Yes, Comics Feature #42 is the one you're thinking of.
Yes, Comics Feature #42 is the one you're thinking of.
Awesome point, Chris. Never heard it expressed like that, but as i think about it, I would have to agree with you.When Mantlo started introducing young mutants like Purple Girl and Manikin and Goblyn, I felt like Mantlo was trying to write a Canadian X-Men/New Mutants book instead. It's like he couldn't decide what the team was about.
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It's always a tricky one for a writer coming to a pre-existing book, especially a team one; you don't want to ape the previous writer(s) stories, yet you don't want yours to be uncharacteristic. You want to put your stamp on the book, yet you don't want it to be unrecognizable.
A lot of the time bringing new characters in solves that.
As a writer, an attitude I keep having to remind myself of - and I don't always do it well - is 'Is what I'm doing to make me look smart, or is it what's best for the story?' If the former, and it hurts the story, I get rid of it. If the latter, I keep it.
Of course, I've never taken over anyone else's work before.
Bringing in new characters is more often than not the former, and it often does hurt the book; if you replace all the existing characters, you end up with something unrecognisable to the fans. Often, that's not what they read the book for.
I've seen this many times on a comic - this isn't just a slight against Mantlo for Alpha Flight. It's a slight against all the other volumes except v4, as three examples among many.
That in itself doesn't make it bad, either - see under Giant-Sized Uncanny X-Men #1; but you need to be careful. Coming in with an attitude of 'I have to make the previous writer look stupid' is not being careful.
Then again, replacing all the characters isn't my primary gripe with Mantlo. He didn't suddenly do it all at once, but slowly, organically, over time. And, frankly, I like his new characters - Kara, Laura and Goblyn, and DreamQueen (though mostly under Hudnall)...
~ Le Messor
"If Barbie is so popular, why do you have to buy her friends?"
[QUOTE=Phil;93557]She can now leave Canada.
Her passport finally came though?!
Mine did... actually, it's been through for a while. But you just reminded me...
I can see why he would aim for something like THE NEW MUTANTS, because it was (also) off and on successful. But I was simply not a fan of Manikin. I didn't mine Goblyn - but the origin was pretty weird, how it tied to - pardon me for possibly getting the name wrong - Laura. With the twin thing. (Come to think of it - it's just dawned on me - that Goblyn/Laura have a VERY similar origin to two popular mutants that came out MANY years later - Penance/M. In both cases, you have one that's normal (Laura/M), and the other that is more primal and not even really able to speak (Goblyn/Penance). Ironic, that originally, I loved Penance and M - but when it was later revealed, their origin - the whole Penance thing went down hill for me. I remained a fan of M, later, because Peter David did a great job writing her in X-FACTOR.
Peter David usually does a great job of writing anybody.
(I'm re-reading Young Justice, and loving it again.)
"Organically"? This cuts to the heart of the problem with Alpha Flight#s 29 through 66: very little happened organically. Very little happened plausibly. Very little happened logically.
I like Pestilence and DreamQueen; they are interesting, worthy adversaries. However, I think it would have been better if the post-Byrne creative team(s) had started out very soon after taking over (3 to 6 months) with its own characters.
(1) Several things happened to Jeanne-Marie between the time that Walter experimented on her (vol. 1# 17) and when she couldn't touch her brother without negating their powers (# 29): psychic death by Somon (#24); receiving part of Walter's essence (also # 24); having her ribs broken/(bruised?) by Dark Guardian (# 26), and being traumatized in the void (# 27). Picking and choosing (or worse neglecting and ignoring) previous events was probably the key reason the Mantlo era doesn't have internal consistencies.
(2) In AF# 31, "Nemesis" said she killed Deadly Ernest, but it was actually Judd who sliced him up; gray-haired "Nemesis" dissolves into dust having fulfilled her mission, something she didn't do when she "killed" Deadly Ernest the first time (vol. 1 # eight).
(3) Scramble...Madison is going to nominate Lionel for Alpha Flight [a] after Lionel had turned just about everybody in a hospital into monsters, [b] when Madison himself wasn't even an Alphan yet, and [c] when no one except Madison saw Lionel "cure himself" by touching his helmet (in # 30)! It's dubious how much Madison actually "saw", as disfigured as he was at the time.
Last edited by Garry/Al-Fan; 02-20-2014 at 04:03 PM. Reason: There's a lot more, and that's just the 1st three issues after the Crossover
Once upon a time, they exploded from the pages of The X-Men. For a moment, they were "Canada's answer to The Avengers."
They were ALPHA FLIGHT....
...once upon a time.
Mine, too.
What if Lara "Purple Girl" Killgrave, Whitman Knapp, and the Derangers had been introduced at the beginning of the Mantlo era (within 3 to 6 months). Original Alpha Flight was ready for a hiatus/vacation/sabbatical at the time of the Crossover, anyway. Not saying the new characters would have had to "rescue" the old team [like Giant-Sized X-Men or Alpha Flight volume 3], but just have the characters take the stage without damaging the established characters...I think that would have worked out better.
Instead, what # 29 through # 50 did was milk the original characters in an excruciating (and contrived) way, raking everybody over the coals in the process.
I was done caring with # 55.
Last edited by Garry/Al-Fan; 02-22-2014 at 11:31 AM.
Once upon a time, they exploded from the pages of The X-Men. For a moment, they were "Canada's answer to The Avengers."
They were ALPHA FLIGHT....
...once upon a time.
You know, I think that's part of the problem. There really wasn't much of Alpha Flight fighting ... The Masters of Evil, Omega Flight, whomever - it was a lot of stories that focused on the specific characters. But not in a good way. Not in a way that advanced the characters. It was more of a, "How badly can I torture and destroy this character and their life?" Essentially making it more difficult for the next writer, or even the next story, to progress, because these characters were so freaking tortured and ruined, that you couldn't even CARE what was happening anymore.