Logan Legacy #2 hits where Amazing X-Men #12 misses

Amazing X-Men #12, the final chapter of the World War Wendigo storyline which guest-starred Alpha Flight, finally came out yesterday.

I say "finally" not out of eagerness, but because I couldn't wait for it to end. I hated the story.  I found several of the Alpha Flight members to be out of character, references to their recent history to be completely inaccurate, and the silly dialogue from some of the X-Men completely irritating. I didn't know Rockslide before this story and I could live a great life without ever coming across him again. I also have no idea when Iceman became such a tool. At least Guardian had an extremely impactful, though completely predictable, moment.

Thankfully, reading Death of Wolverine: The Logan Legacy #2 afterwards offset a lot of that crap very nicely.

I'm not Wolverine's biggest fan (not even close), and I didn't at all follow the story leading to his "death", the reports of which are no doubt greatly exaggerated.

However, X-23, Logan Legacy's leading lady for this issue, is a character I've been curious about for some time. As the clone of Canada's most famous superhero, does she qualify as Canadian herself? The lady who carried this clone is an American, from what I can gather from internet research, so I'm not entirely sure. I was looking forward to finding out a bit more about her.

I'd also seen a few comments in social media about a pleasant surprise for Alpha Flight fans in this book. Of course, I assumed this meant that a current team member would appear, perhaps more than one. That was enough to provide the extra motivation I needed to make the purchase.

And I'm so glad I did.

I won't "spoil" it, even if the book came out yesterday.  A new(ish) character, referred to as The Chinook, appears and it is indeed a sweet treat, in my opinion.

If you look for it you can figure out from this post who our mysterious character is. But I can easily explain, without giving anything away, why I was so pleased at this story by making reference to the Amazing X-Men books.

World War Wendigo was sloppy in handling Alpha Flight's history, even a very recent, high-profile event like Northstar's wedding. In Legacy, writer Tim Seeley makes reference to characters we have either not seen in years, and had no reason to expect to, or whose most prominent appearance came way back during John Byrne's Alpha Flight run.

Said simply, it's a matter of respect. Amazing X-Men did not display much of it, Logan Legacy does.

As for The Chinook, it's unlikely (but not impossible) that we'll see much more of him, but I welcome any future appearances.  He and X-23 make a pretty sharp team, don't they?

Alpha Flight Guest-Appearance in June?

When Marvel's solicitations are released every month, I scan them for any mention of Alpha Flight or their individual members.

It was pointed out, on the Comic Book Resources forum, that they are expected to appear in June's Amazing X-Men #8.  That wasn't immediately obvious in the solicitation, though the reference to Canada should have caught my eye, really.  Here's the teaser:

AMAZING X-MEN #8
CRAIG KYLE AND CHRIS YOST (W)
ED MCGUINNESS (A/C)
• Wolverine takes a trip back to Canada…
• But when he discovers that an old friend is missing, his visit soon transforms into a hairy situation.
• New writers Craig Kyle and Chris Yost!
32 PGS./Rated T+ …$3.99

Apparently writer Chris Yost confirmed Flight's appearance on Twitter, though I was unable to find the comment in question.  And the hairy problem referred to above looks to be of the Wendigo variety.

The mention of the discovery of an old friend being missing is interesting.  I wonder if they're going to end up looking for Guardian's ex, Heather (Vindicator) McNeil Hudson.  It would be about time...

Surprise Omega Flight appearance (maybe)

I can't imagine anyone saw even a mention of Omega Flight coming, let alone a potential appearance.  Here is the solicitations for Avengers #10, scheduled for release at the end of April.

AVENGERS #10
(W) Jonathan Hickman (A) Mike Deodato (CA) Dustin Weaver
50th Anniversary Variant by Daniel ACUÑA
“VALIDATOR”

• We learn that the Canadian super team Omega Flight got lost in a Garden Origin Site.
• Discover what happens when the Avengers go in to rescue them.
• Learn why ADAPTATION is the scariest word in the Marvel Universe.

