TWINSANITY

As preparation for a "'near myth" analysis about a particular ALPHA FLIGHT story, I felt I needed to write an overview of two of the team's characters, Northstar and Aurora, as they were used in the first 28 issues written and drawn by their creator John Byrne.

I had read all the Byrne issues back-to-back a year or two ago. This time I only wanted to scan for scenes involving the mutant siblings, trying to figure out what if anything Byrne meant to do with them once the team graduated from a few random guest-appearances to their own title.

Today Northstar is arguably the better known of the two, as he will forever be referenced as "the first gay superhero." And Byrne has been unequivocal that he meant Northstar to be gay as soon as he began planning the ALPHA FLIGHT feature. But Byrne could only allude indirectly to the Canadian hero's personal sexual proclivities, given that Marvel Editorial wanted to keep gay politics out of their comics. 

An unintended effect of this editorial restraint, however, was that as a character Northstar was something less than compelling, possibly because the author didn't put his best foot forward. I tend to think that, consciously or not, Byrne modeled his speedster-hero on one of the "speed-freaks" whom the artist grew up on: Quicksilver of X-MEN and AVENGERS fame. Northstar, despite not having been pegged as a mutant early in life as was Quicksilver, seemed very similar in his arrogance and waspishness. And as Quicksilver and his sister the Scarlet Witch joined the Avengers to prove themselves to humanity, Northstar also had a sibling-related motive for allying himself to Alpha Flight. Neither Northstar nor Aurora knew one another growing up; they were made aware of one another's existence only as adults. However, Northstar had once been a minor-league anti-government revolutionary, so he was in a sense already an "evil mutant" in being opposed to the status quo. So Byrne apparently decided that such a character's only reason for aligning himself with a government operation was to watch over his newly discovered sister.

The artist-author had much more freedom with Aurora and devoted much attention to her history. Byrne depicted in great detail how during her youth Aurora had been raised in a restrictive, religious orphan's home, which imprinted on her an animus toward her own sexuality. This deviation from a normal upbringing resulted in a split personality: one harsh and anti-sexual, the other an audacious, fun-loving libertine. To Northstar's credit, once he found out about his sister's impairment, he did his level best to help her. However, he never bonded with the other members of Alpha Flight; to Northstar, they were at most a means to an end.

Byrne, being an avid Marvel reader, also would have known the history of the Quicksilver-Scarlet Witch team in the AVENGERS title: that by the early seventies, Quicksilver and his sister had a falling-out due to her dating the android Vision, and that he departed the super-group while she remained a regular member for most of the next fifty-plus years. It's probably no coincidence that when Northstar had a falling-out with Aurora during the Byrne tenure, it was because the brother had some objection to the sister cozying up to a male of which the brother did not approve. But whereas it was clear that Quicksilver didn't think his sister ought to be humping an artificial man, Northstar's objections to Aurora's choice in lovers, that of the hulking Sasquatch, is never very clear.

Byrne did not stay on the title long enough to permanently sever relations between Northstar and the rest of Alpha Flight, but the most prominent Northstar-Aurora arc for those 28 issues was that Aurora began to resent her brother's bossiness and his comments on the sauciness of her libertine persona. The first conflict appears at the end of AF #7, where Northstar makes the rude comment that he thought his sister had vamped a super-villain (and a particularly ugly one) in order to save her life.

The two remain at odds for several more issues, until issue #22. Aurora, going through a psychological breakdown, seeks out her brother, and they reconcile somewhat. However, by coincidence Northstar gets a call from one of his old revolutionary friends, who owns a circus now and is getting trouble from Pink Pearl, a felonious fat lady. But thanks to Aurora overhearing conversation about Northstar's past illegal activities, she cuts him off again, and even informs him that she plans to tell Alpha Flight about his history. 

This was rather out of left field even for Byrne. At this point, though one might think Aurora's conservative persona might be politically conservative, none of the characters had discussed any real-world political concerns, and even Northstar's recollections about his former status are vague at best. A few issues later, one of the Alphans summons Northstar to help them with some great menace. He thinks Aurora called him, and when he makes an egocentric statement about how much she needs him, she slugs him.

That's pretty much the state of affairs between the siblings by the time Byrne wraps up his run. For most issues, Byrne was more concerned with exploring the different aspects of Aurora's personality. One of the last wrinkles was that she wanted to be separated so much from her brother that she had Sasquatch alter her mutant powers so that her powers and those of her sibling were no longer boosted when they touched hands. This seems like a very risky super-science procedure, but that remained the status of the twins as the Byrne tenure came to a conclusion.