It’s those sprawly, non-message driven stories that have been replaced by things like Countdown at D.C. and Civil War and it’s many, many, many offshoots at Marvel.

I miss those old stories.

WCA always had a B-team feel, but still was able to make for good stories that seemed to matter. Like Alpha Flight, except worth a damn. There are still plenty of those “great stories” that I have not and probably will not read. Especially since I am completely disconnected from both the current Marvel and DC universes.

While Butte and Gila were pretty lame—and Cactus was ridiculous—I always liked Sunstroke’s name and costume (coff coff, dork).

Yeah, the thing with The Thing was weird. Englehart was writing FF about this time, too, but I don’t know exactly how much his stints on those titles overlapped. Those FF stories were well intentioned, in a let’s-shake-up-the-status-quo sort of way, but didn’t really come off so great—though Englehart has argued that, as you suggest, he was getting all kinds of direction from editorial (and even published his last FF stories under a pseudonym).

Mooch, how’s construction going on the Omniversal Muffinex?

But the continual will-he won’t-he with the Thing and the semi-bizarre Firebird subplots (which never did seem to resolve) made me think, even at my relatively young age, that there was some editorial heavy-handedness going on. The Mockingbird subplots creeped me out a bit, too.

The Whackos were best because they had barbecues! And yearly baseball games with their sister team! And, you’re right about Englehart juggling the time periods—v. v. cool.