The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 391: Alpha Flight v.1 #12, July 1984

What is it about comics from this era? "AND ONE SHALL SURELY DIE!" (I wanted to add a couple of exclamation marks after that title - one hardly seems sufficient. I wonder what it was that spurred such hyperbolic language - X-Men comics of the era were similarly scripted, same with Secret Wars and Avengers. Marvel really went for the unbridled, and unapologetic, melodrama in the early 80s.

Byrne has long had this strange association with the Doom Patrol, though I'm not certain why. His reboot in the early 2000s was almost universally decried, but aside from a couple of covers, I can't think of any other reason to link him to the series. That said, the interactions between the members of Alpha Flight in this issue hearken back to the Drake/Premiani run of Doom Patrol, in that the team bickers and fights amongst themselves almost as much as they fight supervillains. Though every single one of the team members has acknowledged that their signal device would not have been used if the situation weren't dire, they all take the time to have a bit of a scuffle. And if Aurora had had her way, there's a good chance she and Sasquatch wouldn't have come (well, to the meeting, anyway) at all.

So what do we do with the death of Guardian? As one of the most prominent Canadian superheroes of the time, especially as a character spinning out of the X-titles, killing off James Hudson is a bit like killing off Steve Rogers - and while that has been done at least a few times over the decades, Canada, especially Marvel U Canada, doesn't have that many patriotic heroes to spare. Then there's also the problem of Byrne basically illustrating a flag-burning, which I think, again had it been the star-spangled Avenger, might have raised a bit of ire. Looking at this moment from the future, it's a little less affecting than it might have been at the time - remember, this is before the resurrection of Jean Grey, before the Marvel U began pulling characters back from death left, right, and center. It used to be a cliche that if a supervillain "died," you never believed it until there was a body. Well, even with superheroes if there's a body, death is not necessarily a certainty. However, at the time, it must have been a bit of a shock - Guardian is the longest-standing character in the series, leading what basically amounts to a team of rookies. Where does his death leave that team? I guess we'll find out tomorrow.