How about that?

Now if the book is focused on the search for Omega Flight, there's a chance that the team itself will not be seen, of if they are, that it will be a brief appearance.  Nonetheless, the possibility that the group still exists in some form is pretty interesting.

That said, I'm a little surprised to see them referred to as a Canadian group.  Of the six members, only two were Canadian (for those just joining us, they were Sasquatch and Talisman, seen at right).  It may be that Marvel means to say a Canada-based super-team.

But maybe not.

Sasquatch, of course, was in the recent Alpha Flight mini-series but Talisman does not appear to have had many significant appearances since the Omega Flight book was being published.  Assuming that this is not some alternate reality gimmick (and I suspect that it's exactly that, especially since that looks like a re-imagined version of Aurora on the cover), she seems like a good candidate for inclusion in the storyline.

It would be a pleasant (if unlikely) surprise to find out that Talisman continued the group in some capacity, perhaps as an underground team while Alpha Flight is more visible.  It's fun to speculate as to which obscure Canadian Marvel character, whether a hero or a villain-turned-good-guy, could be a candidate for membership.

Canadian Heroes all over the map

Added a new toy!  Hope it works!

There's a new button at the end of the bar under the banner.  It is rather unimaginatively called "Map".  If you right click to open it in a new window, you will be taken to, well, a map which displays the birthplace and/or base of operations of a number of Canadian comic book characters.  They are separated by categories at the bottom left, that you can choose to isolate or remove from view using the legend at top right.  Use the scale at top left to zoom in and out.

Some notes:

• Daydreamer is not a member of Alpha Flight but I couldn't have her in the Indy category either, so she's with the Marvel team.
• Credit to Heroes of the North for eschewing the obvious choices for home towns.  For example, Acadia is in New Brunswick, but rather than make her a Moncton native, she is from Bouctouche.
• Look WAY up to find Snowbird.
• The old South Park gag about "downtown Canada" could well have been based on DC Comics.  Not a single character has a defined place of birth.  Plastique is clearly from Quebec, but where?  And in the case of a character like Sparx (whom I suspect has faded out of continuity with the New 52 anyway), her home town of Timberton is in British Columbia, but fictional.

There are some glaring omissions due to lack of info, or perhaps of clarity of that info.  Even though he is bar none the most prominent Canadian character in comics, Wolverine's actual birth place is actually quite vague.  I have seen it referred to as both southern and Northern Alberta, making it somewhat hard to guess.  I've also found one source which claims he was born in New York state.  Strange that this wouldn't have been determined by now.

In many other cases, there is consensus, but not specification.  Marrina was born (hatched?) on the coast of Newfoundland, but I don't know where on that coast.

Anyway, I have 30 characters currently listed, but it's still being worked on.  If the map does not display properly for you, please slip me a word at jf4nier@gmail.com to let me know.

ICYMI Art - Captain Canuck / Wolverine by Dave Ross

The Captain Canuck Facebook page has 592 "likes" as I write this, so it may actually be that a number of people have seen the picture below, however it's difficult to determine exact numbers.  I think it's gorgeous and would have for anyone interested in either (or both) characters to miss it, so I post it here.

Oddly, the good Captain's Twitter account only has a dozen followers.

I don't know the person who runs these one (I'm assuming it's the same for both).  The only details provided were "Here's a sketch by my pal Dave Ross".  Excellent job, Mr Ross, and thank you for sharing it, Facebook page administrator!

Oh, Those Sassy Ottawa Farmers!

A number of the more obscure characters that have been featured here were found by accident.

Such was the case with Daydreamer, though her obscurity was a little surprising being that she's a Marvel Comics character.  During a search, I came across a list of international characters which included her name.  Narrowing the search to Daydreamer herself, I was able to nail down her (rather limited) number of appearances.

I was due for another batch of back issues from Mile High Comics recently.  I'm a big fan of those guys, I've been ordering from them since they used to have single page ads in comics in the 80's.

