Wednesday, June 22, 2005

ALPHA FLIGHT #121 Marvel Comics, 1993



[UPDATE, 10/14/05: Although this was a fun issue to mock, I have since been set straight by artist Craig Brasfield, who pencilled this issue. Much of what makes this comic suck happened after Craig had turned in his pencils - for instance, he's not responsible for swiping Caliber and dropping him into the comic, it was the editor. Craig left a comment on this post explaining the real story behind Alpha Flight #121, which led me to post this retraction. Craig's response is actually a fascinating glimpse into deadline hell; you can read it in the comments section of this post or here. Anyway, my thanks to Craig for being so gracious about the whole deal. I'm leaving the original post intact, but annotated in brackets. Here we go:]

You know, people never stop me on the street and ask me, "Dave, you always say the nineties were the Dark Ages of Comics. How come?"

I don't physically carry comics around with me, but if I did, I would produce Alpha Flight #121 as just one of many pieces of evidence as to why the nineties almost killed us all. Sweet mother of God, this is one bad comic. All those involved in making this comic should be held as enemy combatants. Indefinitely. In a country that allows torture. [Omigod, I am like, so mean.]



Seriously, it's that bad. Written by Simon "Transformers" Furman with art by "guest penciler" Craig Brasfield and guest inker Frank Turner, and edited by Rob Tokar, Alpha Flight #121 represents to me all that is wrong with comics in the nineties. The cardinal and unforgivable sin is that this is nobody's best work - it's almost unforgivably bad - and they actually wanted people to pay $1.75 for it. Hell, I did. But at least I finally have gotten my money's worth from Alpha Flight #121 - I have a blog that I can use to mock it. What about all the other kids out there who don't have blogs? Who's going to help them heal? Who, damn you?

This particular issue stinks of hackery and desperation. [Ouch. Meany.] Alpha Flight wasn't doing too good, so they tried some changes like X-Men style costumes and guest stars like Spider-Man. They sure pulled out all the stops with the villains in this issue, though. Instead of the usual suck-ass villains our favorite Canadian super-team has to fight, this issue Alpha Flight gets to do battle with a new and even more suck-ass enemy, THIS GUY:



"He's called the Brass Bishop, and I'm telling you, he's the new Magneto. Kids are going to love him!"

Those words were probably never spoken, ever.

The story involves Alpha Flight being sad because two of their teammates Silver and Auric (I know: who?) have died. Fortunately the funeral for these Canadian heroes is in New York, where Spider-Man and the X-Men live, so we get them involved in the plot for no real reason. As we learn, the Brass Bishop has jacked Silver and Auric's corpses and is using them to power a Something-Or-Other Machine which he will sell to the highest bidder at an auction for supervillains. Among the assembled villains are folks like Doctor Octopus, Arcade, and the Alpha Flight villain known as Caliber.

Caliber first appeared during Alpha Flight creator John Byrne's tenure in issue #23, and then again in issue #25. As a youngster I was psyched because although Caliber was shown to be kind of a pushover, he looked really cool. Maybe he would evolve into a major Alpha Flight enemy over time, Young Dave hoped. Alas, it was not to be, and his only other appearance (correct me if I'm wrong) is here, a hundred crappy issues later in issue #121. Writer Simon Furman remembered Caliber! [Let me jump in here: according to Brasfield, Caliber was originally supposed to be Black Tom from the X-Men, but the X-Editors didn't want the stink of Alpha Flight on their character, so they wouldn't let Black Tom be used. They had to change horses midstream and turn Black Tom into Caliber. Like my Gran Gran always used to say: "Don't change horses midstream in the war against the bats."]

Unfortunately, his script demanded that the fill-in artists actually draw Caliber, and that's where we run into trouble. [As Brasfield points out, how hard would it have been for him to draw three panels of Caliber? Further proof that his presence wasn't due to Brasfield.]

