Omega Flight: Alpha to Omega

Omega Flight #1-5

by Scott Kolins (Illustrator), Michael Avon Oeming

As super-villains flood the Canadian border, Omega Flight begins to cement its team of heroes, featuring veterans Talisman and Sasquatch with newcomers USAgent, Arachne, and Beta Ray Bill.

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Marvel, Superheroes, Fantasy, Fiction

126 pages, Paperback

First published November 21, 2007

About the author

Scott Kolins is an American illustrator, writer and creator for multiple different superhero and science fiction comic books. His main credits are as a penciler but he is an established inker as well as colorist and has some credits as a writer.

Reviews

[Trike · Rating 1 out of 5]

I am not having any luck with comics this weekend. Another stinker. Oeming is a terrific artist, but he is a genuinely terrible writer. Even by comparison to the awful Alpha Flight reboot this is bad. So many cliches, such clunky action, a parade of bad choices. Even awful spelling mistakes, like when one character says to USAgent, “Your an @$$, John.” How did that get through editorial, proofing and lettering? Or was it the letterer’s fault? Doesn’t matter, it’s crap all the way down.

Couple side notes: apparently Alpha Flight was murdered at some point before this came out. And they put the guy who killed them on the team. Wearing Guardian’s outfit. WTF Oeming? And the only Canadians are Talisman and Sasquatch? Gedouddahere with that lame shit.

[Daniel · Rating 2 out of 5]

Felt weirdly obligated to read this, being Canadian and all. It's not great, but it's not that bad. Mostly falters in the action scenes, which are confusing despite the strong illustrations. Lots of people crying in this. Like, just crying all the time. It's HEAVY SHIT, this forgettable comic about an Indigenous stereotype and a flying Canadian flag and the actual Sasquatch and literally fake versions of Captain America and Spider-Man. At least they tried. I mean it.

[Ed McKeogh · Rating 2 out of 5]

As a fan of the John Byrne-helmed "Alpha Flight," I grew first weary then angry at how subsequent creators handled the material. By the end of the first edition, the writing and art were about as low as you could get. The writer pulled a "deus ex machina" stunt in the last few pages of the final issue to resolve a story that took a year to build. All those poor, helpless, incompetent Canadian heroes I'd grown to love needed Dr. Strange to show up and fix their problem for them. Weak. Disappointing. Insulting.

So I avoided the second attempt to revitalize the franchise. Apparently, those creators killed off most of the interesting members of Alpha Flight, so I get to feel disappointed without having had to pay to witness it.

I dove into the latest incarnation of the team, now calling itself Omega Flight, ONLY because I found a copy of the trade paperback for REAL cheap on amazon. According to writer Mike Avon Oeming's publicity materials, this was Marvel's last attempt to test whether Flight could find its audience. The fact that there is no Omega Flight currently on Marvel's publication schedule tells you something.

The story plays off Marvel's massive, dark and unenjoyable "Civil War" crossover event. With supervillains fleeing to Canada to escape the Superhuman Registration Act, the Flight gets reactivated--Canada's first and last response to such threats. Mix in some recycled "Great Beast" storylines from Alpha Flight's better days and the demon horde that destroyed Beta Ray Bill's homeworld, and you have a tale that, really, only Oeming could love.

The team that ultimately faces off against the baddies is composed of the following: (American) USAgent and Arachne; (Alien) Beta Ray Bill; and (Canadian) Sasquatch, Talisman and Guardian III--as obvious a Canadian-flavored Avengers analog as you can get. The team never gells, the tone is bleak and dark throughout, some emotional heaviness and plot points left over from the second series get superficially addressed, and at the end, the team dissipates. If it was Oeming and Marvel's intention to rejuvenate Flight, I declare that they failed.

The thing that keeps this from being a one-star review for me is Scott Kolins' fascinating artwork. I'm kinda working an average here: one-star writing elevated by four-star artwork, leaving a 2.5 which I'm rounding up to be generous. But my art tastes are idiosyncratic and Kolins had a weak script with which to work, so the rating might be lower for you.