I included Marvel Comics Presents numbers 101 and 102 in my order.  Those issues include the first two parts of a story about Daydreamer's team, the Young Gods.  It is entitled "Against a Rogue God" and it involves the team going...huh...against a rogue God.

Daydreamer gets a fair amount of face time as she assists one of her teammates analyze a dream she had in which a...er...rogue God was causing trouble, and confirms that there is substance to it.  She also helps pinpoint the locations in which said God is being a dick.

The part I found comical though involved Daydreamer getting up into some Celestial grills.

You go, Ottawa farmer girl!

It may not have been particularly helpful though.  Yes, the Celestials granted the team's wish to return to Earth to track down and stop this God dude, but with two conditions; they have all of three days to do it, and  if someone suspects that they are demi-Gods, the entire planet will be destroyed.

That's pretty harsh.

The other story which might be of interest is a Wolverine/Nightcrawler team up (hence the cover above).  However, it seems to revolve around Nightcrawler's back story and is written by Scott Lobdell, someone I consider to be "hit-or-miss".

This far into the story, it looks like a miss.  The "threat" from the first part is revealed to be anything but in the second.  It doesn't really work, because the bulk of Wolverine's dialogue is sarcastic humour, which took the edge off any kind of tension that Lobdell tried to build anyway.  If Wolverine can't take the threat seriously, how can I?

As cheesy as some of the dialogue is in the Young Gods story, I'll likely acquire the rest of the issues to see that story to its conclusion.  Daydreamer is likable enough and very few of the Canadian characters discussed here are the cosmic types, so it makes for a nice change.

Puck's Got Better Things To Do.

Unresolved issue.  That's the other thing that has bugged me about the news that Puck would join X-Force.  Never mind that his motivation to join such a group is unclear, he has a clear option if he's looking for a hobby.

Here is the "team" Puck should be on.

Mug shots lifted from the impressive uncannyxmen.net site

Guardian, Puck, Madison Jeffries and, yes, Wolverine.  Of course, Wolverine.  But aside from milking his popularity, he would have a specific cause to appear.  Their mission should be to locate/apprehend...

Disclaimer: This is said not having read any of Jeffries' appearances in the X family of books.  I don't even know if he's of sound mind or what.  For that matter, I have no idea about Puck's mental state either (or how he got out of hell.  But I digress).

These are the four gentlemen who are closest to Heather/Vindicator.  But there are also close friendships within the group.  And those could be strained depending on individual motivation.

If it wasn't bad enough that Heather took off with Guardian's daughter, she also killed two people to snatch her.  Maybe the intention was to resolve that issue in future issues when Alpha Flight was expected to be an ongoing series, but regardless of the reason, it's a dangling loose end I find irritating.

This doesn't have to be a team as such, just a bunch of guys with the same goal but perhaps different motivation.  Guardian needs to step up the search for his kid.  Among the others, one might feel she needs to be apprehended for her crimes, another may feel she can be restored to her "old self".  Another might actually want to defend her ("she wasn't responsible for her actions") and take her side.  There are plenty of possibilities there.

If the recent Alpha Flight title didn't sell all that well, then it's difficult to believe that Marvel would release a limited series in order to give closure to an unfinished storyline that relatively few people read.  This might be addressed in one of Wolverine's twenty-something books as a multi-part arc.  The storyline is an obvious one, but the motivation and character dynamics are what could make it outstanding.

Not going to happen, but in terms of Alpha Flight, it's at the top of my wish list right now.

Alpha Flight strip from Pitabow Comics

Time to segue back from G.I. Joe-related (or similar) material into the more traditional superhero genre.  And being that the last entry was about a comic strip, may as well make this one about one as well.

This one is most definitely "rated E for everyone", especially compared to E.H. Joes.  Here's a sample (right click and open in a new tab or window for a better view)...

