Alpha Flight and Avengers team up to save Atlantis, and former Alpha Flight member Marrina, from the throne-usurping Attuma.
This has one of the best Marvel creative writers at the time (Roger Stern) meeting up with one of the most mediocre (Bill Mantlo).
The Avengers issue is, of course, better. But after Attuma is unseated, bafflingly, the Avengers let him keep his title.
Couple that with one of Marvel’s best artists (John Buscema) crossing over with an unknown, meh one (David Ross). Each book tells the same story, but with different focal points (i.e, the titular teams). As you might imagine, the results are uneven.
Most of it is just fighting: Avengers/Alphas versus mutinous Atlantean hordes until Marrina starts generating new plodexes (that’s the species she belongs to) and Vindicator decides they have to kill her rather than let these ravenous mutations come to life.
Interesting—she’s willing to kill to save Earth.
But Namor loves Marrina and stops Alpha Flight from killer her, and it turns out okay in the end. That’s a gross oversimplication, but the Alpha Flight half of this story is really not worth much more than that.
In the end, Namor marries Marrina and their story is “to be continued…Someday,” which means Namor is done with The Avengers and Marrina isn’t rejoining Alpha Flight.
Interestingly enough, the need to end this story meant that the wedding itself wasn’t attended by a ton of heroes and it wasn’t crashed by a villain. This might be the ONLY Marvel wedding that wasn’t interrupted by a big fight.
In all, this crossover feels like a way to try to boost the failing Alpha Flight book by pairing it with Marvel’s flagship title.