I see this new incarnation of Alpha Flight as Marvel's answer to DC's success with super-hero comedy, Formerly Known as the Justice League. I honestly didn't expect a humor book from the latest Alpha Flight title, but it's an interesting, though radical, change of pace. The problem isn't the approach, but the execution. Lobdell aims for a silly script and circumstances, but some of the characters don't work well in that silly context. Clayton Henry's cartoony artwork, which didn't seem right for the more dramatic Exiles, is right at home in this goofier world.
Dr. Walter Langowski, AKA Sasquatch, is plane-hopping around Canada on a mission for his government. He's been tasked with assembling a new Alpha Flight team, and he's the only original member on board. He's looking for new blood, but all of the superhuman Canucks he approaches seem reluctant to sign up. From a forest god to a bartender, from a senior citizen to a supernatural force for vengeance, each gives the furry scientist the cold shoulder. And perhaps the most unusual of them all is the man known simply as Major Mapleleaf.
Henry's manga-influence, light artwork approaches the story and characters with energy and a clear sense of fun. The characters boasts appropriately comic reactions to what's going on around them. The new character designs are rather uninteresting, though, and the look for the new Puck is so blatantly about sex, it's quite disappointing. Overall, though, I enjoyed the lightness in the visuals, and the final panel put in mind of the distinct style that Alvin Lee and Udon Studios brought to Gail Simone's Agent X. The new cover logo is rather plain, though, and doesn't catch the eye at all.
OK, this isn't going to be a factor for most of this title's readers; the core audience for Marvel's comics is Americans, after all. But I'm Canadian, and it's little details in stories set in Canada that take me out of the plot. For example, in Canada, patrons of nudie bars don't give strippers "singles." We don't have single dollar bills anymore. We have one-dollar coins called "loonies" (named for the bird that appears on the coin), and two-dollar coins called "twonies." The smallest denomination of Canadian bill is $5. Which is too bad for the strippers, as it looks like when they clamber around on a dance floor picking up loose change.
Lost my train of thought.
Major Mapleleaf? Lobdell makes it clear he's offering up super-hero satire, not angst-ridden, soap-opera style of the X-Men, for which he's best known. Langowski works incredibly well as the straight man for the jokes. I rather enjoyed the goofy tone, but Lobdell doesn't stick to that tone closely enough. Nemesis doesn't work in this context at all, and the new Puck is all about being Kewl. She'd have fit in well with Lobdell's X-Men comics, but she doesn't work here.
