NEAR MYTHS: "THIS MORTAL COIL" (ALPHA FLIGHT #50, 1987)

Bill Mantlo's tenure on the original ALPHA FLIGHT series wasn't much more distinguished than that of the feature's creator John Byrne. Yet curiously, one of the few times Mantlo delves into the world of epistemological myth was a story in which he was clearly attempting to jettison a couple of characters he didn't like writing-- that is, Northstar and Aurora, whose history I briefly examined in TWINSANITY.

To the extent "Mortal Coil" is remembered at all, it's as the issue in which writer Mantlo made the big reveal that ambiguously gay superhero Northstar was actually a "fairy"-- but in the literal sense (though this didn't keep some commenters from assuming that this revised origin was meant as gay-bashing). Such invidious remarks didn't take into account (1) that Mantlo was also stating that Aurora, who was not gay/lesbian, shared the same human/fairy heritage, and (2) that Mantlo was a fairly conspicuous Liberal, who was unlikely to have been bashing even an implicit gay character.

Bill Mantlo took over writing the regular ALPHA FLIGHT title after John Byrne departed with issue #28, and he continued on the feature until issue #66. I would judge Byrne's stories to be no more than standard Marvel soap-operatics, in which a team of disparate individuals bounce off one another with lots of emoting and hand-wringing in place of substantial characterization. Mantlo's run was largely more of the same, and it can be argued that he made an honest attempt to follow through on most of the character-arcs Byrne had established. The two authors had roughly opposite strengths and weaknesses. Byrne could not plot an arc to save his life, but he was able to give his characters distinct voices. Mantlo was a better plotter, but all of his characters talk like they just graduated Exposition 101.

I glanced over the Mantlo issues prior to "Coil," and for the most part he keeps the Byrne status quo with respect to the mutant twins. Northstar is jealous of Aurora's dalliance with men in a way that would seem incestuous were he not supposed to be implicitly homosexual. As it is, Brother Northstar just comes off as judgmental for no particular reason. After the death of Aurora's former lover Sasquatch, she begins a love-affair with technician Roger Bochs, a legless paraplegic. Throughout these issues, Aurora's split personality remains unaltered, and her superhero persona is that of a flirt who has only light, insubstantial loves. Mantlo clearly had no interest in improving the fractious characters, and "Coil" is a story in which he sought to get rid of the twins-- and, for that matter, another Byrne original, the dwarf-hero Puck.

Since issue #44, Mantlo introduced the notion that Northstar had a "pre-existing disease" that made him cough in every succeeding issue. Unconfirmed rumors of the period asserted that Mantlo meant to imply that Northstar had contracted AIDS and to have the mutant hero perish of that disease. Allegedly, Marvel Editorial refused to let him make even indirect allusions to homosexuality, so Mantlo revised whatever plans he had to rid himself of the mutant siblings. Thus, Northstar's illness, as well as Aurora's mental instability, become serious enough that the team takes both of them to a potential place of healing, a mystical conduit that links to many of the Marvel magic-worlds.

Despite some nice art by June Brigman, most of the perils the Alphans face are standard and uninvolving. Thus there's some irony to my assertion Mantlo saved his creative energies to craft a new origin for the characters, just so that he could be rid of them. This new origin claims that the twins' mortal father, who died before either sibling could have met him, found his way into the Faerie World, and caught a female elf, Danae, who wanted to be caught by him. However, after the two were married and Danae conceived the twins, an Elf Purity Squad tracked the wayward fairy down. The twins' father expires in an accident and Danae, despite being immortal, perishes for some reason Mantlo does not bother to discuss.

This revelation by Loki, Norse God of Mischief, is taken at face value by both twins as they seek to survive in the darkness of the conduit. This situation engenders the closest thing the two characters have to a "mythic moment." John Byrne, during some of his last issues, had Aurora declare her independence from her snobby brother by altering her genetic makeup so that the two of them lost their powers when they made physical contact. Faced with the prospect of death in an otherworld, Aurora makes a sacrifice, radiating her store of light-energy-- which I guess is now mystical in nature-- into her brother's body. This depletes her so that Aurora is captured by some of the conduit's demonic denizens. 

Northstar locates the rest of Alpha Flight, but because their leader Vindicator is suddenly antsy about letting the demons out of the gate the heroes opened, she then seals it, with both Aurora and Puck inside. With two of the three characters Mantlo didn't want to write out of the way, he then came up with a way to usher Northstar into the Faerie-World of his mother's race-- though it's not clear why the elves suddenly welcomed a half-elf, half-human when twenty-something years ago they wanted to keep their bloodlines pure. 

The book's heroes have to slink away with their tails between their legs, but Mantlo makes certain that the readers don't condemn him for consigning two regular characters to horrible fates. I won't get into Puck's disposition, except to say that he's relieved of an ongoing curse. Loki then tells some irate deities that Aurora, by hurling all of her light-force into her brother, not only cured him but purged her own elf-nature as well. Loki claims he delivered her to some unspecified mortal custodians and that he supposedly cured her of her split personality.

