In one of my earlier reviews of Alpha Flight, I commented on Byrne's ability to tell a story using only captions and panel layouts - I've since had it suggested to me that he did it because he was behind on a deadline, but, as will all things comics related, I choose to be an optimist. In this issue, he does the reverse: standard panel layouts and no dialogue for the funeral of Guardian.
(Huh. Do we say it's the funeral of Guardian or of Mac Hudson?)
And just as I was impressed with the silent (from a pictorial standpoint) section of "Whiteout," so too was I impressed by the silent section of today's issue. There is a long-standing rhetoric surrounding the Holocaust during World War 2 that sees it as a tragedy that is simply too large to put into any words that human beings might have. I've often thought that the death of a loved one, of a husband, wife, child, sibling, parent, is of a similar colour. How does one speak such a tragedy?
This comic is growing on me just as it ceases to be a standard superhero comic. I've always considered Alpha Flight to be a Canadian knock-off of the Avengers, but that just isn't the case. They're not a team in the same way. They strike me more as an emergency response unit - the vast majority of Avengers comics feature the team somehow being all in the same place (whatever super-clubhouse they're in this month), having a chat or a drink, training, etc. But Alpha Flight, in many ways, don't even seem to like one another, let alone have a shared space to be in. There's a verisimilitude there that I quite like. You don't always have to like the people you work with in order to work well with them. And it's this that gives the comic a bit of an intriguing angle.
Hopefully it'll last. Onward!
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