John Byrne's Alpha Flight

"Once upon a time I received the highest royalty check ever paid. Well, up to that time, anyway." stated John Byrne on his forum a few years ago. "It was for Alpha Flight #1, which sold slightly over 500,000 copies, which was also the highest any book had sold in a couple of decades. The royalty was $29995, which I only remember because Marvel's accounting department cut the check for $2995. They'd never seen a number that big!"

Such was the popularity of this diverse, dysfunctional team of Canadian superheroes in the 1980's, that after the huge sales of that double-sized first issue, it remained a top 5 seller for the next couple of years - at least as long as John Byrne was at the helm.

Byrne first had the idea for a team of Canadian heroes whilst at college. Although born in the UK, Byrne's family had moved to Canada when he was 8 years old, and he'd lived there ever since. The first member of this nascent team was "Sentinel." He'd later be known as Weapon Alpha, then Vindicator, and finally Guardian. "The name 'Guardian' works best for him", explained Byrne. "Inasmuch as a version of the word appears in the Canadian national anthem; 'We stand on guard for thee.' "

Snowbird, too, was created during Byrne's college days, but it wasn't until he decided to create a team of characters to go up against the X-Men, that the team really crystallised.

In his first appearance in X-Men #109 in 1977, James McDonald "Mac" Hudson - "Weapon Alpha" - tried to retrieve Wolverine - "Weapon X" - for the Canadian government, it being the government's Department H who'd turned him into "a killing machine."

Weapon Alpha was unsuccessful, so he returned with a whole team in X-Men #120 & 121, in 1979. Such was the reader response to this still mysterious team of characters, that Marvel began considering them for their own book. They appeared again in the X-Men just over a year later - as well as a few other titles, such as Fantastic Four, Hulk and Marvel Two-in-One - but Alpha fans would have to wait until 1983 for the team to get their own book.

By that time, John Byrne had "shoehorned some personalities into them" and skillfully woven Alpha Flight's history into the existing fabric of the Marvel Universe, as though they had always been there.

Alpha Flight was different to other team books in that it mostly concentrated on stories about the individual characters. The team rarely ever got together, and some readers found that off-putting according to Byrne: "This was not going to be a group book, this was going to be individual issues of their own titles. And the readers didn't want it. But because of my particular frame of mind on the book, I couldn't turn it into what they wanted."

During the first year of the book, as well as the main stories, there were backup features showing the team members' origins. They were often much more engaging than the main stories, with a couple of exceptions; the Sasquatch vs. Super Skrull story (Sasquatch was clearly one of Byrne's favourites, having also utilised the character in Hulk annual #8), and of course, the death of Guardian.

The latter was skillfully set up, with Byrne twisting the knife into poor Mac by giving him hopes and dreams for the future, even as his end drew near.

Guardian's death came as a shock at the time. Marvel promoted the fact that somebody was going to die in Alpha Flight #12 - the success of the Dark Phoenix Saga still fresh in their minds - but few people guessed that it would be Guardian, dismissing him as a possibility purely because he was team leader.

After Guardian's death, the title continued in the same vein as before, spotlighting individual members of the team, but some of the spark was gone. Even the apparent return of Guardian (which ultimately turned out to be a revenge plot by an old foe) and the team's battle with the Great Beasts, fell some way short of Byrne's best work. 

One of the things Byrne excelled at, though, was creating new characters - dozens of them! When they appeared in the X-Men, Alpha Flight consisted of Guardian, Northstar, Aurora, Snowbird, Sasquatch & Shaman. In Alpha Flight #1, not only do Puck and Marrina join the team, we also learn of the existence of Beta and Gamma Flight, both of which appear to be populated by fully developed characters. I must admit when I first read this back in the 80's, I assumed that these were all preexisting characters that had appeared elsewhere. I had no idea Byrne was making it all up as he went.

Characters like Box and Madison Jeffries would go on to play significant roles in the team's future. And clearly Byrne enjoyed getting into the minutiae of how their powers worked.

Byrne's character work was also strong during his run on Alpha Flight. In fact, some of the most memorable moments are the quieter times, such as when Heather is walking round her and Mac's apartment after she's packed in preparation for their move to New York. A full page is devoted to her remembered conversations there, some of which we witnessed for ourselves in other comics:

John Byrne stayed on Alpha Flight for 28 issues. "I had a specific number of stories in mind when I started Alpha Flight. As it turned out, a couple of those stories generated other tales, so I actually remained with Alpha Flight longer than I anticipated. Even so, I realised that I was reaching that cut-off point, after which I'd have no more Alpha Flight stories to tell. So I started asking myself what I wanted to do after Alpha Flight? At one time, I would have said Thor. But Thor was in really good hands with Walt Simonson. Then I remembered The Hulk..."

Byrne and the entire creative and editorial team that had been working on Alpha Flight switched places with the team that were producing the Hulk's comic - at that time it was written by Bill Mantlo and drawn by Mike Mignola - and Alpha Flight continued in a very different direction thereafter. 

I think I carried on buying the book up until #50 out of habit, but the new direction didn't appeal to me. Mike Mignola only remained as artist on the book for two issues. It was still very early in his career, but he knew that he wasn't comfortable drawing superheroes - particularly not a whole team of them.

As for Byrne, he would only draw six issues of the Hulk, before the lure of that most iconic of heroes, Superman, would bring about his defection to DC Comics. He had become increasingly unhappy at Marvel during Jim Shooter's time as Editor-in-Chief, and even though Alpha Flight had been almost entirely his own creation, he clearly felt no great love for them: "Alpha Flight was never much fun. The characters were created merely to survive a fight with the X-Men, and I never thought about them having their own title. When Marvel finally cajoled me into doing Alpha Flight, I realized how incredibly two-dimensional they were, and spent some 28 issues trying to find ways to correct that fault. Nothing really sang for me. If I have any regrets, it would probably be that I did the book at all. It was not a good time for me."

Despite Byrne's misgivings, the first series of Alpha Flight generated enough of a following to last 130 issues. It was eventually cancelled in 1994, but then revived a few years later. Asked in 2000 if he'd seen the new series, Byrne responded, "I saw a poster of them with steroidic muscles and constipated grimaces, and thought "Okay! No need to even open an issue!""

For the writing of this article, I drew on a number of sources, as follows:

'Alpha Flight' by Patrick O'Neil from Marvel Age #2.

'Exploding From The Pages Of X-Men: Alpha Flight' by Jason Shayer, from Back Issue #83 published by TwoMorrows Publishing 

'Now Boarding On Alpha Flight' by Peter Sanderson, from Amazing Heroes #22 published by Redbeard Inc.

John Byrne The Hidden Answers by CBR Staff