Undervalued Comics #40 – Alpha Flight Key Issues

July 22, 2020July 22, 2020

This article focuses on Alpha Flight issues that are undervalued and less well known. X-Men #120 (first appearance of Alpha Flight) has been seeing some nice price uptick after rumors broke out that it is coming to MCU. Now, it is time to look at other key issues.

Well known key issues

For the sake of completeness, here are the well know Alpha Flight key issues that are well recognized. These are:

X-Men #108: First appearance of Weapon Alpha
X-Men #120: Cameo appearance of Alpha Flight
X-Men #121: Full appearance of Alpha Flight
Alpha Flight #1: First appearance of Puck and Marrina , as well as first solo series.

Prices for the X-Men have risen to level that are now on par with surrounding key X-Men issues such as #107 and #129. Is there any room for growth? There is but it will be slower than the rest of the issues that I am going to recommend.

Alpha Flight #1, due to the large supply, is still pretty cheap to pick up. Since this is a high print copper book, look for the Canadian price variants or the high grade newsstands.

X-Men #139

Date of Publication: 1980
Sale number: 195,000

Key strengths of this book
1. First appearance of Heather Hudson

2.First appearance of Wolverine’s brown costume

I have briefly this book in comic chat update #2 but here is a more detailed look at the book.

Undervalued relative to importance

Basically, Heather Hudson is a central figure for any Alpha Flight team. She has also made a whopping 270 comic appearances. In terms of importance, she is as heavy weight as you can get.

Undervalued relative to peers

There are a lot of surrounding X-Men issues that have already spiked. Hence, they make good benchmarks to see where this book can rise to.

	Price of 9.4	Price of 9.6	Price of 9.8
X-Men #139	$60	$120	$300 (10%)
X-Men #141	$150	$250	$500 (15%)
X-Men #129	$280	$450	$1,500 (10%)
X-Men #120	$250	$650	$2,500 (5%)

The table shows that this book has a lot of room to grow, even when we compared against the lowest priced book of #141. Across all grades, there are opportunities to experience at least 2X returns.

The numbers in bracket represent 9.8 ratio to total copies being graded. One look and you will know why X-Men #120 has such wide pricing in 9.8 compared to the rest. It has only a 5% 9.8 to total graded ratio, which is low for books in this era.

X-Men #139 is lower than #141 so there is a chance that its price might inch past #141. If that happens, then the return potential will be higher than the 2X mentioned.

Alpha Flight #32

Date of Publication: 1986
Sale number: 240,000

Key strengths of this book
1. First appearance of Heather Hudson as Vindicator

Continuing the focus on Heather Hudson, here is another one of her key issue. In this book, she donned the suit and transformed into Vindicator.

While important, this issue has a pretty high supply number. The best investment is to look for the Canadian price variant or very high grade regular newsstand issues. As shown in my top 10 9 .8 newsstand article, these high grade newsstand can fetch a nice premium over regular issues.

Marvel Age #2

Date of Publication: 1983
Sale number: No Information

Key strengths of this book
1. Preview of Alpha Flight members, Pluck and Marrina before Alpha Flight #1

2. New Alpha Flight cover art, featuring the first look of 2 new characters, Pluck and Marrina

This book is for the collectors of preview magazines. I mentioned this book before in my Marvel Age Comics Value article but there wasn’t any strong response to it. This is before the Alpha Flight rumor was revealed so folks might not be paying attention.

Before the purist come at me, I am not saying this is a first appearance. However, there are folks who like to collect such stuff so this book caters to them.

If you don’t care for previews or different cover art, please move on. I don’t need a debate about this lol.

First appearance of Alpha Flight less well known members

The above covers most of the well known Alpha Flight characters. However, this team has a long history and hence a lot of members. Specifically, there are 39 Alpha Flight members throughout the team’s inception.

It will be fool hardy to speculate on every one of them. Hence, I will only highlight those members who have make more than 50 comic appearances.

Alpha Flight #11

Date of Publication: 1984
Sale number: 280,000

Key strengths of this book
1. First appearance of Diamond Lil, Flashback, Wild Thing and Box (Roger Bochs)

This book is stuff full of first appearances. The great thing is that most of these characters have fairly long staying power in comics. Wild Thing, for example still appears in the current Dawn of X comics.

Diamind Lil – 76 comic appearances
Flashback – 17 comic appearances
Wild Thing – 145 comic appearances
Box (Roger Bochs) – 56 comic appearances

The problem (and this will be a common problem for all Alpha Flight comics) is that you can find these easily due to the large print run. Like the #1 issue earlier, focus on Canadian price variants or high grade newsstands. These will ensure that you will have something that is harder to come by.

Alpha Flight #19

Date of Publication: 1985
Sale number: 280,000

Key strengths of this book
1. First appearance of Elizabath Twoyoungman as Tailsman

I already covered this book in this article on Marvel supernatural characters so I am listing it for completeness.

Tailsman is a good spec pick for both Supernatural as well as from Alpha Flight. However, you should know the drill by now: pick either Canadian price variant as well as high grade newsstands.

Another thing worth mentioning is the black cover. I am not sure how many 9.8 candidates are out there given that this is not a book that is widely submitted for grading.

Alpha Flight #41

Date of Publication: 1986
Sale number: 220,000

Key strengths of this book
1. First appearance of

Another pretty popular character is Kara Killgrave aka Purple woman. If you are unaware, she is the daughter of Purple Man, the one that tortured Jessica Jones.

Kara has made 80 comic appearances, with the most recent being in a Jessica Jone comics. It will not surprise me to see her in a future Jessica Jones TV show, rather than an Alpha Flight movie.

Conclusion

There are more Alpha Flight first appearances than what I have listed here. However, I feel most of what I left out are too unimportant to be worth your money.