If you love Alpha Flight, read the reprint trade paperback of John Byrne's classic run instead. And surrender the hope that it will ever be that good again.

[Ross Vincent · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a child, the day I discovered that there was a Canadian Super Hero Team, I was so excited. (I am half Canadian, so I try to hold onto my roots as much as possible).
I picked up my first Alpha Flight comic as a teen, and saw that it was set in Toronto. And the next one I got was also in Ontario. (And there were a few set in Montreal!)
It didnt take much begging to get my Mom to buy it for me ("Mom, they are Canadian!!!!")

Over the years, the team seemed to have lost itself - the original members went there own ways, and new people joined. And then the team got back together. And then BOOM- they all died. Like DIED.
Well, comic book death. And we all know how long THAT lasts #IDiedButItDidntTake

This collection looks at how Canada deals with the effects of Marvel's Civil War (not the movie - the comic saga, about how the Supers in the States had to sign a registration or be outlaws. Good or Bad - neutral or active, if you wore a suit or fought, you had to register. Except that those that didnt want to had to seek safety in Canada and other places). A sudden influx of powers causes Canada government to work with SHIELD and form an team. Not Alpha -nope, this time, it is Omega.
Yeah, the team that opposed Alpha was as responsible for killing their leader. #NotReallyDead #Again.
And worse - the person that DID kill the original team is now a team-member, much to (including his own) chagrin of Talisman and Sasquatch. Rounding out the team is the @SS#@+ USAgent, the 2nd Spider-woman, and Beta Ray Bill (aka, the OTHER folks who take the names and places of the old school heroes). And their first battle- with the 2nd rate villains of the Wrecking Crew (remember, this is a team who had a member get taken down by a wooden arrow shaft shoot by Hawkeye during the first Secret Wars).

But in the end, things come together. Sort of.

[Jason Tanner · Rating 3 out of 5]

So, there's actually kind of a lot going on for Omega Flight to address. The premise for Omega Flight was that the fallout from the Superhero Registration Act was causing superhumans to migrate to Canada and cause trouble. Canada was overwhelmed because Alpha Flight, Canada's only super team of note, was destroyed in a throwaway Avengers story. So, the Canadian government, along with SHIELD, now directed by Tony Stark, recruited a team of American superheroes to fill in the holes left by Alpha Flight. Surviving Alpha Flight members Sasquatch and Talisman are joined by Arachne (the second Spider-Woman), US Agent (the neocon Captain America wannabe), and a new Guardian (who was actually the guy who killed the original Alpha Flight, only he didn't exactly because he was mind controlled or something, and he feels really bad about it). And, Beta Ray Bill shows up, too, because why the hell not?

The politics and the team dynamics are actually pretty interesting. The book would have been better served to focus on that. Instead, it's mostly a slugfest between the Wrecking Crew, some low-rent but super-strong Marvel hoodlums, and various members of the team. Oh, and the Wrecking Crew are given a power boost by some Old Evil Powers. (Who also possess Sasquatch. And killed Beta Ray Bill's people.) And, not that I'm against slugfests, but this one was really not easy to follow. Because as dynamic and energetic as Scott Kolins's art was, his storytelling was not particularly strong here.

In short, this book was a little thin. It was enjoyable and it had a lot of potential, but it didn't quite get there.

[Mike · Rating 2 out of 5]

Terrible dialogue, boring unfinished art. It's like we got the worst of Oeming on this one - why couldn't he plot this, hand over the writing to someone decent, and work up some of his visual magic? Ugh, and it makes my Canadian heart cry to see what a hack job they do of this.

Good lord that ending was bad - worse than the end credits from Animal House.

Only question I care about pursuing from this book: why is Beta Ray Bill (a) in need of a non-powered "secret identity", and (b) hosted in a human body (when there's a whole universe of body types to choose from - hell, even if they just limited it to the Marvel Norse gods pantheon, there's a lot of others statistically-just-as-probable choices there)?

