Issue(s): Alpha Flight #62
Cover Date: Sep 88
Title: " A real gone daddy!"
Credits:
Bill Mantlo - Writer
Jim Lee - Penciler
Al Milgrom - Inker
Marc McLaurin - Assistant Editor
Carl Potts - Editor

Review/plot:
I suppose it was inevitable, but it would be kind of cool if the Purple Girl never met her father, the Purple Man. Purple Girl's mom described her relationship with Zebediah Killgrave as if he had actually fallen in love with her, but i wouldn't be surprised if the reality is that he used her the way he probably used a lot of women, and never gave any thought to whether or not he had kids. Purple Girl really didn't have any reason to seek him out, especially since he's supposed to be dead at the moment, so it really could have just been background info that he was her father. But if you are going to have them meet, it ought to be in a way that gives Purple Girl some closure on having grown up with no father and then learning that her father was an evil rapist, or maybe she could stop him from raping other people, or something. Instead, well...

Alpha Flight has broken up (look how glum Sasquatch is!)...

...and Kara Killgrave has returned to her mom's house. She's taken Laura Dean and Goblyn with her. When she arrived at home, she found a telegram sent to her mom saying that Purple Man has been confirmed dead. Purple Girl really stupidly goes to his grave and uses her powers to try to bring him back to life.

By the way, that's the second time Bill Mantlo referenced The Monkey's Paw. The first was in ROM #72 when the girl whose parents were killed by Dire Wraiths asked the Beyonder to bring them back.

Anyway, if you haven't guessed it yet: Zombie Purple Man.

Now his power only works on other dead people.

Purple Girl eventually leads him to a gas station and sets him on fire.

Well what in the holy hell was the point of that?

In other news, Heather Hudson and Madison Jeffries announced that they were going to get married before Alpha broke up. And we're going to start seeing more of Elizabeth Twoyoungmen again.

Quality Rating: D

Historical Significance Rating: 1

Chronological Placement Considerations: I'm assuming it just took a long time for Purple Man's death to be confirmed and Mrs. Killgrave to be located. Based on statements in Alpha Flight #67 (and see Comments below as well), there's a strong possibility that the Purple Man appearing here is really just an illusion created by the Dream Queen, but it's not definitive and i'm still listing him as a Character Appearing to maintain consistency with the MCP.

References:

• Purple Man was thought dead after the Sub-Mariner broke the crystal where Dr. Doom was keeping him imprisoned in the Avengers: Emperor Doom graphic novel.
  
• Jade Dragon, who went with Alpha Flight to Canada after Alpha Flight #60, and he's still being held by the Canadian government.
  
• Purple Girl's origin was shown in Alpha Flight #40.

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A

Later issues suggest the Purple Man's return was the work of the Dreamqueen.
Purple Man inexplicably returns in X-Man some years later.

It turned out Purple Man wasn't ever truly dead in the first place--he just used his powers to tell people to think he was dead. Presumably he really was injured and needed some time to recover though, given how long it was before he resurfaced.

This reminds me of a Buffy episode set after her mom dies. Maybe Joss Whedon was a Mantlo fan or he also read "The Monkey's Paw."

Purple Man did indeed get better and is now Marvel's version of DC's post-Identity Crisis Doctor Light...:(

If The Purple man was not dead, then who was that Zombie guy?

Presumably one of the Dreamqueen's conjurings.

The Purple Man was dead in this story.

The Purple Man's survival is a retcon. Retcon's exist going forward. They don't rewrite a past story that was written with another intent. A retcon exists to make sense of a story that a writer wants to tell now.

For example, when you read the classic Amazing Spider-Man stories with Gwen Stacy, if you're imagining her having a sexual relationship with Norman Osborn, then you're misreading the stories as they were written. It's only from the retcon forward that that plot point exists.

That's certainly a philosophy for reading. But of course by definition a retcon is retroactive. And at least for the purposes of this site, i accept all retcons as being true.

I think it's pretty definitive that the Purple Man appearing here was an illusion created by the Dreamqueen. The green blobby aura around Kara's head at Purple Man's grave is an indication of the Dreamqueen's power, not Kara's. (It's around Killgrave's head on the splash page, and that sequence turns out on page 6 to be Kara's nightmare.) We see it again around Madison Jeffries' head (twice) when he has nightmares in #65. In #66 it's around Whitman Knapp's head on the splash page, then there's a blank space around Heather's head where the green overlay should have gone when she starts freaking out, and another green aura appears around Sasquatch's head right before she strikes gold. (I don't have #63-64 to check.) In #67, a similar green aura surrounds Nanquato when he's seeing the Dreamqueen's illusory rainfall, then all of Alpha Flight's recent nightmare experiences are shown to be the work of the Dreamqueen, with more green auras when she manifests at the end of the issue. So it looks like Hudnall was just following what Mantlo had started setting up before he left.