a couple of them, but those were mistakes, not part of some grand scheme to pound them into irrelevance. Chill oooout.

Maybe Alpha will get their day in the sun once again. Maybe they won't. The nature of the business means it will always be unpredictable. Until then, enjoy all the great stuff we've already gotten over the years and take what you can get, going forward. I know opinions were mixed, but, bittersweet as it was, that Lil/Mads Nation X 8-pager was one of my favourite stories to come out of the X-Men in a long while. And it never would have existed if this supposed Alpha Flight jihad had any real bearing.

I'm with you on this one. It's not that they don't want a Flight title to succeed, it's that they don't think one will succeed.

With all of the bad writing and retcons and deaths and rebirths in AF, they have become somewhat of a joke that current writers have tapped into in that way (Fraction comes to mind). For them to be viable again, they have to be portrayed as 'cool' or interesting which they have not been for years. I thought an interesting spin on the roster, as with Omega Flight, was a good way to go but to get a good Flight book with some of the classic Flight characters in it, they are going to have to be built back up and show a new generation of readers that AF characters are not just punch line characters. This will take time to do but it has to start with the current writers of other books showing them in a positive light like Van Lente does. Maybe then we can get a Flight book that will satisfy the hardcore readers and bring new ones to the table.

[Le Messor]

One thing really disturbs me about that Winter Guard cover, a problem that goes back to Alpha.

One of the things that always attracted me to Alpha is not that it's set in Canada, but that it isn't set in the US. I'm not American, and don't want to read a bunch of 'America is the Greatest Nation On Earth' stuff.

So why did Omega Flight, and now Winter Guard, both have a Captain America type? Is it part of the post-911 jingoism that a non-American team must have a patriotic American hero?
(And, yes, I do know enough of Bucky's second coming history to understand his place in the team.)

Or is it just a coincidence?

- Le Messor
"Education is what remains when we have forgotten all that we have been taught."
- George Saville

[MistressMerr]

One thing really disturbs me about that Winter Guard cover, a problem that goes back to Alpha.

One of the things that always attracted me to Alpha is not that it's set in Canada, but that it isn't set in the US. I'm not American, and don't want to read a bunch of 'America is the Greatest Nation On Earth' stuff.

So why did Omega Flight, and now Winter Guard, both have a Captain America type? Is it part of the post-911 jingoism that a non-American team must have a patriotic American hero?
(And, yes, I do know enough of Bucky's second coming history to understand his place in the team.)

Or is it just a coincidence?

- Le Messor
"Education is what remains when we have forgotten all that we have been taught."
- George Saville

It's an interesting point, but if you mean the Red Guardian, the Winter Guard's always had a Red Guardian on the team, he's Russia's answer to Captain America and has been around nearly as long. There's nothing American about that guy at all, he's like their Guardian.

[Le Messor]

It's an interesting point, but if you mean the Red Guardian,

... y'know, I guess I do.
I'd only seen the thumbnail, and thought it was Bucky. All those stars and stripes confused me. Way to ruin a perfectly pointless rant!

Also, I read a comic with Red Guardian the other day, and she looked nothing like that (she was a Defender at the time, I believe).

- Le Messor
To the Blue Raja: "Y'know, you have every other colour in here. You could at least work in a little blue!"
- Mystery Men

[MistressMerr]

Way to ruin a perfectly pointless rant!

Also, I read a comic with Red Guardian the other day, and she looked nothing like that (she was a Defender at the time, I believe).

My bad. XD

The Winter Guard seems to go through their members like candy, that Defenders issue was probably five Red Guardians ago by this point.

[cmdrkoenig67]

One thing really disturbs me about that Winter Guard cover, a problem that goes back to Alpha.

One of the things that always attracted me to Alpha is not that it's set in Canada, but that it isn't set in the US. I'm not American, and don't want to read a bunch of 'America is the Greatest Nation On Earth' stuff.

So why did Omega Flight, and now Winter Guard, both have a Captain America type? Is it part of the post-911 jingoism that a non-American team must have a patriotic American hero?
(And, yes, I do know enough of Bucky's second coming history to understand his place in the team.)

Or is it just a coincidence?

- Le Messor
"Education is what remains when we have forgotten all that we have been taught."
- George Saville

Hi Mik,

I really don't believe it's a post-911 thing...Most Government-run/funded/etc teams have a flag bearer of some sort, since they are just that...Government teams. The Avengers is (of course) an American/UN-sanctioned team, but keep in mind Captain America hasn't always been a member.

