"COMIC LEGEND: Peter David shared photocopied pages of the death sequence in Alpha Flight #12 at a convention before the issue came out."

More than 30 years after Alpha Flight #12 (first volume,  'natch) hit shelves, that book's conclusion is the subject of a "Comic Book Legends Revealed" segment on Comic Book Resources.

As you can piece together from the subject line, writer Peter David is accused of spoiling the end of Alpha Flight #12 in which Guardian dies (for the first time). Read the full report on that claim over at Comic Book Resources.

...retailers at the get together had no idea that the sequence actually indicated that Guardian really died. I know this because when John showed up at the get-together, he looked at the material, screamed at me at the top of his lungs, “How could you be showing this to retailers?!? It gives away the fact that Guardian dies!” and stormed out of the room, slowing only long enough to kick over a standing ashtray on his way out. At which point stunned retailers said, “Guardian DIES?,” started looking at the xeroxes again, and were muttering, “I thought it was just a dream sequence…”

Oh, look, there's another report of John Byrne acting like a complete jackass.

Being that this was before social media, and the moment remains iconic in Marvel history, I think it's safe to say that any concern about "spoilers" was ultimately unfounded.

The surprise death's importance is not based on my personal opinion as a fan of this character, I might add. Comic Book Resources themselves named it the 75th Most Memorable Moment in the publisher's history, behind the death of Captain George Stacy in Amazing Spider-Man #90 (and further behind still to "Frog Thor", so draw your own conclusions).

My recollection at the time (bearing in mind I was barely a teenager then) was that most folks thought Northstar would buy it. It seemed unnecessary for the team to have two characters with the same abilities and his sister Aurora was considered the more interesting of the two.

To the best of my knowledge, regardless of what may have been handed out at conventions or any other event, Guardian's demise took the greater majority of folks by surprise, as intended.

Origin Recap in Marvel Saga #1

My folks were cleaning out their basement during the holidays and stumbled into boxes full of some of my old comics.  Many are filled with crap, but one box did include some Alpha Flight issues from late in volume one and the book below, which I'd forgotten I'd ever owned.

If you're unfamiliar with Marvel Saga, published in December 1985, its goal was to tie the various aspects of the Marvel Universe history chronologically.

A significant portion of the first issue was devoted to the origins of the Fantastic Four, and since the FF were the in-story inspiration for Alpha Flight, their segment leads to Guardian's own origin.  It is told by patching together panels from the back-up stories in the early issues of Alpha Flight that provided background details about each team member.  The installments in issues two and three focused on Mac and Marvel Saga summarizes them in three pages.

This Saga ran for 25 issues then spawned more character-specific series, such as Spider-Man Saga and Wolverine Saga. Since they figure prominently in his history, it's no surprise to see Mac and Heather show up in the first issue of the Wolverine book as well.

We'll just assume that Expos line is an attempt at humour by Mac...

The second issue of Wolverine Saga covers Guardian's (Weapon Alpha at the time) first attempt at recovering Wolverine for the Canadian government (originally depicted in X-Men 109), as well as the scrap between the X-Men and Alpha Flight in Calgary from X-Men 120 and 121.

The first few pages of the third issue recap Wolverine and Nightcrawler teaming with Guardian (still known as Vindicator), Shaman and Snowbird from Alpha Flight to stop the Wendigo (X-Men 139 and 140) in northern Ontario.

So no new material to speak of, just old panels/pages reorganized to abbreviate a little convoluted history.  Still, in light of how poorly treated Alpha Flight and Guardian have been in the past, it's nice to see their place in Marvel history recognized.

Guardian Year One

Not being particularly interested in Wolverine's early days aside from his interaction with James MacDonald Hudson, I was a little unsure as to how much I would enjoy this book.  Now that I've read it, I'm still not certain I do.

The book describes itself as a "contemporary retelling" of Wolverine's formative years, but since much of that period was spent with, and impacted by, the Hudsons, it is nearly inevitable that their history will be affected by any modification or modernization to Logan's.  That includes the sudden revelation of an early model of the Guardian armour.

