A review by trike
Captain Marvel, Vol. 1: Rise of Alpha Flight by Michele Fazekas, Tara Butters
3.0
I was underwhelmed by the previous iteration of Captain Marvel, which had great promise held back by lackluster and, to be honest, incompetent storytelling.
I picked this up for two reasons: a new creative team and Alpha Flight. This version is merely okay.
Carol Danvers and three members of AF are put into a Star Trek-meets-Alien type of situation, with a story that starts strong but kind of trips up on the plotting and timing as it goes. You can see the "Writing 101" cliches immediately, with a story that begins in media res and then jumps to "Yesterday." Then there are multiple versions of The Countdown, used to artificially ramp up tension. There are a couple Reversals and some Reveals, all of which are telegraphed and land softly.
It's not that this stuff is annoying so much as it's amateur. The weird thing is that comics today have such decompressed stories yet they feel light on character development and plot. This story suffers the same problem. 25-30 years ago this would be two issues, max.
I'm a big fan of Alpha Flight's original incarnation -- in fact, the same day I bought this I ordered the big retrospective collection, [b:Alpha Flight by John Byrne Omnibus|30621671|Alpha Flight by John Byrne Omnibus|John Byrne|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1470293667s/30621671.jpg|51153229] -- so it was disappointing to see Puck, Aurora and Sasquatch used so sparingly. Puck is an actual supporting character, but both Aurora and Sasquatch could be replaced by redshirts and you'd never know. I think Sasquatch has about six lines in the whole thing, and since Carol is stronger than he is, he's rendered redundant in any action scenes.
I picked this up for two reasons: a new creative team and Alpha Flight. This version is merely okay.
Carol Danvers and three members of AF are put into a Star Trek-meets-Alien type of situation, with a story that starts strong but kind of trips up on the plotting and timing as it goes. You can see the "Writing 101" cliches immediately, with a story that begins in media res and then jumps to "Yesterday." Then there are multiple versions of The Countdown, used to artificially ramp up tension. There are a couple Reversals and some Reveals, all of which are telegraphed and land softly.
It's not that this stuff is annoying so much as it's amateur. The weird thing is that comics today have such decompressed stories yet they feel light on character development and plot. This story suffers the same problem. 25-30 years ago this would be two issues, max.
I'm a big fan of Alpha Flight's original incarnation -- in fact, the same day I bought this I ordered the big retrospective collection, [b:Alpha Flight by John Byrne Omnibus|30621671|Alpha Flight by John Byrne Omnibus|John Byrne|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1470293667s/30621671.jpg|51153229] -- so it was disappointing to see Puck, Aurora and Sasquatch used so sparingly. Puck is an actual supporting character, but both Aurora and Sasquatch could be replaced by redshirts and you'd never know. I think Sasquatch has about six lines in the whole thing, and since Carol is stronger than he is, he's rendered redundant in any action scenes.