The rest of them can be found here.  I don't know that there's much of a story here, besides a guy making a strip about a team he enjoys.  It's been a few months since the last one was posted, but they probably just appear when inspiration happen to strike writer/artist James Duncan.

A Can-Con look at Astonishing X-Men #49

Every attempt will be made to keep this a spoiler-free zone.

This book is similar in almost every way to the previous issue.  The only difference is that the action takes place in the middle pages rather than at the end.  Northstar again appears in a near-future scene over the first four pages and we spend the rest of the issue still catching up to that point (but we're not there yet).  Not every one likes that but personally I have no objection to that kind of story-telling.

I'm still not crazy about this book overall though.

I buy it for Northstar specifically and he feels out of character to me.  I have no idea what he's doing with this bunch.  For that matter, I have no idea what the team is together for.  They feel like random characters thrown together.  Maybe all will be made clear later but there's no real indication of that.

They were attacked at Gambit's place after which Northstar apparently agrees to help some of the others track down who did it.

Why?  He has no reason to think that he (or Kyle) was specifically a target.  He didn't even want to be there, he was dragged by Wolverine.  He has no problem telling Alpha Flight to go to hell.  But his relationship with the X-Men is so much better that he'd look into who blew up Gambit's condo?  Hasn't he been trying to avoid this lifestyle for years?

And of course, we get what appears to be a mandatory four-page declaration of love between Kyle and Northstar.  I don't mind romance in a book but this one is so over-played that it's nauseating.

Also, whether you consider it a plus or a minus, Wolverine is still not particularly prominent and in fact, when you do see him in a fight scene and are actually able to determine what he's doing, he's getting punked by a couple of d-list'ers.

I'm going to make my way through the first storyline regardless but will not make an effort to keep up beyond that if the book remains little more than an advertisement for Marvel's new-found tolerance and if the book exists just to have another X-book out there.  It may be that the team's purpose was defined earlier and I just missed it because I don't buy 20 x-books a month, but that doesn't help me enjoy this one any more.

A Can-Con look at Astonishing X-Men #48

Even if this blog were not specific to Canadian characters, this would be a Can-Con look regardless for the simple reason that I don't even slightly care for anyone else in it but the Canadian characters.  In fact, even that is stretching it because I find Northstar's boyfriend Kyle to be a one-trick pain in the ass.

A very good sign early on is that Northstar has the first page all to himself.  He's joined by Wolverine on page two, so in terms of Canuck-goodness, we're off to a fast start.  Gambit is there too, but since he's a character I detest only slightly less than Michael Pointer, I shall ignore him.

Pages 4-7 continue to include Northstar, now with Kyle, unpacking.  That's right, four pages of unpacking in their new place.  And being gay.  Lots and lots of gayness.  It's like Marvel REALLY wants us to notice that however homophobic they were in the past, they're totally not now.  See how gay these two are being? SO gay!!  And that's okay!

The next three pages are Gambit and some chick, ALSO chatting in an apartment.  After checking the cover again to make sure they haven't brought back Friends in comic book form, I forge ahead hoping that the next four pages aren't just Gambit making gumbo.

They're not.  Northstar and Wolverine show up on Gambit's doorstep.  Not sure at first that it's actually Northstar because writer Marjorie Liu got his name wrong.  He's referred to as Jean-Claude instead of Jean-Paul.  The pointy ears give him away though.  At least they got that right.

Though it's a head-shaker, I'm sort of appreciative of the timing since I referred to Alpha Flight as a Marvel afterthought in the previous post.  Way to prove my point, Marvel.  But in fairness, only one writer and three editors would have looked at it.  And the mistake only appears three times in total.

Speaking of goofs, the usually arrogantly proud Northstar reminded me of another comic character during that scene.

Even after some warrior chick shows up and tosses a severed head on Gambit's floor, Northstar's reaction is to ask if he can go home.  Dude is totally bummed.  Must have a been a tiring night of gayness, because Marvel is totally pro-gay now, if you haven't heard.

