After last week's hiatus, we're back to another heavy schedule for the X-books.  Because when you've got a month to kill, the best thing to do is put out even more comics so that there'll be even more pages to fill!

We start with the second issue of Scott Lobdell and Clayton Henry's Alpha Flight.  It's actually a considerable improvement over issue #1, largely because most of the jokes work this time round.  The opening double page spread - a reverse view of the same scene from issue #1, complete with reversed lettering - is a particularly neat idea.

Sasquatch repeats his attempt to put together a new Alpha Flight, and this time everyone ends up joining - some more willingly than others.  To be honest, this is the sort of story that might have worked better in a double-sized opening issue, since we're now a third of the way through the opening arc and we still haven't really established what the wider plot it (besides knowing that the rest of Alpha Flight have gone missing and Sasquatch is assembling a new team to rescue them).  But it's worked reasonably well as an introduction for the new characters.

Lobdell is building problems for himself down the line, though.  This is meant to be a comedy/action book, but some of the characters he's introduced are unworkable as anything more than joke characters.  Major Mapleleaf is impossibly nice, and while he's seemingly being used in the role that Captain Marvel had in the early Giffen Justice League stories, the joke worked with Marvel because he was a kid.  Mapleleaf is just freakishly weird. 

Yukon Jack is a particular problem, as Lobdell has been so determined to undercut the character's "hidden city" origin that he's left it completely unviable.  I can't for the life of me see how this character is ever going to be anything but a joke, given the way he's been introduced, unless heavy retconning is brought in.  For the moment that's not an enormous problem, but it's building up serious difficulties in the future.

It would also be helpful if Lobdell could make up his mind whether Nemesis is meant to be an anarchist or a nihilist, since they're not the same thing.

Clayton Henry's art tells the story efficiently enough.  I don't get the sense that he's adding much to the jokes in terms of delivery, but at least his art his a bright, open style to it which fits the tone of the book.

Taken in isolation, this is a fairly entertaining issue.  But Lobdell has been undercutting the book to such an extent that there are going to be serious problems for the future.  Of course, that's assuming the book makes it that far, which isn't exactly a given these days.  Still, as an X-book (however tenuously), it's got reasonably good prospects of sticking around. 

Amusing as far as it goes, but the long term problems are building up.

Rating: B-

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