Alpha Flight #43
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeAlpha Flight #43 is a quiet but consequential chapter in Marvel's long-running, editorially constrained effort to imply Northstar's homosexuality without ever stating it outright. The issue plants two seeds that would pay off across the next several years: Northstar develops a mysterious illness, and — in a detail that rewards retrospective reading — the Sentinels of Sebastian Shaw's Interdefense project fail to register him as a mutant, a plot thread Bill Mantlo was threading toward a reveal that Jean-Paul was not a mutant at all but of Asgardian origin, itself a workaround after Marvel editorial killed Mantlo's original intention to give Northstar AIDS. The issue also marks the debut of Whitman Knapp and introduces the Sentinels Mk VI, tying Alpha Flight's distinctly Canadian world to the broader Marvel mutant-persecution mythology for the first time in this era.
In "Strike Across the Border!", Mesmero's escape from custody sends shockwaves across the border, triggering a dangerous mission as Interdefense deploys the new Mark VI Sentinels to recapture him. With chaos erupting in the middle of Expo '86, Alpha Flight finds themselves caught in the crossfire—forced to defend both the event and the innocent bystanders from a Sentinel force gone rogue. Written by Bill Mantlo and illustrated by David Ross, with inks by Whilce Portacio and colors by Bob Sharen, this 1987 issue features a cover by David Ross that captures the tension of the moment.
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By late 1986, Bill Mantlo had taken over as Alpha Flight's writer from John Byrne, trading titles with the Incredible Hulk scribe, and he had settled into a long collaborative run with Canadian penciler Dave Ross — whose nationality, per a Comics Interview feature from October 1986, was coincidental rather than by editorial design, though Marvel did supply him with Canadian reference material. Whilce Portacio, early in his career, handled inks. Editor Carl Potts oversaw the issue under editor-in-chief Jim Shooter, whose well-documented policy against openly gay characters was the structural force shaping how Mantlo could only encode, never confirm, Northstar's orientation — a constraint that pushed the creative team toward the Asgardian-fairy retcon introduced later in issue #50. Mantlo's working method, described by collectors who have studied this run, involved writing plots ahead of finished art and filling in dialogue from penciled pages, which produced at least one documented continuity error in this specific issue: a footnote asterisk referencing a kiss that hadn't happened yet, because the scene actually appeared in the following month's issue #44.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Title of story: 'Strike Across the Border!' — written by Bill Mantlo, penciled by David Ross, inked by Whilce Portacio, colored by Bob Sharen, lettered by Ken Bruzenak; edited by Carl Potts under editor-in-chief Jim Shooter.
- First appearance of Whitman Knapp, introduced as an intern at the New Life Clinic run by Dr. Lionel Jeffries (Madison Jeffries's brother).
- First appearance of the Sentinels Mk VI, deployed by Sebastian Shaw's Interdefense project — connecting Alpha Flight's corner of the Marvel Universe to the X-Men's mutant-hunting mythology.
- The Sentinels fail to detect Northstar as a mutant in this issue — a detail Mantlo was deliberately seeding toward the later revelation (Alpha Flight #50) that the twins are of Asgardian fairy origin rather than true mutants, itself a workaround after editorial rejected Mantlo's plan to give Northstar AIDS.
- The issue contains a documented continuity error: a caption asterisk intends to reference a kiss that had not yet been published, because the scene in question actually appeared in the following issue, #44 — a result of Mantlo's plot-ahead working method.
- Box (Roger Bochs), trapped inside his armor and increasingly unstable, is brought to the New Life Clinic, where he agrees to treatment from Dr. Lionel Jeffries — a subplot that develops his relationship with Aurora (Jeanne-Marie Beaubier) as emotional motivation.
- The issue is set partly at Expo '86 (the real-world World's Fair held in Vancouver, British Columbia), grounding the action in a specific, contemporaneous Canadian cultural event.
- The issue is collected in the Bill Mantlo & Jim Lee Alpha Flight Omnibus (Marvel), which gathers Alpha Flight #30–70 and related issues from this era.
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Reprints
Reprinted in Strange #223 (1988), Marvel Two-In-One Alpha Flight & La Masa #39 (1988), Marvel Two-In-One Alpha Flight & La Masa #40 (1989), Alpha Flight by Mantlo & Lee Omnibus #[nn] (2025)
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