Sigh...more Guardian.  With zero knowledge of what happened in the AF appearances years earlier in X-Men, seeing the opening splash made me a happy kid.  I was more than a little let down to find out it was a flashback. 

Still, great to see JB returning to the inking for a brief time.  The additional background on Hudson's dealings with Dept H and the Canadian government help flesh out his character, and just a hint of inner turmoil after nearly taking Moira's head off.   And who knew that the team's strongest member was a young redhead in glassses...

Double sigh...Aurora's third straight naked appearance.  Love the ankle bracelet!

Anyway, this issue was structured as it is in an effort to recapture some of my lost time. Those few reprint pages bought me an extra couple of days.

During the time I was doing FF and ALPHA, Marvel changed the schedules. They were -- wisely -- trying to build in more "office time", production time, when paste up and art corrections could be done in a leisurely manner, and not as last second scrambles. Unfortunately, they insisted on revamping the schedules retroactively, so one morning I awoke to learn I had lost a month. (I was fortunately ahead of schedule, but Frank Miller awoke that same morning to find himself suddenly a month late!)

Could you imagine a publisher doing that now? 

My first (adult) reaction to those reprint pages -- what a great inker Terry Austin was and is.   He truly captured JB's line - 'cause the transistion from JB inks to TA inks is seemless (mostly).

This was one of my favorite issues of the run since it added great back-story to my all-time favorite issue of X-Men (my first issue).  I think a read this issue as many times as X-Men 109.

I REALLY miss JB's Alpha Flight.  Maybe the comic Gods will smile a JB will get a itchy finger to create a one-shot for Marvel one day soon -- or clone his earlier creation into a new independant book (like he did with FF in DU) -- that would be neat.

Andrew:

I meant DC or Marvel.