'The musings and ramblings of an aged comics fan'.

Well I guess you all know that Alpha Flight is due for the canning come the end of #12. I guess it was to be expected, sales were bad, no real ties to the Marvel Universe within the book and probably the fact that people don't want new, they want what they know. Now of course you wouldn't see the almighty X or any Marvel mainstay being treated with such disdain. I mean, could you imagine the Avengers, FF or any silver age character being subjected to untried and untested?

At one point in its history Alpha Flight was a regular top five comic. Of course that was when Byrne was writing the book, but as we all know by now Byrne never intended for the title to go beyond twelve issues. Lay down a little history and have the glue that holds them together go toes up at the end of the last issue. Leaving any future writer of Alpha guest appearances to work from there. However, Marvel knew a winner when they saw one and persuaded Byrne to stay aboard and write some further adventures. It never ceases to amaze me how Byrne insists that he didn't like writing Alpha and found the characters two-dimensional. This is the man who gave them such deep characters in his initial twelve issues.

Now it would seem to me, a layman in terms of the comics business, that if you are going to release a previously cancelled series you are going to want it to sell well, unless of course you never intended it to go beyond twelve issues in the first place? Then again, if we were to ask someone in the know whether it was ever intended to be anything more than a twelve issue limited, would we get a straight answer or would we receive the standard form letter that Joey DaQ is so fond of chucking our way? I wonder if Scott Lobdell would be willing to answer the question?

So what will volume three be remembered for? Well not a lot really, the first arc wasn't really much of anything, apart from a tool to casually shuffle of the real Alpha Flight into some strange spatial void. Captured by a ship that was destroyed by Alpha way back in volume one. The second arc had slightly more, but it was a nothing story, status quo was maintained and the characters received a little more depth. It wasn't until the last arc that we saw a tie to the past and a story the reader could get their teeth into to. All to late to save a book, that, if Mister Quesadas letter is too believed, had been scheduled for cancellation for a few months anyway. Now if Alpha vol 3 is to actually mean anything, then Marvel should learn from the mistakes and ensure that any future series of a previously cancelled book should stick to what made it sell in the first place. If only that was the case, New Warrior fans are looking towards volume three of that series with a little trepidation, given the Scooby Doo Mystery Machine scenario that is presently being touted. Do Marvel learn from past failures? Obviously not, do Marvel care about characters that aren't mainstays of the silver age? I'll leave you to figure that one by yourselves. So what about Alpha Flight? Well they will go back into the cupboard, to be dragged out periodically as guests, to be ridiculed by most writers and written as good solid characters by a few.

Of course we will see some Alpha characters elsewhere, Wildchildferatu, under the influence Jeffries and deeply dippy Aurora will probably appear in any future Weapon X title, hopefully written by Frank Tieri. Mister Tieri at least shows Alpha respect. Northstar looks like he is staying with the X for the foreseeable future and at least if Chuck Austen treats the rest of Alpha as jokes, he certainly (to my mind) writes Northstar with some dignity.

As for any future volume of Alpha Flight, I'm all for it, but only if it's written as Alpha should be written. Respectfully and as equals in the teeming masses of Marvel characters. Otherwise I'd rather they kept to guest appearances, written as well as Sasquatchs recent role in the Sabretooth mini.

As a closing thought, its been suggested that in regards to Alpha, people like me are closed minded and averse to anything new. That is not the case it's more that the first time I read Alpha I was hooked. I appreciate that things change, but believable change and necessary change over a well thought out arc has got to be better than the sudden changes we saw in volumes two and three. Plus, why should Alpha be subjected to such sweeping changes constantly, when mainstays always return to the status quo, no matter how disassembled they become or how much of an identity crisis they may be having?