The Final Solution Solution
2003-05-31

While it's nice to read that Johnny Alpha and his speech-impaired buddy Wulf are coming back to 2000 AD, I just can't help wishing that Johnny and Wulf hadn't been killed all those years ago.

I know that sometimes it seems like all fictional heroes - superheroes in particular - have all died dozens of times, and it never did any of them any real harm, but deaths in 2000 AD have been pretty few, Johnny and Wulf being the only two (a) I can think of off the top of my head and (b) I care about.

And it's not like Johnny Alpha "pretend" died, like Superman did. Alpha really did die - all the adventures that have appeared since "The Final Solution" in prog 687 have been set before his death.

Is it a good thing that there's a new Alpha adventure on the way? Yes, because we get to see more of him. No, because it invalidates a very powerful moment in 2000 AD history. And no again, because there can be no real sense of peril in his latest adventures; we knew he wasn't going to die in "Roadhouse", and we know he's not going to die in "The Tax Dodge".

I was kind of upset when Johnny snuffed it (less so when Wulf died; much as I liked him, I just couldn't take him seriously, what with all those references to cucumbers and suchlike - maybe I just have a dirty mind), but it was a good ending. Johnny went out in a blaze of glory, and it really was powerful stuff.

Why it was done, I don't know. Perhaps Johnny's popularity was waning, and they didn't want him to go the way of Dan Dare and just disappear in the middle of a story. Or perhaps Tharg and his droids had simply grown tired of the character. Or perhaps [cynic mode on] it was merely a gimmick to boost sales [cynic mode off].

Whatever the reason, Johnny's dead and there's no getting around it...

...Or is there? We can't pretend that "The Final Solution" never happened: It was written by Alan Grant and, while he may not have been Johnny Alpha's creator, his contributions to the character and series were immense. Therefore, when he decided to kill Alpha, this wasn't another, lesser writer mucking about with someone else's character.

A couple of years back John Wagner gave us a Strontium Dog story that suggested that Alpha's adventures with Wulf and the Gronk were apocryphal. This is a fairly neat way to restore the character, but it does invalidate almost all of Alpha's appearances in Starlord and 2000 AD: if those adventures weren't "real", then his death didn't mean anything. The same problem exists if Mr. Wagner keeps going back to tell us "missing" stories.

So what we need here is a way to bring Johnny Alpha back while adhering as close as possible to the established continuity.

And the nominations are...

1. A Clone
   Johnny Alpha didn't die in "The Final Solution" - that was a clone. The real Alpha has been in a cocoon at the bottom of the ocean for the past few years. Or something.
   
2. Snatched from Time
   Microseconds before Johnny was killed by the flying beastie, he activated one of those time drogue thingies of his and it only looked like he'd been killed.
   
3. Another Clone
   Johnny really was killed, but someone came along later with a dustpan and brush and swept up enough DNA material to make a clone of him. The rapid aging of the clone halts when he reaches about the age Johnny was when he died (this worked for Spock), and somehow the clone retains Johnny's memories (this one worked for Ripley).
   
4. Johnny Alpha Junior
   Johnny died, but somewhere along the way he had a kid. Perhaps with another mutant. Durham Red, for example. That'd be cool! A mutant with both their powers! And, hopefully, someone else's hair.
   
5. Parallel Universe
   The Johnny we saw killed was from a parallel universe. Or, if it's easier, the Johnny we're seeing now is from a parallel universe. This is like having an infinite number of "Get out of jail free" cards: you can kill your character a bazillion times and still have him coming back for more!
   
6. Reconstructed by Aliens
   In the far future aliens have heard tales of the legendary bounty hunter, so they reconstruct him - and rebuild his memories - so that they can recruit him to track down some really, really bad guy. After he succeeds, they send him back to his own time. And they reconstruct Wulf while they're at it, but they leave the Gronk stuffed on someone's mantelpiece.
   
7. A Robot
   Yes, Johnny was - for some reason - replaced by a life-like robot shortly before "The Final Solution". The real Johnny Alpha has been locked away in a dungeon somewhere, but is rescued by Judge Dredd, Rogue Trooper and Sam Slade, who have all been recruited from various time zones to battle some nefarious villain who wants to take over the galaxy. Once Alpha has been rescued, the heroes discover that the mysterious person who recruited them is none other than Dan Dare, who - using his Cosmic Claw - has been able to roll back the Duvet of Time and straighten out the kinks in the Electric Underblanket of Causality, thereby enabling the heroes to battle the bad guy and save the universe! Ta daa!

Or...

Well, maybe once the decision has been made to kill off a character, he should be left to rest in peace. That would be a shame, because he was a great character, and leaving him dead prevents new readers from getting to know him.

However, I'd rather that new readers could get to know Alpha as we long-time established readers knew him, back before prog 687, when we were innocent enough to believe that Johnny Alpha fought on because of his tenacity, not merely because The Powers that Be were back-pedalling like crazy in order to rectify a very big mistake.