145. Alpha Flight vol 1 #17 ... Marvel ... John Byrne ... X-Men guest stars ...

Well from that last issue of iconic ... you will have to wade through some grieving issues and one big action sequence before you reached this ... and the thing about number 17 is that it is part flashback and part moving forward and part grieving yet again on the death of James Hudson i.e. Guardian the leader of the pack

Well in this issue there is a fair bit of time spent looking behind the scenes of a number of the primary characters include the wife, Heather where she ponders upon the fate of herself, the Flight etc and she is being visited by an old friend ... thus reminiscences unfold ... and they think back to the first time the X-Men met the Flight and the atypical fight that ensues between 2 heroic teams

It's a generally quiet issue ... with the flashback giving us the thrust of the issue's quota for action

Typical of comics of that era and typical of Byrne's work, we are given some subplots with one of them developing and moving to the front at the end of the issue and it involves Shaman ... so that we all have something else to look forward to

So is this issue worth buying? If you have not read any of the earlier issues, I would say NO. If you have read a few, then yes this is a nice chapter in the greater ongoing saga

Ratings: 7/10