ABOUT | Taking Flight

TAKING FLIGHT has been a long time coming. It was inspired by the frustrated goals of the Captain Canuck animated series creative team and was originally conceived as an antidote to that experience.

To that end, the creators sat down many years ago and decided to do justice to Canada's super team. Goals were set, ideas were batted around, and then nothing happened. After a few false starts, a planned Kickstarter that got sidelined by a global pandemic, and various understandably distracting life events, the time has finally come.

And here we are, it's 2022. Hope is alive, albeit a bit bruised, and the stars are aligned. Production is underway. We're retooling the script, pushing through the designs, and creating a production pipeline that will be shared with you, the fans.

Who is ALPHA FLIGHT?

Apart from being the most overlooked super team in the Marvel Universe, they're Canada's best and brightest. Sometimes referred to as the Canadian Avengers, Alpha Flight has a deep and committed fan base, and an embarrassingly sporadic publishing history. The original 24 issues are considered by most to be the iconic version of the team, created by Canadian comics superstar and legendary curmudgeon, John Byrne. They debuted in the pages of Uncanny X-Men, and eventually graduated to their own series.

Things got complicated after Byrne left. The characters lost their core and reboots lead to a very convoluted continuity and muddy identity. Our goal is to create an updated, contemporary take on the team that pays homage to those first 24 issues. We want to capture the essence of these characters, strip them down to their most iconic qualities, and build them back up again for a modern audience.

And I think we're on the right track.

We've set out to produce a high end action adventure, animated short film. The duration will run somewhere between 7 and 12 minutes, and our team is truly world class.

We have no rights to the property, there's no profit to be made, and this is genuinely a labour of love. The project is anchored by producer/director Mike Valiquette, who was the driving force behind the Canuck series. The only real goal here is to make the best film possible, and do right by the fans and the characters.

There will be a Kickstarter. But that's coming later. Animation is expensive, and when we get into the really labour intensive stuff, we'll need real funding. But for now, Mike is doing most of the heavy lifting himself, working on designs, retooling the script, and lining up the rest of the crew. We're trying out a transparent production model, with an ongoing series of live videos and updates.

We've set up a Patreon for the development/preproduction phase. The videos will live there, and you can already read the original treatment and see advance looks at the designs. Please contribute and share. The more support we get, the more time we can spend on the project.