His Finest Hour

On November 20th, I wrote about what I thought was one of the most putrid Guardian appearances in the character's rather colourful history. It made me stop to consider which might be my favourite.  It didn't take me long to settle on the book below.

The two-part story came out in 1998, but in terms of continuity it takes place after the fourth issue of the first Alpha flight book.  Most of the team's adventures to this point had revolved around conflict with the X-Men as a result of attempting to bring Wolverine back to Canada.

The first issue is rather X-Men heavy, though the premise revolves around Guardian's back story.  The terrorist organization known as Hydra has swindled hundreds of suits of Guardian's original armour prototype from Department-H and uses them to apprehend the mutant team. Professor-X calls upon Guardian, and therefore Alpha Flight, to rescue his team.

Admittedly, there's an undertone that Alpha Flight is not on the same level as the X-Men.  Guardian is said to have the same leadership "potential" as Cyclops.  Guardian admits that without freeing the X-Men, getting out of the facility that they're about to infiltrate is near impossible.  And in battle, Alpha Flight is becoming overwhelmed right at the point that the now-freed X-Men join the battle and basically save the day.

Setting biases aside however, it is true that the X-Men were a far more experienced bunch at that point.  And ultimately, Alpha Flight is given some much-needed (and rare) respect.  Additionally, the team's relationship with the X-Men (and Wolverine specifically) is solidified.

There are a couple of odd moments. Strucker uses Guardian's suit-based ability to not be affected by the rotation of the Earth to "teleport" away.  I'm not convinced that making use of such a tool would be particularly wise indoors.  There are also a few pages in the beginning of Alpha Flight taking time to train in the X-Men's danger room.  Sure, what's the rush, with six members of the X-Men kidnapped by a terrorist group?  Just send out for pizza too while you're at it.

But those are relatively minor complaints in an otherwise entertaining story.  The books were written by Ben Raab and John Cassaday, the latter also handling art duties.  Steve Oliff did the colours on the 2nd issue (Jason Wright did the first).