Issue(s): Alpha Flight #46
Cover Date: May 87
Title: "Friends... and lovers"
Credits:
Bill Mantlo - Writer
June Brigman - Penciler
Whilce Portacio - Inker
Joanne Spaldo - Assistant Editor
Carl Potts - Editor

Review/plot:
Walter Langkowski is taken to Lionel Jeffries, aka Scramble, to see about getting a sex change. We've seen that the more outrageous Aurora's French accent, the more distraught she is, and she definitely seems to need a Valium here.

Langkowski has taken to calling hirself Wanda.

Poor Roger Bochs, meanwhile, tells Aurora that he only asked Scramble to give him legs because he loved Aurora, and she now tells him that he was just an "amusement" to "dispel the darkness -- zat crowded so close on so many long, lonely nights". Langkowski has always been a bit brusque, and it's interesting to see him not concerned about Aurora not being "faithful" to him while he was "dead", and also accepting his new gender calmly and even joking about it.

What follows is the strange soap opera that is Alpha Flight today.

And Mantlo continues with the character assassination he's already inflicted on Puck, Northstar, and Aurora, and now reveals that Roger Bochs used to be unstable.

As Michael notes in the comments, the idea that Jeffries knew Bochs prior to Beta Flight is a contradiction of Jeffries' debut in Alpha Flight #16, which shows the characters meeting for the first time (and actually, Jeffries was in the "raw recruits" of Gamma Flight, not Beta, as shown in Alpha Flight #1.).

This all results in Box trying to kidnap Aurora, who has reverted to childhood and thinks she's surrounded by nasty nuns. The rest of Alpha Flight fight the paranoid Box...

...and more of Bochs' past mental problems come out.

Finally, Madison Jeffries forces Box out of the armor.

The amount of sniveling and moping that goes on in this book, and the use of mental illness as character development, is really offputting. The whole relationship between Bochs and Aurora never needed to happen; him being unable to recognize that Aurora wasn't really in love with him seems out of character. He was never so maudlin under Byrne. And then this thing with him getting legs and Walter Langkowski coming back as a woman... it's all so weird but the weirdness isn't fun or interesting, it's just a vehicle for characters to cry and/or go crazy.

Statement of Ownership Total Paid Circulation: Average of Past 12 months = 239,584. Single issue closest to filing date = 221,700.

Quality Rating: D

Historical Significance Rating: 1

Chronological Placement Considerations: N/A

References:

• Walter Langkowski's original body was killed by Snowbird and his soul was transferred into Box's armor in Alpha Flight #23-24.
  
• His soul was then lost while trying to capture a new body for himself in the Crossroads, as seen in Alpha Flight #28, Hulk #313, and Alpha Flight #29.
  
• Snowbird's baby was possessed by Pestilence in Alpha Flight #37-38 and then Pestilence possessed Snowbird's dead body last issue.
  
• Vindicator wonders if Alpha Flight can really trust Scramble, after her experience with him in Alpha Flight #30. And she's right, as we see hints of this issue with strange splotches appearing on Roger Bochs' legs after Scramble's work on him last issue (that no one in Alpha seems to notice), plus a worrying outburst at his intern, Dr. Knapp.
  
• A number of images as Heather looks through some computer files, including some already listed above plus the death of Guardian in Alpha Flight #12 and the marriage of Marrina to Sub-Mariner in Alpha Flight #40.

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A

Note that when Madison Jeffries encountered Box in issue 16, it was clear they'd never met before and Box felt the need to tell Jeffries that he understood how Jeffries' powers work. But in this issue, Mantlo depicts them as old friends who were in an asylum together.

I can see Northstar, under the circumstances, being sarcastic enough to admit to Wanda that he preferred her as a man. With the right emphasis on scripting, it might have worked as the literal truth or just being a jerk which Northstar usually was. Jean-Paul admitting he cried, while nice as a continuity check, just seems out of character.

Alpha Flight #12 had Guardian specifically stating that Bocchs was mentally sound, to the point that he could not imagine him accepting to participate in Omega Flight. I would say that this counts as a flaw of continuity as well. Particularly since the book had a "random member turns out to be dangerously psychologically unstable" as early as recently as in #2 already, and we could reasonably expect James to be a bit mistrustful at that point.

Although I guess I am over-analysing it. Jeffries' recollections are already entirely at odds with what we actually saw in past issues as it is.