I don't pretend that "Coil" is a good story, and as soon as Mantlo left the feature, the subsequent writer reversed the "half-elf" solution and both Northstar and Aurora came back, though I haven't re-visited at those stories for years. But I will give Mantlo some credit for coming up with a climax for the Northstar-Aurora sibling relationship, in marked contrast to the characters' creators John Byrne, who was content to have them simply snipe at one another endlessly. The idea of Aurora surrendering her essence to cure her ailing brother could even carry a loose clansgressive motif, which plugs in to Northstar's jealousy of his sister's sexual relationships-- though I won't claim that this was intentional on Mantlo's part. The name he gives to the twins' elfin mother also has an inverted connection to the use of "light" to signify "intercourse." In Greek mythology, the mortal maiden Danae begets Perseus after the hero's godly father Zeus appears to Danae as a "golden shower," usually translated as rain, though the shower's color has stronger associations with sunlight. And though I don't have reason to think Mantlo a "mythophile," it's interesting that the name Danae resembles a Celtic name for the faerie-folk: the "Tuatha de Danaan."

TWINSANITY

As preparation for a "'near myth" analysis about a particular ALPHA FLIGHT story, I felt I needed to write an overview of two of the team's characters, Northstar and Aurora, as they were used in the first 28 issues written and drawn by their creator John Byrne.

I had read all the Byrne issues back-to-back a year or two ago. This time I only wanted to scan for scenes involving the mutant siblings, trying to figure out what if anything Byrne meant to do with them once the team graduated from a few random guest-appearances to their own title.

Today Northstar is arguably the better known of the two, as he will forever be referenced as "the first gay superhero." And Byrne has been unequivocal that he meant Northstar to be gay as soon as he began planning the ALPHA FLIGHT feature. But Byrne could only allude indirectly to the Canadian hero's personal sexual proclivities, given that Marvel Editorial wanted to keep gay politics out of their comics. 

An unintended effect of this editorial restraint, however, was that as a character Northstar was something less than compelling, possibly because the author didn't put his best foot forward. I tend to think that, consciously or not, Byrne modeled his speedster-hero on one of the "speed-freaks" whom the artist grew up on: Quicksilver of X-MEN and AVENGERS fame. Northstar, despite not having been pegged as a mutant early in life as was Quicksilver, seemed very similar in his arrogance and waspishness. And as Quicksilver and his sister the Scarlet Witch joined the Avengers to prove themselves to humanity, Northstar also had a sibling-related motive for allying himself to Alpha Flight. Neither Northstar nor Aurora knew one another growing up; they were made aware of one another's existence only as adults. However, Northstar had once been a minor-league anti-government revolutionary, so he was in a sense already an "evil mutant" in being opposed to the status quo. So Byrne apparently decided that such a character's only reason for aligning himself with a government operation was to watch over his newly discovered sister.

The artist-author had much more freedom with Aurora and devoted much attention to her history. Byrne depicted in great detail how during her youth Aurora had been raised in a restrictive, religious orphan's home, which imprinted on her an animus toward her own sexuality. This deviation from a normal upbringing resulted in a split personality: one harsh and anti-sexual, the other an audacious, fun-loving libertine. To Northstar's credit, once he found out about his sister's impairment, he did his level best to help her. However, he never bonded with the other members of Alpha Flight; to Northstar, they were at most a means to an end.

Byrne, being an avid Marvel reader, also would have known the history of the Quicksilver-Scarlet Witch team in the AVENGERS title: that by the early seventies, Quicksilver and his sister had a falling-out due to her dating the android Vision, and that he departed the super-group while she remained a regular member for most of the next fifty-plus years. It's probably no coincidence that when Northstar had a falling-out with Aurora during the Byrne tenure, it was because the brother had some objection to the sister cozying up to a male of which the brother did not approve. But whereas it was clear that Quicksilver didn't think his sister ought to be humping an artificial man, Northstar's objections to Aurora's choice in lovers, that of the hulking Sasquatch, is never very clear.

Byrne did not stay on the title long enough to permanently sever relations between Northstar and the rest of Alpha Flight, but the most prominent Northstar-Aurora arc for those 28 issues was that Aurora began to resent her brother's bossiness and his comments on the sauciness of her libertine persona. The first conflict appears at the end of AF #7, where Northstar makes the rude comment that he thought his sister had vamped a super-villain (and a particularly ugly one) in order to save her life.

The two remain at odds for several more issues, until issue #22. Aurora, going through a psychological breakdown, seeks out her brother, and they reconcile somewhat. However, by coincidence Northstar gets a call from one of his old revolutionary friends, who owns a circus now and is getting trouble from Pink Pearl, a felonious fat lady. But thanks to Aurora overhearing conversation about Northstar's past illegal activities, she cuts him off again, and even informs him that she plans to tell Alpha Flight about his history. 