Here's a panel from Alpha Flight #121 of Caliber throwing a mechanized hissy fit at Brass Bishop's auction:



[Check this out, this is interesting: You see the big blob in the left hand side of the panel? Brasfield originally drew a picture of the Green Goblin, but - you guessed it - the Spider Editors wouldn't let them use him, so they had to black him out. GG still made it into one panel, though.]

Is he shooting at Brass Bishop in that panel, or just letting his plasma cannon froth a little for dramatic effect? Tough to say. We could ask "guest penciler" Craig Brasfield, only he didn't actually draw Caliber! No, our time-crunched fill-in artist just lifted Byrne's art straight out of Alpha Flight #23.

Here's the original panel:



"Well, that looks darn similar," you might say. "But look here, Campbell! In this original art Caliber is facing the wrong way! And his arm is in a different position! Why you'd have to be some kind of computer wizard to change the art..."

Fine. To illustrate my point I have summoned my vast computer wizardry and done my own little hatchet job on Byrne's art. Voila! I have recreated the panel in question!



Look, I even drew Arcade and The Living Laser in there, because damn it, I don't skimp on backgrounds when I'm stealing other people's work! God, I'd be so pissed if I were John Byrne.

Maybe I'm being too mean. I mean, Caliber would be hard to draw. At least the artist doesn't do it again. Oh, wait... [You are being too mean, you dick.]



I call bullshit and bullshit once again! That's Puck, by the way, valiantly attacking a photocopy of a supervillain. I believe we've already covered Puck in a previous post.

Here's the original Byrne art the [editor] swiped for this panel, courtesy of Alpha Flight #25:



"But wait!" you may say. "Why is the cop in the foreground colored green like that?" I don't know, man. I'm just taking the piss out of one comic book at a time, here. Let me focus.

Anyway, for a cheap laugh and to further mock all involved, I've yet again recreated the panel in question:



Seriously, that's the level of craftsmanship that went into creating Alpha Flight #121. The story is awful, guest-stars are shoe horned into the plot in a transparent ploy to gain new readers, the non-stolen art sucks ass, and the stolen art is even worse. Honestly, I think it shows contempt for the audience. Where was editor Rob Tokas for all of this? Did Marvel have no standards of quality in the year 1993? [Hey, well at least I put it on the editor's shoulders here.]

Alpha Flight #121: further proof that the nineties were truly The Dark Ages.

This comic is so bad, so shamefully bad, that I must give it "The Pain Award."

'Nuff said! [It still gets The Pain Award because it's god-awful, but for entirely different reasons.]

77 comments:

Anonymous said...

Holy. Shit.

Anonymous said...

i say this way too much in comments sections but.... i really genuinely HAVE. NO. WORDS.

You rock. :)

Greg said...

Luckily, we live in a country that cheerfully tortures people (whoops - is that too political?), so they can hunt down those involved and do their thing!

You need to send those panels to Marvel. Maybe they will let you revive Alpha Flight. It couldn't be any worse, could it?

The 90s RULE! How dare you bash them.

Anonymous said...

I love how they didn't even attempt to make the first Caliber picture robotomically correct. That cannon connects directly to the shoulder like it was designed by a Tyrannosaurus Rex. Good bad stuff.

gorjus said...

GASP!! I would have never noticed that! Sonofabitch.

Even though I hate him now, I'm calling John Byrne RIGHT NOW and . . . I mean, lissen: everybody swipes. But you're right: this is a PHOTOCOPY. And that? Is just LAME.

Pere Ubu said...

I think The Brass Bishop qualifies for lame-ass villains 8-10, just by himself. Did he even have any frickin' powers, or just a thing for metal clothing?

And I agree with Johnny Canuck - this P.O.S. *must* have come with a hologram insert, at the very least.

Anonymous said...

I was hope hope hoping to see The Pain on this one. This post represents better investigative journalism than most of what we're getting in The Times these days.

Nik said...

I love this blog more than I love my own son. Seriously, the Byrne art rip off -- you, my man, deserve a Pulitzer for that.

Anonymous said...