[C · Rating 1 out of 5]

Continuing the (not currently so) great x-read of 2017/18...

Well, it has been awhile since I read two absolutely awful TPBs in a row in this experiment. But yeah... This was terrible. Bad plotting, What little characterization there is is pretty atrocious, the art goes between pretty good to messy panels where you can't tell what is going on. It's pretty easy to see why this Alpha Flight relaunch never got off the ground. There just isn't anything here to get excited over.

As an aside, was USAgent always this big of a jerk? I don't think I've read anything else with him in it but this certainly would not make me want to seek out anything else of him...

[Blair Conrad · Rating 1 out of 5]

Really, there was nothing here for me. I'm not familiar with most of the characters, or with Alpha Flight (I'd read an issue or two a long time ago), but liked the title and so I picked it up at the library. Muddled and confusing story, with muddled and confusing art, most of which is fight scenes.

[John · Rating 2 out of 5]

Another spin-off from Marvel's Initiative (which had so much potential but extremely unrealized). I actually really liked the art on this book.

It feels like a nice compliment to the "Last Defenders". It's such a nice time capsule of mainstream naughties superhero comics.

[Laura · Rating 2 out of 5]

I feel like this book was trying really hard to be gritty and dark and it was just boring. Also USAgent is the worst and such a jerk. Arachne was the only good part of this.

[Tym · Rating 3 out of 5]

The art was inconsistent and the story a bit dragging but there were some good moments too just not enough to earn more than 3 stars

[ilham · Rating 1 out of 5]

the only thing i liked about this comic was finishing it

[Rick Hunter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Scott Kolins artwork in this volume could be described as mediocre at best. The art is detailed like I want my comic art to be, but all of the characters look just a little off. None of the faces look very good and the bodies are weird looking to me. Sasquatch is the only character htat I really enjoyed how he looked and he's not human. I've seen some of Kolins' other work and almost all of it is better than his art here. art gets 2 1/2 stars.

Michael Avon Oeming is a comic writer that I'd never heard of until reading this volume. I wasn't so blown away that I have to track more of his work down, but I also wan's put off by his work. If I happen to stumble across something else by him, I'll pick it up if it looks interesting. Most of the downfall of the story had to do with the fact that there were really no star characters in this volume. I know Oeming didn't sit down and say I want to write a book about about the reformation of Alpha Flight and I just have to have Sasquatch, Talisman, US Agent, Arachne, Beta Ray Bill, and Weapon Omega. Those were the characters that someone higher up the food chain at Marvel decided should be in the book. That right there is why this volume isn't a must read. Sasquatch is the only original Alpha Flight character in the book and pretty much the only original character. US Agent is just a Captain America rip off that briefly wore the mantle of Cap. Arachne is the second Spider Woman. Talisman is the daughter of Shaman from the original Alpha Flight with basically the same powers as her father. Beta Ray Bill is a Thor knock off who briefly replaced Thor and has only sporadically appeared in the Marvel comics. Weapon Omega is the guy guy who killed all of the original members of Alpha Flight and is the third or fourth person to wear the Vindicator/Guardian suit. There was some good dialogue because of the fact that Talisman and Sasquatch were forced to work with the man that killed their friends and Talisman's father, but that's pretty much the shiniest part of the whole package. Arachne and US Agent both are good supporting characters for and ensemble group like West Coast Avengers, but neither one has the star power to carry a series which is why they don't have their own titles. Also, neither one of them is really leadership material. They are the foot soldiers and not the General. Sasquatch just wasn't the same without the other Alpha Flight members. The only person he has anything to do with is Talisman and vice versa. Alpha Flight itself was never a top selling comic, but without the original team, this didn't really seem like a good idea. Had the book been a few issues longer, Oeming might have been able to tell some great stories about the relationship between Talisman and Sasquatch and their animosity towards Weapon Omega, but that's not the case. I'm only giving the story 3 1/2 stars, but that's because of the cast of the story and the limitations placed upon the writer rather than fault with the writer himself.