Then the team gets attacked by a chopper, and a few pages later six super bad guys, for no reason I could determine (maybe it's hinted at in the previous issue?).  And on the last page, Kyle appears to get abducted in a nearby alley.  To be continued.

So the Canadian Content is actually quite high, and the pleasant surprise is that it isn't 80% Wolverine.  Northstar is actually the most prominent character in the book.

Unfortunately, it isn't a very good book.  But it's too early to judge the overall story, so we'll get #49.  At the very least, we're pretty well guaranteed a gay old time, because Marvel loves gays now.  They really, really do.

2005 Paradise Toronto Comicon program cover art

This is another terrific piece I've come across while looking up information in order to write The Superman Conundrum (see above).


Some cropping was required for display purposes.

I happened across this pic from the graphicly site and it is identified as being the work of Kaare Andrews (in case you missed it on the picture itself). It seemed like a particularly appropriate time to post it since it was done to celebrate the launch of the Shuster Awards mentioned in the previous post.

OK, so maybe we'll talk about Wolverine a little...

I don't remember precisely when I started hating the X-Men so much.

It wasn't long after the Claremont/Byrne run, that much is certain. There was a spell there where even existing characters were suddenly said to be mutants (Cloak and Dagger come to mind) and Wolverine was in just about every Marvel book being publi...come to think of it, that spell is still ongoing. And it seemed that for a while they would throw out dozens of characters at a time with any power that the creative team could pull out of its collective ass. The whole mutant phenomenom became tiresome real quick.

That said, I would still get the X-Men or Wolverine books which featured significant appearances by Alpha Flight, whether it was the if the whole team or only one two members, if I happened to hear about them. That includes #414, when Northstar is offered a teaching position at Xavier's school.

Because it didn't seem as though Northstar was a significant part of the book, I generally ignored it beyond that one issue. But with Alpha Flight having come to an end, Northstar will return to the mutant team with Astonishing X-Men #48 (though technically he never left; he made it quite clear that he didn't consider himself a member of Alpha Flight in the 8-issue mini-turned-ongoing-turned-mini-again series).

Northstar's X-Men "return" isn't breaking news; his appearance in the book was first announced in mid-December.

What seems to have changed is his degree of involvement within. Here are the solicitations for issues 49 (April) and 50 (May):

• The Marauders Are Back! • Something From Northstar’s Past Has Resurfaced And Is Looking For Revenge. • Kyle Goes Missing – How Is He Connected To The Person Behind Everything?

• Karma is losing control of her mind, and taking control of the other X-Men! • When Kyle is put in danger, will Northstar choose him or his team? • Don’t miss the end of this issue – it’ll be the most talked about moment of the year!

And for what it's worth, he's rather prominent on the cover for the latter.


So we'll give the first story arc a try and see where things go. I've heard nothing but good things about writer Marjorie Liu so perhaps this will be a pleasant surprise. I just hope I can make sense of it being that I don't read any of the other dozens of mutant-based books that Marvel publishes.

Who you WON'T read about on TSOG.

At least not very much.

Wolverine. Did you know he was Canadian? ;-) You can't swing a dead cat around (at least in a comic store) without hitting a book that features Wolverine. There doesn't seem to be much point in trying to draw attention to his appearances, especially when these guys seem to do a great job of it anyway. And if I tried to keep up with all the books he's in, I'd be homeless. So I'll pay attention to Wolverine when he happens to interact with other Canadian characters but otherwise, I'll largely ignore him.

Deadpool. Well, for one thing there appears to be some confusion as to whether he's even Canadian. If he is, it doesn't seem to be (from my limited exposure to him) particularly noteworthy to his overall character. Plus, one of the first books I bought as a collector was a New Teen Titans issue where the character he's ripped off from became a favourite of mine, so I can't get into this idiotic version.

We're going to make a rare exception today just as we set the ground rules...



...but it's not going to be regular occurrence.