Mac & Heather, Maybe ?

[Ben]

Department H was created when Mac joined the government after explained what had happened with Jaxon. I think you are reading way more into the colour of the Beta/Gamma suits than really is there It is named after him, there has never been any evidence that I know of to prove it existed before him.

Ben

[Phil]

#37 has him ending up at the door to Department K (The shadowy chopshop introduced in... Deadpool I think?), so I think the solicit's wrong...

Actually, Dept. K was first introduced in the pages of X-Force (iss. 10), in Deadpool they first explained it's connection to Weapon X.

Yechezkel Pinchas Shalom Kornberg

Cheers for the correction.
I never read X-Force and wasn't sure hence the 'think' part. I may haveta try and find a copy to flick through.

Speaking of the Departments, where do those names come from(H,K)?

K for Kane, Garrison Kane from early X-Force/Cable, IIRC. He appeared in Alpha circa 116l took out Northstar with electricity.

Hmm... I thought it was after Killebrew the workshop doc.
Maybe Deadpool & Death '98 retconned the X-Force issue though.

[DelBubs]

I read both X-Force and Deadpool for a while and took it that it was K for Killbrew.

Deadpool/Death 98 didn't retcon anything I'd read in those comics. The only problem I recall with which was bought up by DMK at the time was DP/D 98 suggested that Mac was aware of K and ergo endorsed K's actions.

[zekethegreat]

It doesn't make sense that K is after Kane after all, they at one point said that the people that made Logan into Weapon X were working for Dept. K (I think).
Killbrew: how far back is he from, was he involved with Wolverine?

Z-boy

[Garry/Al-Fan]

Department H was created when Mac joined the government after explained what had happened with Jaxon. I think you are reading way more into the colour of the Beta/Gamma suits than really is there It is named after him, there has never been any evidence that I know of to prove it existed before him.

Ben

Ben, you make a good point, so I had to go back to the source material.
It's better laid out in Amazing Heroes# 22 than Alpha Flight #3, but Hudson does become a part of something that has already been started.

AH# 22, page 32, column 1: " 'After losing his job, Hudson took the suit to the Canadian government,' Byrne recounts, 'and...the governement said, "This is great. We've got this department H that we've started up over here. Maybe you should get involved with that".' Alpha, Beta, and Gamma Flights evolved thereafter, and Hudson, 'by setting in motion the chain of events that led to the formation of Alpha Flight, was sort of elected leader without even realizing that it had happened.' "

While Frank Hulme says in AF# 3 [4th page of back-up story], "It seems, you see, that you have been...ah..employed by us for six years--retroactively."

Kind of vague and unexplained, but something was in the works for six years. And Hulme seems to be one of the few geniune bureaucrats who isn't maliciously trying to stab the Hudsons in the back, so "H" could stand for "Hulme" as much as "Hudson" or "Hellfire," since the Beta/Gamma suits look similar to the Hellfire guards. Moreover, Walter felt a vague and unexplained anti-mutant threat was looming, a big enough threat that he took a chance on altering Aurora. Then, during the Mantlo era, Sebastian Shaw made a cameo appearance during the Sentinel story.

Like most of the unexplained (underexplained) dangling plot-threads, I wish the writers could've given the readers a little bit more so a lot of things didn't have to be pieced together or speculated upon.

[Powersurge]

I don't know for certain what the H in Department H stands for. I thought it stood for Hudson, but I'm not sure where I got that from.

Anyway, it seems safe to assume that as super powered beings began to sprout up in the MU, that the defense departments of various states would begin to look at the phenom.

So, while I'm not sure where, exactly, Mac, et al. fits into the Marvel timeline and the appearance of other heroes (after the FF; where the FF the first?), it seems likely to me that if "Depart.H" didn't exist before Mac, something did. And if Department H didn't exist befoer Mac it was probably heir to whatever did, and thus might be looked upon as Deparmtnet H in retrospect. Does that make sense?!.

[DelBubs]

I forget exactly where I read it, but I believe Mac spent 10 years developing the suit and other aspects of Dept H after he read of the emergence of the FF.

[kozzi24]

Didn't Walt change Aurora because he was afraid that the anti-mutant hysteria might spill over from the States?

[Mokole]

I kind of think the H is for humans, since Dept. H was set up to evaluate and watch/handle paranormals. H as in humans do it. Humans priority.

[DelBubs]

Taken from DMK's Guide To Alpha Flight

Department H was originally a top secret branch of the Ministry of Defence named after its top employee: James MacDonald Hudson. Using H's resources James Hudson refined the set of armor that he eventually came to wear, and also recruited the other super-human beings that came to form Alpha Flight.

I'm also sure there's a line of text in one of the early issues of AF where Heather reinforces that by saying "It was a bit pretentious of Mac to name it after himself" (not verbatim)

[cmdrkoenig67]

So...It's very possible that the Canadian government was planning some sort of superhuman powers build up, but it really didn't have a form or name until Mac and Heather came along?

The Weapon X program was around a while before they created Dept H, though...but was that was more of a project created by the U.S. and Canada in unison?

Dana