When the Canadian parliament shut down their superhero training program due to budget constraints – most members of the Beta and Gamma Flight training squads found themselves abandoned, without purpose or place to call home. Jerome Jaxon, who had carried a grudge against James Hudson for an entire decade, seized the chance to recruit these super-powered individuals into Omega Flight. Their mission statement was quite simple - take down Hudson and destroy Alpha Flight.
First appearance: Alpha Flight (1st series) #11
Last appearance: Alpha Flight (1st series) #28
Membership: Delphine Courtney / Guardian II, Smart Alec, Diamond Lil, Wild Child, Flashback, Box II
Before
- While working for the Am-Can Petroleum company, James MacDonald Hudson built the prototype of a mechanical suit to increase efficiency and development. He was furious, when he discovered that his boss, Jerome Jaxon, planned to sell the suit to the American military, as Mac had intended his invention to be used for peaceful purposes only. Therefore, he destroyed all blueprints of the suit and stole its cybernetic helmet, as without it the prototype wouldn’t function properly. Heather McNeill, Jaxon’s secretary, arranged for Hudson to meet with members of the Canadian parliament and they agreed on the helmet being the property of Canada, as Hudson had designed the helmet while still in college on a government student loan. [Alpha Flight (1st series) #2-3]
- Considered a failure by his superiors, Jaxon was fired soon thereafter. He was left by his wife and, as he couldn’t find a new job in the business, he was soon flat broke. A failed suicide attempt left him confined in a wheelchair and a rather bitter man. Ten years later, when he saw Alpha Flight’s public debut on TV, he immediately recognized the headpiece of Guardian’s costume as the cybernetic helmet Hudson had designed. With his knowledge of Guardian’s secret identity, Jaxon sought out an old business acquaintance at Roxxon Industries and proposed a plan for them to work together – Jaxon would get revenge and Roxxon the technology inside the suit. Roxxon also provided Jaxon with an alluring assistant, Delphine Courtney. [Alpha Flight (1st series) #12]
- Shortly after Alpha Flight’s public debut, the Canadian government decided that having their own team of super heroes was a luxury they could no longer afford, as they had caused damages amounting to several million dollars. As a result, Department H immediately shut down the Flight program. While Alpha Flight decided to continue on their own without government support, the members of the training squads Beta Flight I and Gamma Flight I suddenly found themselves without a job or purpose. [X-Men (1st series) #140, Alpha Flight (1st series) #1]
Chronology
| Alpha Flight (1st series) #7: | At a shopping mall in Winnipeg, Alec Thorne competes in an all-comers chess tournament against all the other participants. Being one of the smartest men alive, there’s no doubt he will win all the games. Suddenly he is approached by Delphine Courtney. The beautiful woman not only recognizes him for Gamma Flight’s smart Alec, but she also comes with a job offer. Alec is easily convinced and leaves with her. |
| Alpha Flight (1st series) #11: | In Moosejaw, Saskatchewan, Roger Bochs, has received the same offer from Delphine Courtney. Roger says he needs 24 hours to prepare and Delphine leaves to contact one last person. Roger is not convinced, though, and tries reaching the governmental liaison of the Flight program on the phone. However, the contact person is on vacation. Roger then thinks it’s up to himself to find out what is going on. The next day, Roger meets the other people hired by Delphine Courtney in an office in New York’s World Trade Center. It’s his former teammate Flashback and Gamma Flight members Smart Alec, Diamond Lil and Wild Child. Within minutes, they start bickering at each other and Delphine Courtney smiles, thinking that her behavior influencer is working perfectly. She then introduces them to Jerome Jaxon, who explains that they were all let down by James Hudson, before he offers them the chance to take part in the destruction of Hudson’s dream, Alpha Flight. Also in New York, due to a fake job offer by Roxxon, James Hudson wants to pick up his wife, Heather, from the airport, but only finds Jaxon’s business card waiting for him. Realizing he has been set up, Mac sends a distress signal to Alpha Flight as he flies to Jaxon’s office. There he find Omega Flight waiting for him. |
