In 2019, Marvel published the Alpha Flight: True North special, which asked entirely Canadian creative teams to do stories about Canada's super-team. Of the three stories, I'm most interested in "Monsters" because it takes place - and this is rare for Alpha - in the Maritimes, specifically Cavendish Beach on Prince Edward Island, which I HAVE BEEN TO. We'll be able to compare. I'm glad to see Jed MacKay take this opportunity to showcase this part of the world - he's from Stanley Bridge, a mere 5-minute drive from Cavendish. Montreal native Djibril Morissette-Phan had his work cut out for him doing the place justice, in part with the help of colorist Ian Herring (Toronto) because the most important thing you need to do to get PEI's beaches right is their trademark reddish color!
You did it, gentlemen (though Cavendish isn't actually this extreme compared to other sites because they truck in sand). After taking care of something called "The Beast", the twins, Puck and Marrina are relaxing on a rather deserted stretch of the beach (maybe it's a weird time of year for it; or really not on the main stretch, which makes sense in terms of sand color). Just to show how neglected readers of the Maritimes have been, Marrina confesses she's never been to PEI in all her time in Alpha Flight, despite being raised in Newfoundland, which would be in swimming distance for her (but a long ferry ride to Nova Scotia, then a short one, or else a long drive through the other provinces for us, better to take a plane). Speaking of ferries...
I believe that's my own New Brunswick (maybe a 45-minute drive from me) in the background. Puck tells Marrina a story that takes place in 1937. Back then, there was a ferry between Port Elgin, NB and PEI. That very narrow place in the Northumberland Strait is now serviced by the Confederation Bridge. You can definitely see the other province as you stand on the other's shore so the boat carrying monster hunters Judd, Fat Cobra and Ulysses Bloodstone is definitely coming from here and not Nova Scotia (maybe Caribou is visible from the Island, but where why would the heroes make that detour).
Puck found something poetic about coming to kill a monster on an island "with soil as red as spilt blood", and so they did, a Lovecraftian monstrosity worshiped by a local cult. And if he's telling Marrina this, it's because he's confessing to her that he later found out it was a Plodex, one of her own people, and thus had the potential for intelligence and goodness. She doesn't forgive him so much as tell he he doesn't need her forgiveness. Plodex be dangerous, yo. She's a monster too, so is Puck, we're all monsters, but we're also people with the capacity to change for the better. I love the line about her being born to conquer and so vowing to conquer her own biology. Time to walk into the sunset...
Artistic license on the size of the sun, of course, but it's setting in the East somehow. Still, what a nice little story about two of Alpha's least powerful members. Just lovely.
Now I want to know what this whole "Beast" crisis was all about. I can only imagine it happening at the Anne of Green Gables Heritage site, maybe in the "haunted wood". Somebody give McKay a shot at telling it!
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