The Winter Guard (formerly The People's Protectorate, I believe) has been around for many years and Red Guardian appears to have been a member since the beginning (although, it may have been different men in the uniform over the years)...Even the once-Government-sanctioned mutant team (which confusingly, now seems to have merged with their former enemies in the Winter Guard), the Soviet Super Soldiers had Vanguard (with his Hammer and Sickle).

Germany had Hauptmann Deutschland (Captain Germany, now called Vormund) on it's govt team (The Schutz Heiligruppe).

Dana

[cmdrkoenig67]

My bad. XD

The Winter Guard seems to go through their members like candy, that Defenders issue was probably five Red Guardians ago by this point.

it may be closer to 8 or 10...LOL!

Dana

[cmdrkoenig67]

BTW: Again...Sales for Omega Flight (these numbers are from CBR and I'm not totally sure of their accuracy)...

Omega Flight 1 58,093
Omega Flight 2 57,221
Omega Flight 3 55,660
Omega Flight 4 52,253
Omega Flight 5 48,883

OM# 5 still had far more readers than many of the "should be canceled for low numbers" books selling now, Losing a bit less than 10,000 readers since it's first issue (but still well above cancellation numbers).

Marvel execs would kill for a book selling at the numbers above right now.

Dana

[MistressMerr]

BTW: Again...Sales for Omega Flight (these numbers are from CBR and I'm not totally sure of their accuracy)...

Omega Flight 1 58,093
Omega Flight 2 57,221
Omega Flight 3 55,660
Omega Flight 4 52,253
Omega Flight 5 48,883

OM# 5 still had far more readers than many of the "should be canceled for low numbers" books selling now, Losing a bit less than 10,000 readers since it's first issue (but still well above cancellation numbers).

Marvel execs would kill for a book selling at the numbers above right now.

Dana

And again, it was losing THOUSANDS of readers with EVERY issue. When there were only five issues, and they had the benefit of being a tie-in to something, that's not a good thing. The comics that are selling those numbers now have been HOLDING those numbers for some time now, and the rest are being knocked off one at a time. Those are certainly numbers that we can be proud of, but they are NOT enough to sustain an ongoing.

[Le Messor]

I really don't believe it's a post-911 thing...Most Government-run/funded/etc teams have a flag bearer of some sort

Hi Dana,

My misplaced rant wasn't about a flag-bearing hero (I read Alpha Flight, after all!) it was about what I thought was a U.S. flag bearing hero on a Russian team (so soon after one on a Canadian team!); but I'd mistaken him for someone else. There was no US flagger.

- Mik
"Given time, a generally accepted solution to this problem will evolve, as it has in the past for other issues, only to be replaced by the next issue, which no one has even dreamt of yet."
~ Andrew Lawrence

[Phil]

BTW: Again...Sales for Omega Flight (these numbers are from CBR and I'm not totally sure of their accuracy)...
OM# 5 still had far more readers than many of the "should be canceled for low numbers" books selling now, Losing a bit less than 10,000 readers since it's first issue (but still well above cancellation numbers).

But did it sell those numbers because it was a limited series and casual fans knew they'd only be committed for 5 issues and not a long expensive slog?

[mreeez]

And again, it was losing THOUSANDS of readers with EVERY issue. When there were only five issues, and they had the benefit of being a tie-in to something, that's not a good thing. The comics that are selling those numbers now have been HOLDING those numbers for some time now, and the rest are being knocked off one at a time. Those are certainly numbers that we can be proud of, but they are NOT enough to sustain an ongoing.

I may be off in my assessment on this but I think a major reason for the 10k drop by the end was the re-write to make it a mini. That seemed to stretch out the first arc and drag the book along. Also, one of the gripes I repeatedly heard about the book was the lack of Beta Ray Bill which seems to have happened because of the re-write. I think there were a lot of non-Flight people out there that were drawn to the book not only for the Initiative tie-in but because of the line up including some heroes like Beta Ray Bill that readers don't get to see in a regular basis and not getting BRB pretty much at all in the first few issues probably caused people to drop it especially knowing it was a mini anyway.

[-K-M-]

Yeah there was supposed to be a lot more BRB, as we were going to see his human mother introduced and such.

I know a lot of people who don't buy minis as often times once their done their not referenced again in another book and thus forgotten.