| Alpha Flight (1st series) #12: | As neither member of Omega Flight is capable of flight, Guardian manages to hold them off until Alpha Flight arrives. Meanwhile, Heather Hudson is tended to by Delphine Courtney. When Heather learns of Jaxon being behind the attack, she attacks Courtney and accidentally rips off some synthetic skin, revealing the woman to be a sophisticated robot. Apparently not even Jaxon was aware of his assistant’s true nature. Close by, Omega Flight fights valiantly but Flashback, Dimamond Lil and Wild Child are soon defeated by the more experienced Alpha Flight. Smart Alec snatches Shaman’s mystic pouch during the battle and, curious, looks inside trying to understand how it works, the effect of which is the immediately loss of his mind. Suddenly, Box lunges forward, taking Guardian to a secret compartment of the building. There, Box reveals that it’s not Roger Bochs controlling the strong robot but Jaxon, who is cybernetically controlling its movement. In the confined space, Guardian has no room to outmaneuver Box, so he decides to overload it with an electrical charge. Still linked to Box, Jaxon’s body is fried by the electric feedback. Guardian’s battle-suit is severely damaged, though, and explodes, apparently killing its wearer. |
| Alpha Flight (1st series) #13: | Shaman shrinks the mindwiped Smart Alec to the size of a doll and stores him in his mystic pouch until he can find a way to cure him. |
| Alpha Flight (1st series) #25-26: | Many months later, Guardian is found alive and reunited with Alpha Flight. He explains that, in the explosion, he was shunted through a rift in space-time to Jupiter’s moon, Ganymede, where he was rescued by the alien race called the Quwrlln. After they had healed his injuries, they sent him back home. Guardian assumes leadership of the team, and orders half of the group to accompany him to check out a crisis at a shopping mall. There, they are attacked by Diamond Lil, Wild Child and Flashback. This time, the Alphans are defeated, as “Guardian” switches sides during the battle, revealing himself to be Delphine Courtney in a new disguise. |
| Alpha Flight (1st series) #27: | Delphine Courtney explains that she busted the rest of Omega Flight out of prison, as they had yet to finish their mission. While their primary goal - the death of James Hudson – was accomplished, their secondary mission, the destruction of Alpha Flight, was not. With the captured half of Alpha Flight rendered unconscious, Delphine waits for the other half of the team to arrive, still posing as their late leader. Upon arrival of the remaining Alphans, Shaman among them, “Guardian” claims that he and the others were attacked by Omega Flight, except for Smart Alec. At that point, Shaman mentions that he stored Alec in his mystic pouch. Wanting to free her teammate, Courtney rips the pouch of Shaman’s belt and reaches inside, finding it empty. Believing there might be hidden pocket, she turns the pouch inside out, releasing an all-consuming void. The rest of Omega Flight realize they are way out of their league and make a run for it, while Courtney further tortures Shaman by grabbing Snowbird by the neck, making him chose between aiding her or rescuing his daughter Talisman from the void. |
| Alpha Flight (1st series) #28: | Joined by Courtney, Omega Flight tries to escape from the mall, but are met by Alpha Flight ally Madison Jeffries. The techno-morph was the only member of Gamma Flight that Delphine Courtney did not recruit into Omega Flight. Jeffries re-shapes the cars parked outside the mall into a robot to oppose Omega Flight. Courtney grabs one of Flashbacks future selves and uses him as a human shield, with him getting impaled by the huge robot in her place. Instantly, all of Flashback’s other temporal selves vanish and he knows that he will die as soon as real time catches up with the timezone from which the killed duplicate originated. Next, Jeffries uses his power on Courtney herself, destroying her by scrambling all the wiring and technology inside her robot body. He then leaves the robot he created from the car parts to guard Omega Flight until the authorities arrive. |
Afterwards
- Wild Child broke out of prison and randomly killed ten innocent people. [Marvel Comics Presents (1st series) #51-53] He was later caught and incarcerated again. With his bestial nature apparently under control, Wild Child was pardoned into the new governmentally sanctioned Gamma Flight II. [Alpha Flight (1st series) #76] Nevertheless, his savage side eventually resurfaced. [Alpha Flight (1st series) #87]