Dave: you let the Brass Bishop off waaaaay to easy...

thekelvingreen said...

As a fan fo Simon Furman's (British) Transformers comics, I find it hard to believe that this could be so bad. But you provide compelling evidence to the contrary, so yet another childhood hero has been unmasked as a hack. :(

Anonymous said...

Wow. Just...wow. I think Simon Furman's a pretty good writer, but... um. Heh. The Brass Bishop? You mean someone BEFORE Steve Seagle thought it was a good idea to actually show him?

Now I know why Brasfield disappeared years ago.

Furman and Brasfield did redeem themselves, though, at least partially, with What If...? vol. 2 #72, "What if Spider-Man Became a Murderer?"

David Campbell said...

Thanks everybody for the comments! I too, dig Furman's Transformers stuff, but this is no damn good. I'll bet he wasn't psyched about it when he saw the art the fill-in team turned in.

I think the editorial staff has to take responsibility for printing stuff like this issue of Alpha Flight; too release such shoddy work and (ten years ago, mind you) charge $1.75 for it... it's not right. And as Danny Glover would say: "I'm tired of what ain't right!" So thus begins my crusade to expose the slack editorial standards of the 90's that almost killed us all!!!

And yes, Brass Bishop did get off too easy; he should probably get his own Lame-Ass Villain post all his own... I hear the Beastie Boys whenever I look at him: "Brass Bishop... That funky bishop.... Brass Bishop..."

Mark W. Hale said...

I think what Dan is referring to is the fact that Puck mentioned having fought a Brass Bishop before joining The Flight about fifty grajillion times in previous issues. I don't recall him showing up in the Seagle issues, though he may not have been a LITERAL GODDAMN BISHOP MADE OF BRASS in that series. Sheesh.

David said...

Dave,

Once again I am amazed at your Longboxedness. Good Job.

Another David.

Anonymous said...

When Alpha Flight first came out, I, along with just about every other non-Canadian, dropped it with the first few Mantlo issues (Puck is a tall guy with a shortifying demon in him? WTF?), but I decided a couple years ago to pick up as much as I could find in the quarter bins just to see how bad a mess it really turned out to be. Man, if I knew what I was in for... Anyway, my point is, this was a title so bad that grim'n'gritty storylines and Image-style art was actually a step up. I won't defend this particular issue, but Alpha Flight is not the posterboy for 90's comics crapola you're looking for. After the delights of Manikin and Purple Girl and the wonder twins' ever-mutating backstory, a few ludicrously big guys with ludicrously big guns shooting up the place was a refreshing new direction.

Zoot

Anonymous said...

Alpha Flight looked so cool when they first appeared in the XMen but it was all downhill from there! Was'nt the leader of the group the 1st superhero to come out of the closet or something weird like that???
Pucks cool, rhymes with everyones favorite word. Vertically challenged but cool.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, several symptoms of Early 90's COMICS TO THE EXTREEMEEEEEEEEEE there. I'm just surprised that at the time Alpha Flight wasn't renamed something more EDGY and EXTREME like Bloodfiredeathklaw Flight or KILLBLOWSTRYKEFLIGHT - THEY'RE CANADIAN SUPERHEROS WITH IN YOUR FACE ATTITUDE!

Anonymous said...

Vector (the UFoes guy) just loves it when photocopied robot guys shoot plasma at metallic clergy. Makes you wonder why Ironclad's on his team...

Also: The art sucks, yes, but that Arcade drawing is so damn cute. He must Arcade's junior clone or some thing. "Lil' Arcade."

Anonymous said...

Forget Vector's little heart - if you squint at the cover just right it looks like Sasquatch is wearing a beret.

Pere Ubu said...

Jim Henson's Lil' Supervillain Babies!

...and a "shortifiying demon"? please please please pleeeeze tell me that's a joke.

Aw, hell. it *is* a 90's Marvel comic after all. I couldn't be so lucky.

Tegan O'Neil said...

