Finished up the ALPHA FLIGHT BY JOHN BYRNE omnibus earlier and I'm experiencing a bit of a Mandela Effect. Which is to say that my memory is shit.
I remember the end of Byrne's run, with the Hulk being pulled out of the crossroads dimension and smashing Box going very differently.
The series is excellent until about halfway through Mantlo and then it just derails. Still fine through the Black Blade of Baghdad and Lady Sasquatch stuff, but it all falls apart by the time they decide Northstar is an elf
Those early Mantlo issues go deep into the body horror thing, which is one of the few examples of superheroes doing horror reasonably well. (Byrne had some moments in the previous issues, too...something about AF's batch of weirdos seemed to lend itself to it!)
What really stood out to me in Byrne's run was how little time the actual team spent together. It was mostly just specific members paired up or solo, with only a handful of issues with the full team together. Well, even less than that with the FULL team, as Marina was mostly absent.
AF is interesting to me as a failed superhero team. Half its members didn't want to be there, most were flakes or security risks themselves and the team has almost never won a fight cleanly. They're cannon fodder to be rescued by the Avengers or X-Men.
I'd write from that POV. Them rebuilding.
The first issue is about them rebuilding - or deciding to try to continue after losing funding and official status - and then that kind of goes out the window in the second issue.
Another interesting aspect is that unlike other teams they initially had no HQ and were geographically scattered.
In fairness, his life had been like that before Alpha Flight even existed. Started as soon as he gave in and started doing what his grandfather's skull told him to do.
