One thing that’s nice about these issues of Alpha Flight is that John Byrne has dropped a fully-formed team into the Marvel Universe, and its members are almost all new characters. It’s hard for comic book readers to get a handle on new characters—most fail—so Byrne gives each of them a “turn” at what is basically a solo story. This one is devoted to the team’s twins–Northstar and Aurora.
It’s also the first appearance of Nemesis–a pretty minor villain, but I think it’s Alpha Flight’s first costumed enemy. She can fly and gets other powers from her magic sword.
And also Deadly Ernest. He’s kind of a Canadian version of Kingpin, only he’s immortal. He’s Nemesis’ daddy.
Like Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch, these two siblings are unusually close. Northstar is concerned about Aurora’s psychological condition, so he takes her to the team’s psychiatrist. Aurora is a split personality, with her hero persona not knowing about her civilian one, so, when she is examined, the doctor finds no abnormality: Because the examined personality believes that it is normal and has no knowledge of the other identity. And she can be pretty nasty.
It’s a pretty interesting idea.
From there, we end up in a complicated family story surrounding the twins’ adoptive parent, and it ends with the tempermental Aurora feeling judged by her brother and breaking off their partnership. The details aren’t all that important, because it’s consistent: She WAS being judged by him—the whole story started with him thinking she was crazy!
Backups about Talisman and Snowbird.
Nice character work by Byrne, and of course wonderful art.