Ah, Manikan... quite probably the lamest super hero ever... at least he's in the top 10.

And I keep waiting for someone ... ANYONE ... at Marvel to remember that the Purple Girl existed, because you know there's no way, what with the Purple Man having been inexplicably resurrected as a major-league baddie, they could resist throwing her into the mix.

Anonymous said...

Actually, I'd be pretty upset if I were John Byrne too, but that's just amazingly lazy business. But what did you expect? It's Alpha Flight, for pity's sake, during the 90s, with what was referred to round our way as a "Guest Rider" (because it was usually either Wolverine or Ghost Rider). So it's a three-time loser.

Oh - and what was with putting Ghost Rider all over the place in the 90s? Was he popular, or were they just THAT committed to stinking up the whole decade?

Anonymous said...

He had a flaming skull and he drove a motorcycle, that was supposed to be cool in the 90's.
Of course guys who had ponytails and tiny liitle goatees were the ones who thought it was cool so consider the source.

Yail Bloor

Anonymous said...

Oh - and what was with putting Ghost Rider all over the place in the 90s? Was he popular>>

Yeah, he was. The book had adequate promotion but took off like a rocket. But as it turns out, the real stars of the book were artists Javier Saltares and Mark Texeira, and once they were gone the book's buzz stopped dead.

Gordon D said...

Is it just me, or does "Brass Bishop" sound off-color, as in "don't mind me, I'm just polishin' the ol' Brass Bishop"

Anonymous said...

Hi,Dave & Co.
A friend pointed out your site & I felt the need to come to my own defense, if just a little.
It really should be obvious that the disaster of Caliber was NOT the artists' doing. Really, my stuff may not be your favorite but it IS all mine (I despise swipes). Avoiding drawing that one character in his 3 or so panels would really not save much time.
The original villain was Black Tom, which I loved drawing in an appropriately Cockrum style. Far after the pencils, inks, & letters, the X-Office denied use of that character. Some other villain was suggested & I was going to have to redraw those panels quickly but then THAT villain was vetoed. Editor Rob had his back against a deadline and just went w/ a villain HE had control over, pasting a Xerox of previous art over Tom. I've peeled those off the original art I've gotten back.
Interestingly (kinda), the Goblin was there in the crowd scene, covered over by a peculiar black blob after the Spider-Eds objected, but is still seen later fleeing the fight. Also, I drew some of the villains here in that month's New Warriors (#36) arriving at the Vault after their defeat here. I thought that kinda neat.
I honestly always tried to do my best for Marvel, being a huge fan of the characters but my work always looked much better in pencils than finished. The inkers I got tended to be on the scratchy side, sort of unfinished. Also being a freelancer, it often happened that I'd go months with nothing then get 3 books in one month.
Check out AF 113, New Warriors 35-6, Illuminator, the Justice mini, and the Toys R Us '93 X-Men giveaway for some of my better efforts.
Thanks for the forum and special thanks to the one kind soul that complimented that Spider-Man What If.

Anonymous said...

As someone who both knows comics, and has seen Craig's original pencil work, I'm amazed at the rampant stupidity I've read here. Craig was a very talented artist and to see the 90's failures dropped in his lap on what was basically a rush, fill-in issue of a book that had long since lost its way is amazing. It is also totally lacking in insight and reflects the kind of shortsightedness that created the clone saga. So while you great guardians of the comic art form blast an artist's work, incorrectly I might add since he wasn't in any way involved in the use of Byrne's art in the issue, I'll just remind you of one little fact. HE GOT WORK FOR MARVEL, DC and various Indies. While from what I've read here your qualifications to work in comics are based on your sadness over Jim Aparo's death. That was sad. Wow! I'll send you cash to write something immediately with that on your resume. And please send it in photocopy form. You seem to have a firm grasp on how that's done.

Marionette said...

Hey Gregg, overreact much?

You seem to be insulting Dave personally for being unaware that a fault in the art of a comic was not down to the artist. Until Craig responded to the post how exactly was Dave or anyone else expected to be aware of this detail?

