Good Luck, Puck

As the history of comic books progressed with our country, it's array of superheroes became more diverse by introducing minorities, homosexuals, and people of varied beliefs. One of comic's one-of-a-kind heroes includes a Canadian hero named Puck, member of Alpha Flight and our Z-Lister of the week!

First appearing in "Alpha Flight #1" in 1983, Eugene Milton Judd was born in Saskatchewan circa 1914. He was a traveller who provided his services as a soldier for hire, early in his career he was hired to find The Black Blade of Baghdad. A sorcerer known as Black Raazer was freed from the blade once Judd removed it from it's temple, but by using some ancient mysticism Judd was able to seal the sorcerer back into the temple. This spell costed Judd a portion of his life energy and reduced him to the height of 3' 6''. This curse however, granted him immortality and his new stature allowed him to become a master gymnast. So just to clarify, Puck is both older and shorter than fellow Canadian, Wolverine. Wolvie still has more hair though, so points to him. Judd had many other adventures following this event, once defeating El Aguila during The Spanish Civil War in the 1930's. He also befriended author Ernst Hemingway and became a bullfighter for a while until finally joining Alpha Flight as Puck. To put it simply, Alpha Flight was Canadian's answer to The Avengers, but they usually interacted more with The X-Men mainly because Wolverine was a member of Alpha Flight before his time on The X-Men. Department H, Alpha Flight, X-Men, Avengers, seriously Wolverine's job credentials must be as long as Super Mario's! Some of Puck's notable battles include his fight against Omega Flight, The Great Beasts and The Incredible Hulk. And some Wendigo, which are like Canadian werewolves. But not polite.
After Puck was killed by The Collective, he went to Hell and soon met Wolverine down there after Wolvie was sent down. Because of the nature of Puck's curse, he was aware of how Hell worked and told Wolverine to endure the torture of Hell's demons because by refusing to weep in pain, the devil would begin to look weak and Hell's prisoners would begin an uprising. While the devil fights off the prisoners, Wolverine and Puck try to scale the walls of Hell and escape, and while Wolverine succeeds, Puck falls and is pulled back into Hell by the condemned. Wolverine finds out that while Puck remained in Hell he acquired the devil's sword and became ruler of Hell. Yes, this canadian dwarf and known Z-Lister was The King of Hell. He didn't even need some necroplasmic suit to do it either! He was the new Satan, until Hell spat him out like an olive. A hairy olive. Also he joined X-Men's covert-ops team, X-Force!
Puck was created by writer John Byrne and loosely based off John's friend who was short, he intended on the character to be conditioned with achondroplasty (the condition that causes dwarfism). However, writer Bill Manto misinterpreted Puck's dialog of being in constant pain (a symptom of achondroplasty) for being reference to some magical curse. And thus, John's implied origin to the character was changed from a condition of dwarfism to a magical side effect.
Admittedly I've always had a minor curiosity to Alpha Flight as it had some very unique characters: a homosexual Peter Pan-like character, a character with multiple personality disorder, basically a Captain Canada, and a Sasquatch who wasn't actually a Sasquatch. And then there's Puck, probably the only little person superhero ever. It's only appropriate for such a unique character to appear in an X-Men spin-off book and I'm happy Puck exists to represent a often overlooked group of people. Recently though, another little person appeared in comics, a character named Anna Marie who dated Spider-Man. Well, it was Doc Ock in Spider-Man's body. But he wasn't a bad guy. Okay he was a bad guy, but he protected people. Needless to say things got awkward. Almost as awkward as a hairy little man in a black leotard! Thanks for reading!

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