Here’s a comic chosen at random from my collection.
Alpha Flight #27 by John Byrne, Keith Williams, Andy Yanchus, Rick, Parker, and Dennis O’Neil
The first 2+ years of Alpha Flight volume 1 was sooo good. It had great characters, stories, art, and superhero angst, which this issue delivered. We have already learned that that the just returned Guardian, whom we thought dead for the last year, is in fact Delphine Courtney, an android intent on destroying Alpha Flight. In the ruckus, “Guardian” takes Shaman’s medicine pouch and turns it inside out, unleashing the mysterious void inside. Nearly all of Alpha Flight is trapped inside, and it is up to Shaman and Talisman to save them. But tragedy strikes when Shaman is unable to help his daughter escape the void before it returns to the pouch, trapping his daughter inside.
Say what you will about Byrne as a person, he did a great job of producing comic books. This issue is very wordy, yet Byrne’s draftsmanship doesn’t make the pages feel overly crowded and the art doesn’t suffer for it either. His depiction of the void as it unleashed in our dimension is simple but interesting visually. Also, the look on Shaman’s face at the very end is soap operatic, but I still feel for the guy (and knowing what comes later makes it even more distressful). I stopped collecting this series with issue 30, so I don’t know if the book’s quality was maintained after Byrne left. Let me know if I should read more!
What do you think of this issue?
Longbox Review 