It's not as if knowing the truth makes it any less of a crap comic than before, but it was twelve years ago. Let it go.

Bully said...

Dave's retraction in a much later post and more important, his correction to the original post--not simply blotting out his mistakes but inserting corrections in addition to show where he went wrong--make him a class act in my book. The New York Times doesn't even go this far to make corrections. I'll bet a very precious few of the millions of bloggers correct their errors with such care, either.

Anonymous said...

Hmmmmmm, did I overreact much? No. Ignorance is no excuse to insult someone's work in a cruel way. Not constructive critism, but just drivel expressed with a nasty attitude that is too often used by 'fans' against a comic creator's work. If I fired back with equal venom, well, how did it feel? Hurtful? Shortsighted? Maybe since Dave didn't know all the facts I went to far? Or perhaps that was exactly the point I was trying to make. Before you shoot off your mouth in a hateful way to another human being, maybe you should think twice and then NOT. I'm not saying don't express your opinion if you don't like something, but the original comments were absurd. If you aren't sure you know what you are talking about, just be quiet. Or actually talk about something...YOU LIKED. Wouldn't that be something?

David Campbell said...

Gregg,

A couple of points: As this is my blog, I can choose the manner and form any comments or criticism takes re: a comic book. I can see how you might find certain entries "hateful" or "cruel," but I think if you look through the Long Box you'll find many posts about comics I enjoy. I don't agree with your statement, "If you aren't sure you know what you are talking about, just be quiet." I don't know the background of many of the comics I comment on, nor can I divine the intentions of the creators. I simply evaluate the finished product. When you see a crappy movie, do you hold off on judgment because you don't know the entire story of how the film was made? No, it's just a crappy movie, and as a consumer you have a right to your opinion.

Comic creators open themselves to positive and negative comments re: their work when they publish - I purchased the right to bitch about Alpha Flight #121 years ago for $1.25. It's fair game. Now that I know the whole story about the swiped art, does it change my opinion about the comic? No, I still think it sucks, but it's suckiness is clearly on the shoulders of the editor and writer. I'm satisfied that my retraction and notes in the original post make it clear that Brasfield wasn't responsible for the swiped art. I didn't want the guy's reputation smeared for something he didn't do.

I can appreciate where you're coming from re: being cruel, etc. My rule here is to insult the work, not the person, but the line between the two can be blurry sometimes... I think you and I just have different definitions of "cruel" and "hateful" and so we'll just agree to disagree in this case. And no, I didn't find your comments hurtful or shortsighted - I say call 'em like you see 'em. I appreciate your passion and you're more than welcome to comment here, whether you like my stuff or not. Thanks!

Anonymous said...

Dave, I agree that an artist leaves themselves open to critism when they are producing comics. It isn't critism itself, I reacted to so much as statements that were probably just intended to be funny, but pushed the edge with me. Still, the fact that you did the retraction speaks volumes for you. And it was done in an extremely upfront way, not hidden, which speaks a little louder. I want to tip my hat to you on that. Well done.

David Campbell said...

Thanks bro.

Anonymous said...

Aww, you guys made up. That's sweet.

Kidding! It's kind of refreshing and weird to see people acting civilized online. You people do know you;re on the internet, right? ;)

PeeJay

Anonymous said...

In Dave's defense, re: what has he done about comics.

Since superhero stories emerged in comics and these years since 1938 have mostly been featured in comics (other media include novels and lately film), it can be said that comics and superhero stories are, in a way, intertwined.

Based on that assumption, I have to bring to your attention these 2 words. The Velvet Marauder.

Anonymous said...

In response to Craig Brasfield's post, I can state that I have fond memories of Illuminator. The story itself was pretty thin, but the art itself was amazing to me and actually inspired me to some degree when I was younger. The actual drawings were very dynamic, and the colors were very ahead of their time (maybe even a trial attempt at computer coloring by Marvel?) It still stands as one of my favorite ninties visuals.

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