YMMV / Alpha Flight

• Complete Monster: Vol. 2 issues #10 & 11: Baron Zebek, determined to restart the villainy of Baron Karza, commits a bloody conquest of the Antica region so as to enslave the population. Forcing the Antica to be used as slave labor and participate in brutal Gladiator Games, Zebek's most wicked act is to recreate Karza's vile Body Banks, subjecting the Antica to being torn apart piece by piece to use their bodies as merchandise to be sold to the highest bidder. Intending to eventually wipe out all Antica, Zebek then intends to spread his reign to other worlds, and, when beaten, spitefully tries to set off a bomb that will engulf Antica and many more billions of lives in nuclear fire.
• Fanon Discontinuity: Every Alpha Flight story after the original series, save for the brief Omega Flight series, which did its best to undo Bendis's slaughter of the team by way of revealing Sasquatch survived "The Collective" and only stating outright, that the two least liked Alphas (James MacDonald Hudson and Shaman) were dead.
• Flat Character: Creator John Byrne felt this way about the majority of the team, especially Mac, which is why Guardian was killed so early into his run. The only exception would be Northstar and Aurora and, to a lesser extent, Heather Hudson.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Bizarrely, Alpha Flight has historically been more popular with Americans than Canadians. Even their Canadian creator never liked them much, and has publicly stated he was "'forced' to make Alpha Flight a real series".
  • Probably has something to do with the fact that for whatever reason, Canada has almost always been depicted as unambiguously evil in the Marvel universe. Well, the Canadian government at least, because it was mixed up in the horrific Weapon X program in Wolverine's backstory.
  • Alternately, Canadians are very used to American media, and so tend to have a very negative opinion of American media portrayals of Canada and Canadian cultures (see Dudley Do-Right). A newcomer to the comic would suspect that, since Marvel is an American company, Alpha Flight would be a continuation of those stereotypes. So, like any stereotype, best to be avoided, and certainly not a good basis for a comic series. It doesn't help that, in a lot of Alpha Flight's guest appearances in other books, all they do is play up those roles (when they're not unexpected antagonists). Plus most Canadians only like jokes about Canada when they themselves tell them (see the Mackenzie Brothers).
• The Woobie: Poor Marrina. So, so much.
  • Marrina stopped being the woobie in volume four, when Fred Van Lente recast her as no longer giving a fuck about humanity after being brought back to life - complete with a new battle cry of "Die, human scum!" Whether this was a change for the better or worse is, of course, debatable.

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