I picked this volume up at Books-a-million in the clearance section for $3. I guess they wouldn't have been able to sell it otherwise. I only picked it up because it was a collected volume that held 5 issues for the price of what 1 issue normally costs. I've held onto it for a couple of years, read it 3 times and now I'm going to trade it in for hopefully about the same amount of money I paid for it. I'm then going to use that money towards something that is hopefully a better read.

Oh yeah, this story takes place in the aftermath of the Civil War storyline. If you've read ALL of that, then this might be worth a read, but only if you can borrow it or find it in the bargain bin like I did. Everyone else just stay away unless you're a diehard fan of one of the characters in the story.

[Arno Callens · Rating 2 out of 5]

On paper Omega Flight has all the elements to make for a fun comic. On actual paper it's just OK. How you turn a team-up of Sasquatch, Talisman, Beta Ray Bill, Michael Pointer, Arachne, and US Agent into something that feels so superfluous, I'll never know.

Of these six only Pointer gets some actual character development, and he plays well off the mournful Talisman. Sasquatch, however, gets the Hawkeye-in-The-Avengers-movie treatment, Beta Ray Bill continues to try and make sense of the arc he commenced in Stormbreaker (and with him the reader), and Arachne and US Agent are just there to banter, although the former's daughter gets a nice moment with Pointer.

The villains are a mess too. The Wrecking Crew are the dumb and disposable kind of bad guys, and over these five issues Sasquatch makes for a better opponent in the fifteen panels he's evil. Surely they could've had someone cooler escape the United States over the Canadian border. The endless and meaningless hordes of Great Beasts, demons, Brood or whatever are not helping, being so thinly sketched you could blow them off the page. Frankly, I don't see why they even needed Omega Flight to defeat them.

Which brings me to another, and final complaint. I'm not one to talk much about the art of a comic - at least, not yet - because I usually think it's adequate to awesome. In this case, however, I was disappointed by how crudely the whole thing seemed to have been drawn. None of the actions beats hit, and again I want to emphasise how easy that should be, concerning the combination of superpowers at hand. Instead we get uinspired punching, muddled mise-en-scène, and random explosions with random sound effects. With better art Omega Flight might at least have stuck the landing with a spectactular fight.

As it stands, there wasn't much reason to continue Omega Flight, not even in-story. I can't say I don't understand why Marvel didn't go through with this series, but it's a shame it never got to live up to its potential. Also, I hope the next comic I read starring Beta Ray Bill isn't written by Michael Avon Oeming, because I think this is bordering on animal abuse. He's an alien horse that is also Thor, how do you mess that up?

[Lemonmango · Rating 3 out of 5]

I remember hearing about this series seven years ago and pre-ordered it at my local comic shop. Boy, am I glad that the staff were lazy and never followed through; I would have kicked myself for spending money on this after reading it. I heard it wasn't so good, but I still had to pick it up when I noticed it at the library.

The covers make the team seem like a force to be reckoned with, but instead they just gnash their teeth at each other and get their asses kicked by a two-bit group of villains. The only purely Canadian members are held in custody (Sasquatch) or have a largely backseat role in the conflict as a seer/healer character (Talisman). To have a Canadian superhero team composed mostly of Americans is rather disappointing, especially when reading the extra few pages after the comic, where the reader learns USAgent felt more or less insulted to be assigned to a backwater country like Canada. A canuck myself, I was flattered.


Regardless of the story, the art is wonderful. I suppose if I want a serious Canadian superhero team I should pick up the Alpha Flight omnibus.

[Terje Birkedal · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of my personal favorites. Scott Kolins' art is different, but very entertaining. Great story.

[Jdetrick · Rating 2 out of 5]

So sad. I used to love Alpha Flight, but this follow up is such a hodge podge of characters that it barely makes sense. Perhaps it could have been interesting to watch these characters interact, but most of the five issues are a big fight scene. Not worth the time.

[Trey Kennedy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Such a great idea. The execution could have been so much better.