Issue(s): Alpha Flight #11 (origin back-ups only)
Cover Date: Jun 84
Title: "Unleash the beast!"
Credits:
John Byrne - Writer
John Byrne - Penciler
John Byrne - Inker

Review/plot:
The origin back-up for Alpha Flight #11 is for Sasquatch. Walter Langkowski was a peer of Bruce Banner when they were both Freshmen in college...

...and when he later learned that Banner became the Hulk, Langkowski followed in his footsteps. With funding from Department H, he went up to an isolated area in northern Canada (an area that Snowbird warned was dangerous for mystical reasons, to no avail), and recreated the event that created the Hulk, but under controlled circumstances. The result, surprisingly, was a giant furry orange monster, not a green Hulk. The transformation art looks, i think deliberately, a lot like the way the Innuit Gods were depicted in Snowbird's origin back-up in Alpha Flight #7.

After the transformation, Sasquatch goes on a rampage that he'll have no memories of. It's said that Snowbird, since she's also a metamorph, will train Langkowski so that he can control the monster that he turns into.

Quality Rating: B+

Historical Significance Rating: 2 - Sasquatch's origin

Chronological Placement Considerations: Walter Langkowski isn't Sasquatch in Alpha Flight Special #1, so this should take place after that.

References: N/A

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A

I like Sasquatch a lot and only like Heather more among the members of Alpha Flight. Some of the things they did with however were quite weird.

Sasquatch's origin resembles the version of the Hulk's from the TV show. In that version Banner is researching why people sometimes show extraordinary strength in times of crisis. (Because he lost his wife in a car accident, and wasn't strong enough to turn it over and save her.) He thinks the cause may have been natural gamma rays and exposes himself to them in an attempt to recreate the effect. In the TV show he doesn't change at that time, but when he loses his temper later.

One thing I like about Sasquatch, at least as I've seen him in the Byrne run, is that it is a deception: you'd think it is gamma radiation that transformed Walter, but it's actually the Great Beasts. It's a neat deception and really its that sort of thing that makes me wish that a movie of Alpha Flight could be done. (though considering the likes of Wolverine and Deadpool, I can't say if the US would want more Canadian super-heroes in their theaters)