- Diamond Lil too was supposed to be part of this new Gamma Flight but the first thing she did after being released from prison was to track down her old lover, Madison Jeffries, to see if he still had feelings for her. When Madison was called away for a mission with Alpha Flight, Diamond Lil went along and ended up stuck with Alpha Flight on a journey across several alternate dimensions. It took them three months to get back home, by which time the new Gamma Flight was already up and running and no longer had a need for her. Instead, she ended up joining Alpha Flight full time. [Alpha Flight (1st series) #76, 71, 78]
- The remains of Delphine Courtney were studied by Roger Bochs and Madison Jeffries, who managed to extract the technology from it with which had simulated the original Guardian’s powers. They managed to turn them into a similar battle-suit that ended up being worn by Guardian’s late wife, Heather McNeill Hudson as Vindicator II. [Alpha Flight (1st series) #30, 32]
- Smart Alec’s body would eventually serve as a temporary host body for Walter Langkowski’s disembodied soul. After being stranded at the Crossroad’s of realities, Walter inhabited Alec’s body and crawled out of Shaman’s pouch. He arrived in Alpha Flight’s mansion right in time to thwart an attack of the villain Pestilence, who had possessed Snowbird’s albino Sasquatch form. During the battle, Alec’s body was crushed, though it had served Walter long enough for him to find a permanent body. [Alpha Flight (1st series) #44-45]
- It is unknown when or how Flashback got out of prison but, after he did, he went into hiding and burned his costume, reasoning that, as long as he never wore it, he could not be summoned into the past to the moment of his death. Apparently, the universe wouldn’t let itself be thwarted so easily, though, as he eventually found the costume popping up in his apartment time and again. Flashback turned to the current incarnation of Alpha Flight for help and via time-travel they managed to break Flashback’s temporal cycle. [Alpha Flight (3rd series) #9-12]
Members
Delphine Courtney / Guardian II
First appearance: Alpha Flight (1st series) #7
Last appearance: Alpha Flight (1st series) #28
All Omega Flight I appearances: Alpha Flight (1st series) #11-12, 25-28
Powers: gynoid designed by RoXXon Oil with superhuman strength and reflexes, an open-ended deduction capacity, and an influencer device that affects the human brain to heighten negative emotions or bend their thoughts to her control
- formerly wore a version of the Guardian battle suit that allowed her to manipulate electromagnetism into concussive bolts, funnels of plasma energy, and an inertia-dampening force field, levitate and propel herself along magnetic ley lines, and place herself at rest with the Earth’s rotation to launch forward at high speeds
Smart Alec (Alexander Thorne)
First appearance: Alpha Flight (1st series) #7
Last appearance: Alpha Flight (1st series) #12, 45
All Omega Flight I appearances: Alpha Flight (1st series) #11-13
Powers: intuitive genius able to assimilate data and extrapolate conclusions at an accelerated pace
Diamond Lil (Lillian Crawley-Jeffries)
First appearance: Alpha Flight (1st series) #11
Last appearance: X-Force (3rd series) #23
All Omega Flight I appearances: Alpha Flight (1st series) #11-12, 26-28
Powers: generate a perpetual bio-aura that reinforces her body against all physical harm and supports additional weight to enhance her strength
Wild Child (Kyle Gibney)
First appearance: Alpha Flight (1st series) #11
Last appearance: Wolverine: Origins #39
All Omega Flight I appearances: Alpha Flight (1st series) #11-12, 26-28
Powers: augmented strength, speed, agility, endurance, and reflexes, hyper keen senses, accelerated regeneration factor, razor edged teeth and claws
Flashback (Gardner Monroe)
First appearance: Alpha Flight (1st series) #11
All Omega Flight I appearances: Alpha Flight (1st series) #11-12, 26-28
Powers: summon his "future-selves" back in time, imprinting his current consciousness over their future ones to increase his manpower
Box II (Jerome K. Jaxon)
First appearance: Alpha Flight (1st series) #2
Last appearance: Alpha Flight (1st series) #12
All Omega Flight I appearances: Alpha Flight (1st series) #11-12
Powers: operated a robot made of "living metal" via cybernetic headset, giving him tremendous strength, reflexes, and an indestructible armored hide