Such "touch ups" don't have to be a bad thing.  For example, the "Hudson hunting honeymoon" has ceased to be.  The Hudsons don't shoot Wolverine in the wild and nurse him back to health, but rather recover him following his devastating battle against the Wendigo.  The hunting aspect is not specifically important to the scene so its  removal doesn't negatively affect it.  Really, it arguably improves it as the Hudsons have never shown an interest in hunting since, that I can recall.

What does seem out of place is Mac's dialogue throughout much of the book.  Many of his actions that appear to be out of character can be explained as the result of his patriotism being abused by his superiors.  That's historically consistent so not difficult to accept.

But his words towards Logan are often malicious and petty.  A lot of them are spoken after Wolverine has put Heather in harms way, so the anger is understandable at that moment, but it persists well beyond that point and is far worse than the trash-talking type of dialogue in X-Men 109.

The other inconsistency is in Mac's confidence.  Mac's reluctance to wear the battle suit is well documented.  In this story, not only does he do so without a second thought, he takes to it like a fish to water.  During a scrap with Wolverine in which he has the upper hand, he even states "I could do this all day".  He seems more comfortable with the suit in this book than he does in his next chronological appearance (again, X-Men 109).

While a lot of gaps in Wolverine's (and by association, Guardian's) background are filled in, because some of the story is inconsistent with other works, it feels like it's out of continuity.  But based on the pitch as a retelling (not re-imagining), it doesn't seem like that should be the case.

As a stand alone book, both the story and art are quite good.  If you're detail-oriented, those little inconsistencies may get on your nerves.  I found myself trying to consolidate parts of the book with what I know has gone on since that period in Wolverine's life until I realised that it's not my job to do that, it's the writers'.

To be fair, my focus was on Guardian.  Theirs was on Wolverine.  My criticism might be a touch more valid if this book had been "Alpha Flight: Season One" which, regardless of my opinion of this book, I would buy in a heartbeat.

Early Guardian (well...Captain America...) samples

Sometimes, things just fall right into place.

I was filling out the "About Guardian" page at above left.  There wasn't much information to add that hadn't been included somewhere else on the blog, so I had the idea to copy some of his "real" origin.

At first, my plan was to include quotes from John Byrne that appeared in the Guardian Eaglemoss magazine. In order to flesh it out some, I started searching for similar interview excerpts.

As you can now see on the page in question, I was able to access parts of Modern Masters #7.  This was a bit of a stroke of luck, because being a Google books preview only, many pages were deliberately skipped.  But the one I would have ripped right out of the book given the choice was readily available.

On that page, Byrne mentions that he drew "bad samples" when asked to display his skills for a Captain America story set to take place in Canada.  In the story, Cap was to fight a Canadian superhero that, we now know, would later become Guardian.

Other versions of Guardian's true origin usually ignore the Captain America aspect.  They do make reference to sending a Canadian superhero to bring back Wolverine, of course.  That this superhero is one that Byrne dreamed up many years before is often mentioned, but that Guardian-to-be might have appeared in a Captain America book beforehand tends to be left out.

By complete fluke though, I stumbled into what appears to be a copy of one page of those samples.

It was up for auction in 2005 so the image has been floating around for a while.  Maybe it's common knowledge to die-hard Alpha Flight fans, but I admit that this is the first time I come across it.

I do recall Byrne stating that "badly coloured" pages of that sample artwork were still owned by someone.  It seemed like a harsh assessment but, well, I can kind of see how he reached that opinion.

Pre-Alpha Flight look at Guardian

Courtesy of the "John Byrne Draws" tumblr account.

It's probably fairly obvious, but the second character from left was referred to as an early version of Guardian (quite early, since the sketch is said to be from roughly 1971) when I first came across this piece.  Viewing the page now, I see an asterisk next to "Guardian" but with no explanation as to what it signifies so I suppose there's a possibility that it is not the case, or at least not confirmed.

If you're a John Byrne fan, you need to follow that account, or the similar Twitter account "John Byrne says".  They display tons of rare art and quotes from the controversial writer/artist.