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A couple of months ago, I got an email from a reader ( a rare enough event, what's up with you guys?......WRITE US!!!! ) with a suggestion that got me interested. I spent a couple of weeks doing sketches, but found that I could find few areas where improvement was necessary. Most of the costumes were good enough, and I haven't had any great flashes of inspiration for any of these characters, so I looked for a different angle to work from.
So, there I was, trying to come up with some way of reworking this team of superheroes from some little country called "Canada". I hear it's the same place that that tasty bacon comes from, that we use on pizzas and the people say "eh" a lot. Hard of hearing, probably.
Now, before you folks north of the border blow a gasket ( that's the U.S. border, not the Texas border, who cares about Oklahoma ), I'm kidding. I know there's more to Canada than snow and ill-tempered moose (mooses?). In the 1980s, in the pages of the Uncanny X-Men, Chris Claremont and John Byrne introduced Canada's answer to the Avengers, the government-sponsored super-team called Alpha Flight.
The first hint was dropped in X-Men #109, when Wolverine was attacked by an ex-team mate from the Great White North answering to the name Weapon Alpha. This was James MacDonald Hudson, later known as Vindicator, then Guardian. Jamie Hudson had been sent to bring Wolverine back, on the orders of his superiors in Department H, the sponsors of Canada's official super-team. His mission brought him into conflict with the X-Men, as well and ended with him vanishing in mid-air.
It was only a year or so later, amid the developing Dark Phoenix storyline, that the actual team made it's first appearance. The X-Men, minus Phoenix, were making their way back to the United States after their separation in Antarctica, after their second battle with Magneto. Flying back to New York, by way of Japan ( I can't possibly cover all the details, here, check out Essential X-Men for a cheap source of background material ), the X-Men's flight was diverted by an un-natural storm and forced to land in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. You guessed it, Alpha Flight had decided it was time to make it's move to bring Wolverine back into the fold.
In the first appearance of Canada's premier super-team, we were introduced to five new characters and re-introduced to Weapon Alpha, now rechristened Vindicator. Among the new characters was Shaman, a real Native American shaman, using shamanic magic and items from his mystical "medicine pouch" a small leather pouch with an almost infinite variety of offensive and defensive contents. Also, there were the twins, Aurora and Northstar, mutant super-speedsters with the unique ability to generate a blinding pulse of light when they clasped hands. The powerhouse of the team, Sasquatch, a towering orange-furred man-monster with Hulk-like strength, who all but destroyed the commercial plane on which the X-Men were traveling. Rounding out the team, the aforementioned Snowbird.
When the team appeared in it's own book, for the first time, we were introduced to two new characters. One was the resilient scrapper, Puck, a dwarf who, in his secret identity, works as a bar bouncer. The other was the humanoid alien, Marrina, whose ability to breathe underwater and swim at unbelievable speeds made her a formidable addition to the team.
PIn addition to the team members introduced in the first issue of Alpha Flight, I added the combination of Madison Jeffries, a telekinetic with a special affinity for machinery, and the cybernetic power suit known as Box. Again, the details are too complex for this article, with all the changes that Box went through over the few years AF was in publication. I also included James Hudson's wife Heather, in her role as Vindicator, which she took on after his untimely death.
Visually, there's very little I dislike about most of these costumes. I actually preferred Aurora's original costume, which was a mirror image of her brother Northstar's, but I actually found it fun to sketch this version. Also, it's kinda nice to keep every character as unique as possible. One of the costumes I loathed from the start, however, is Puck's. I mean, seriously his original suit was just terrible. So, obviously, I could do something with Puck's costume, but the others I like just fine, so where's the "hook"? After sketching them for a few days, I stumbled across it, finally. What would an animated Alpha Flight look like?
Alpha Flight: the Animated Series...that could work. So, I started looking at the costumes, from the perspective of the animation model designer. One of the first I looked at, from that viewpoint was Alpha Flight's major villain, the Master.
The Master has an interesting costume, fairly basic in it's coloration and design, but distinctive enough to differentiate him from other villains. It also lends itself to the kind of simplification that animation requires.
With that decided, all that remained was to work up designs for the heroes, redesigning Puck's costume, of course.
That brings us to the "main event" of this article. You'll note that I didn't include the redundant Heather/Vindicator and I couldn't think of a good way to bring Marrina into the picture, so she's out, as well. It was fun to revisit these characters, after so long. I haven't kept up with the series through it's various incarnations, but I will always have an affection for these guys. There's something about a regional super-team that I like, guess that explains my soft spot for the Great Lakes Avengers, eh?
Well, that's all for this time. Before next months rolls around I need to work out a problem with my scanner that just decided to stop working as I was writing this. Wish me luck!
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