Last week, we got a great example of how to open comics with a prose piece in Jeff Lemire’s Animal Man; now, we get a counter-example of how to do it poorly. We’re only four issues into an eight-issue series, and now we need Walter Langowski to recap what’s happened? On a full page? That’s one less page that Dale Eaglesham gets to draw. It’s printed on a photograph of looseleaf paper, for God’s sake.

That makes me very sad.

If you can skip over the first page, though, this is an okay issue. The story’s a bit less focused here — the team crosses over into New York in a van, then teleports back to Canada immediately. It feels like they did that purely so they could get the team to Niagara Falls for the dramatic moment of Mac dropping his costume over the falls.

But as awkward as that was, it tells me two things about how Van Lente and Pak are telling this story. One, they’re giving plausible reasons for how and why Alpha Flight gets from one place to another. Too often, Alpha Flight writers have just ignored the sheer vastness of Canada, having characters walk distances in a few hours that should take days to travel. Pak and Van Lente understand that they’re setting this in a real country, and are using that to help the story.

Two, it tells me they’re focused on the character moments. I really like that they’re exploring Mac’s personality and motives in this series. Northstar gets some great moments too, and evil Heather Hudson’s deadly shenanigans just get creepier and creepier.

Notwithstanding that, I wasn’t really digging this issue until I got to the last page, and we see who’s really pulling the strings at Alpha Strike: Master of the World. Now, I love Master of the World. As I write this, I have a big Dale Eaglesham sketch of Master of the World framed on my wall, and when I got it, he told me that was his first time drawing the character. Now, I presume, we’re going to be seeing a lot of him.

That makes me very happy. Put that in your little notebook, Mr. Langowski.