This was rather out of left field even for Byrne. At this point, though one might think Aurora's conservative persona might be politically conservative, none of the characters had discussed any real-world political concerns, and even Northstar's recollections about his former status are vague at best. A few issues later, one of the Alphans summons Northstar to help them with some great menace. He thinks Aurora called him, and when he makes an egocentric statement about how much she needs him, she slugs him.

That's pretty much the state of affairs between the siblings by the time Byrne wraps up his run. For most issues, Byrne was more concerned with exploring the different aspects of Aurora's personality. One of the last wrinkles was that she wanted to be separated so much from her brother that she had Sasquatch alter her mutant powers so that her powers and those of her sibling were no longer boosted when they touched hands. This seems like a very risky super-science procedure, but that remained the status of the twins as the Byrne tenure came to a conclusion.

    

COSMIC ALIGNMENT PT. 4

 The second appearance of Yuriko Oyama also does not bring her into direct alignment with the X-MEN cosmos, though in contrast to her DAREDEVIL appearance, this time she at least meets Wolverine face-to-face. But her dramatic arc is secondary to Wolverine's interaction with the character of Heather Hudson.

Once again, I don't choose to reread every story involving Heather or her husband James since Chris Claremont and John Byrne introduced them in the pages of X-MEN in the early 1980s, or the characters of the Canadian supergroup Alpha Flight, who were in essence a project brought into being by James Hudson. Byrne both wrote and drew the first 29 issues of ALPHA FLIGHT when they got their own title, and during that period James, who took up superheroing under the name Vindicator, was killed off. Heather took over theoretical command of the supergroup after James's death, but the next writer on the title, Bill Mantlo, determined that she should become the new Vindicator in order to join her fellow heroes in the field. But because she had no combat training, she sought out the man whom she and James had essentially fostered in his identity as Wolverine: the mystery man Logan. (And I'm sure Mantlo chose this story-path for much the same reason Wolverine was included in DAREDEVIL #196: to stoke a title's sales with the appearance of a popular character.)

I assume, without checking, that Mantlo mainly followed the broad outlines of what Claremont and Byrne had established in the backstory about James and Heather taking in the feral-seeming Logan, but it's my loose impression that Mantlo probably expanded on some details. For instance, Mantlo specifies that James and Heather were on their honeymoon at the time they found Logan, and that James actually leaves his blushing bride alone with the feral man to seek out help. Mantlo's not usually a very mythic writer, but I rather liked him having Heather think that her "Cinderella" story got turned into "Beauty and the Beast." This may also be the first time Wolverine himself witnesses how he was transformed by the Weapon X project, though the uniqueness of that experience was later overwritten by the events of WOLVERINE: ORIGIN.

As for Lady Deathstrike, she's brought in just to give Wolverine and the New Vindicator someone to fight. To this end, Mantlo quickly undoes O'Neil's happy ending for Yuriko Oyama, claiming that her lover Kira, shamed by the slaying of Dark Wind, committed suicide. This essentially caused Yuriko to do a 180-degree turn, so that in effect she became a copy of the father she had resented all her life. She considered that because Wolverine's adamantium skeleton had been created by Dark Wind's research-- even though it was the scientists of the Weapon X project who transformed the hero-- her dead father had a proprietary interest in said skeleton. This lousy motivation is matched by a rather desultory fight between the heroes and the villain's forces, after which the story kind of drops the training idea.

Lady Deathstrike quickly becomes fully aligned with the X-MEN cosmos in UNCANNY X-MEN #205, dated May 1986, which happens to be the same date allotted to the second part of the Mantlo ALPHA FLIGHT story. Given the quickness of the villainess's transformation, the editors may have flown Mantlo's idea of Lady Deathstrike before regular writer Chris Claremont, after which he, or other parties, arranged to remold the character. Thus, with the help of regular X-foe Spiral, Yuriko becomes a killer cyborg who now emulates Wolverine with her own claw-appendages. From then on, I would say that Deathstrike remains in the X-MEN cosmos no matter where else she may have appeared.

And just to bring things back to the cinematic tales, Deathstrike first makes her movie debut in X2, where she's said to be the creation of scientist William Stryker, who also assumes the role of transforming Logan into Wolverine in place of the head of the Weapon X project, one Doctor Thorton. Regrettably, Deathstrike isn't given even as much character in the movie as Mantlo gives her in the ALPHA FLIGHT tale, even though X2 remains the best of the X-films. But all this establishes in my mind that Lady Deathstrike is not in an iconic bond with Stryker or anyone else in the comics, and thus the film's use of Deathstrike and Stryker together makes that movie a charisma-crossover, even disregarding the presence of the script's other villains, the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants.