Comic Review #38: Alpha Flight #106 (1993)

 

Yeah I updated 3 times in a day. My blog is getting close to it's 200th post so expect a lot of posts in the next week or two because man I want to hit THAT milestone really badly. Also somehow just me and port have commented over 500 times on this blog. Can you believe that? I can but just because I like telling portnoyd he is wrong. However I feel he will not tell me I'm wrong about this comic book that feels cliche even for the time it came out. This is the infamous Northstar comes out comic which is almost 30 years old. I am old and my bones will turn to ash probably before I even finish this review. I hope they do because this is not a very good comic book.

Alpha Flight for those who are wondering is a Canadian super hero team from the Marvel Universe. Wolverine used to be a member. They appeared in X-Men several times during the Chris Claremont/John Byrne era which was a fantastic era for the X-Men and those comics are great. They got their own series that was written and drawn by Mr. Byrne and was very very good. Then around issue 30 or so Bill Mantlo takes over and it was still pretty decent. I mean I would still pick them out of the dollar bin if I saw them there. Then I think James D Hudnall takes over and it becomes a weird mess and not a lot of fun to read. Then it was a mish mash of writers until Simon Furman from the Transformers UK comic took over for the final set of issues. It ended in 1994 with 130 issues. The last few years of this series are really rough. 

I will never get how Scott Lobdell gets a job. I will never get how he has fans. I know every thing ever has fans but this is a guy who does not deserve them. I have not read a single comic book by this man that I have ever enjoyed. He's a poor comic book writer and this might shock some would rather read Rob Liefeld over Scott Lobdell. Yes I had to bold all that because it needs to be said. This comic is just another in a long line of works he's done that I find to be very poor and incredibly unmemorable. I've never seen anything else from the artist of this comic but I really do not like it. Even with the help of better artists, his stuff still looks ugly as hell. I'm sorry Mark Pacella but I am not a fan of your art.

This story starts out with a guy watching home movies about his life. They talk about how he was a hero during the Second World War fighting alongside the American heroes like Namor and Captain America. We then hear about how he went underground with his fight against crime in the 1950s and quit in the 1960s when he has a child. He's seen hugging the TV. Oh and I just forgot to tell you the man's name. He was known as Major Mapleleaf and I'm sorry but not a single person will ever make me care about a character with a name as that stupid. I know Alpha Flight was Canadian but Jesus christ do you have to be so on the nose about it?

We then see Alpha Flight fight Mister Hyde. One of my favorite villains. I love when he's teamed up with Cobra. He really doesn't do much here except get his ass kicked by Sasquatch. Remember when Sasquatch became a lady? Comic books are weird and I love them. Northstar is punched away from the group and he finds a baby. I mentioned this comic was about Northstar coming out and if you guessed correctly this baby has AIDS. I know it was a big thing in 1992 but reading this for the first time in 2021 made me go "wow this is cliched. I'm glad gay people get to have stories that don't involve a deadly disease.". He names the baby Joanne Beaubier. Northstar is a speedster and he's a jerk. Just like Quicksilver. I love those two. I don't love this comic.

Major Mapleleaf fights Northstar because he's pissed that the baby with AIDS is getting respect and love from the media when his gay son was left alone and forgotten. I'm glad gay people get to tell stories with these characters that aren't so depressing along with being cliché. Oh and Northstar comes out to Major Mapleleaf. That's the first person he comes out too. Yeah, that could have been the entire review but I like to make port have to read all this shit. He probably skips over a lot of stuff. Oh and the baby with AIDS. It dies because this comic book is emotionally manipulative and not very well done.

FINAL VERDICT: There has been a big push lately to let gay people write gay characters and black people write black characters and such and such. I am for it for the most part. I don't think any person who doesn't want to be shoehorned into being the black guy who writes black characters should be. I also think some one who wasn't gay that had talent could still write gay characters and stories. Still having gay people write gay characters and stories mean that they could be more true to life and that's always fun, but I still think anyone should be able to write these characters which somehow comes up as an argument with comics gate weirdos because they think you mean that gays should write gays and only gays which isn't true, what's true is I just want someone better than Scott Lobdell and his emotionally manipulative AIDS Baby stories to fuck off. (a few months prior to this issue DC had the Pied Piper, a Flash villain who became hero come out as gay and it was written wonderfully by William Messner-Loebs.)  Port will be wrong about what he says on this. Like a jerk. He loves Scott Lobdell and Bone claw Wolverine.