scans_daily | Alpha Flight #106

Title: Alpha Flight #106 - "The Walking Wounded" (Marvel, 1992, 22pages)
Creators: Scott Lobdell (writing) and Mark Pacella (art)
Availability: Out of print

So...Northstar's coming-out issue.

*deep sigh*

Yeeeah. Northstar's coming-out issue...about that...

There's been a lot said about this comic. Little of it has been complimentary, and with good reason. Was it well-intentioned? I think so. One can even make the case that it was a necessary first step, stumbling and clumsy as the execution turned out. But is it a good comic? Does it stand the test of time? No. Nononono. No.

Lord, where to start?

First, there's the stiff, heavy-handed dialogue, delivered with all the nuance of a sledgehammer to the forebrain. It's a story about a baby dying of AIDS, so its being a downer is expected, but you cannot turn a page of this book without someone wringing their hands over something, and any gravity the subject in question might have is almost totally undermined by the absurdity of the situation. We get Puck, the dwarf who has a literal demon living inside of him, remarking to Northstar about the horrors of AIDS. We also have Heather lamenting all the billions countries spend in the name of defense, but so little on AIDS research, all while standing atop Alpha Flight's spiffy, high-tech HQ, paid for with a few hundred million of those billions. And, of course, Northstar and Major Mapleleaf screaming their opposing POVs on the responsibilities of homosexuals in the public eye while engaged in a wall-shattering brawl that carries them out of a hospital, across a public street, and through a supermarket. That last might have made a great Fry and Laurie sketch, but playing it straight doesn't work so well.

Even aside from the fact that most readers weren't likely to be impressed or enlightened by anvilicious moralizing being pushed on them for pages at a time, AF #106 was simply a pile of bad writing. It would be generous to even describe some sections of dialogue as conversation, as so much of this issue is simply the writer pontificating on social issues while using the characters as mouthpieces. (And this was a problem Northstar was going to run into a lot following his coming out.) The writing reduces the book a nothing more than a fight scene held in place by the comic's own sense of self-importance, resulting in a story that takes itself so seriously with so little good reason that the only entertainment value to be found in its pages is of the point-and-laugh variety.

Then there's the art. I don't think I have adequate vocabulary to describe all of the anatomical fail going on below. Looking at these pages, you could assume that the artist had never seen adult human beings -- let alone children -- and was just working off of Rob Liefeld's written descriptions of how people are put together.

In addition to this being a bad story told badly with bad visuals, there was also the not-insignificant issue of the cast seeming to have left their common sense and typical personalities in their other pants. Social Services up in Canada are presumably in the habit of awarding guardianship of critically ill children to imperious adrenaline-junkies in spandex. The proper response to having just thrashed the man who was about to crush your adopted child with his bare hands is to drop to your knees in the street and give the would-be-killer a hug after bonding over the plight of homosexuals. And, of course, the rightful place of a man who's just caused millions of dollars in damage and endangered dozens of hospital patients in his drunken, grief-stricken rampage isn't a well-guarded cell, but standing at the bedside of the child he was cheerfully prepared to murder as she passes on.

You get the idea -- this is a ridiculous, steroid-pumped After School Special in comic form.

That said, there was one bit of plausible characterization in there, and that's Northstar's willingness to take responsibility for an abandoned child, since he was in the position of being unwanted and alone as a child himself, until someone who had no obligation to care for him took him in. I don't agree entirely with the portrayal -- I think Northstar is way too heart-on-his-sleeve here -- but he is capable of more empathy than his team tends to give him credit for, and I can buy him stepping up to be a guardian to a dying kid, even if the only thing he could ultimately do for her was give her a name to be buried under after her family threw her away.

And so, by request:

Mr. Hyde is making nuisance of himself in Toronto. During the fight, Northstar gets swatted away from the main battle and into a side alley.

Gee, thanks "Uncle Walter". The kid's already dying, you think she needs nightmares on top of that?

*insert one long, ridiculous fight scene that's been rightfully mocked to death for the last twenty years*

And, eventually, the inevitable:

There you go,

dorksidefiker. Hope I didn't just replace one bad taste with another. ;)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only | Expand All

From:

nonners

Wait, this is his coming out issue? Does he come out earlier/later in the issue or something?

From:

northstarfan

He shouts out "I am gay!" between punches in the omitted fight scene. A few pages later, there's a faked newspaper sheet about him holding a press conference where he comes out more publicly.

Bringing the crack since December 2003

Alpha Flight #106

Links