Alpha Flight #3 Oct 1983
"Yesterday Man!" Part 2 of 3.
Snowbird, having received a mystic communiqué from Shaman, flies across the Northern Territories, in search of her friends in Alpha Flight.
She finds the crashed remains of the Omnijet, and uses her post-cognitive perception powers to replay the events that led to the ship's landing.
In the vision, she sees a red laser beam originating from beyond the plains striking the ship and sending it down into the snow.
Her friends survived the crash and left the ship, briskly walking northward. Snowbird begins following Sasquatch's footprints towards their destination.
Meanwhile, the rest of Alpha Flight has found an entranceway into the technologically advanced lair of the Master.
In the hopes of expediting their search for the missing Alphan, Marrina, they split up into two teams.
Vindicator and Sasquatch head off in one direction, while Northstar and Aurora fly down an alternate tunnel.
The teams get cut off from one another, and Aurora begins to grow scared.
Northstar and she lock hands, generating a blinding glow of light, which illuminates the entire tunnel.
As they explore further, large metal poles protrude from the walls. One of them strikes Northstar, rendering him unconscious.
Aurora grows even more scared and slips into her meek Jeanne-Marie personality.
Vindicator and Sasquatch manage to smash through several yards of thick wall in order to find them.
Meanwhile, the self-proclaimed Master of the World has captured Marrina and strapped her to a large torture device.
He alludes to the fact that Marrina's heritage is alien in origin and that both of their destinies are intertwined with one another.
While Marrina screams in torment, the Master amuses himself by relating his own origin.
Flashback:
The Master was once a member of a tribe of humans known as the Eshu that thrived in the Northern wastelands over 40,000 years ago.
The Eshu maintained a strict code against the taking of human life, and discovered that the Master had in fact violated this stringent law.
Exiled from the community, he wandered south until he felt an instinctive need to change course and head farther north.
An unidentifiable summons drew him closer and closer to the North Pole until he discovered the ruins of an enormous spaceship.
Entering the vessel, the Master found himself at the whims of this seemingly living ship.
The ship captured him and used his body for excessive experimentation.
It slowly stripped away all of his biological matter for study, and then progressively replaced it with renewed tissue.
The sheer pain and torture of the experience ultimately drew him insane, and he remained a prisoner of the ship’s controls for years.
Eventually, he regained his sanity, and his consciousness evolved to the point, that he was able to wrest control of the ship and free himself.
The Master concludes his story and tells Marrina that the egg that birthed her originated with this ship,
and that she belongs to a race of extra-terrestrials that came to Earth millennia ago.
Before he begins his ultimate takeover of the world, the Master is determined to eliminate all traces of the original alien race.
Suddenly, the Sub-Mariner and the Invisible Girl appear in the doorway of the Master's torture chamber.
Neither hero is prepared to allow the Master continue with his mad plans.
Story and art by John Byrne.