I think there is great potential but every story I've read has something happen to Dagger and then Cloak teaming up with somebody(Usally Spiderman) to rescue/revenge her.

I met Terry Austin at a convention at the time and he told me how he had thoroughly done his research about recently blind persons adapting to their new life. I don't remember how Dagger had become blind but I though it was brilliantly written by Austin. Austin's stint was sadly short lived, the series was cancelled, and I don't think he wrote a regular title after that. Must have been a blow to him to invest himself so much into something and get the rug pulled from under him.

You guys should try to hunt these gems down and read them.

Kirby and Lee were trailblazing again when they created her. What a brilliant way to illustrate the old saying "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" to show the sentimantal aspect of Ben Grimm.

Maybe DeFalco didn't do it right when he tried to fic Byrne's mess, but I was still happy he did it. I thought that Byrne went very wrong when he made her reject Ben Grimm for Johnny Storm. I had been a big fan of Byrne's FF up to then. He was the only one to make the FF interesting since Lee and Kirby's run at the time. I dropped the title when he did that stupid stunt with Alicia. I must not have been the only one because Byrne was removed (or left of his own) from FF not long after that. He had pretty much run out of ideas of what to do to shake things up anyway, and Fantastic Four was slipping from the top sellers ranks where it had been for most of Byrne's run.

In a storyline that had stretched for years, Colossal Boy's longtime crush on Shrinking Violet was eventually reciprocated and they became an "item," inspite of Violet's long-term, long-distance relationship with another guy (Duplicate Boy of the Heroes of Lallor)(yes, I'm a geek). But it is eventually revealed that this Violet is actually a Durlan (those are DC's alien shapeshifters) spy, and the real Violet was being held captive.

...And, years later, the same thing happens to poor Johnny Storm. He should have been reading the Legion.

I'd love to see someone make a list of such re-occurring plotlines that have appeared across different comic companies. One could start with Swamp-Thing/Man-Thing and go from there...

Setting aside the rampant stupidity of sending a spy to impersonate a sculptress and not sending someone who can sculpt, there are at least two occasions where we see Alicia sculpt after she starts dating Johnny. One, in fact, has her sculpting She-Hulk, someone she didn't even meet until after she was supposedly replaced.

But apart from the sloppy plotting of the retcon, it was just a bad idea. DeFalco basically said, "I don't like the idea of Alicia developing as a character, I'll just reset her back to the way she was before Byrne started writing the FF." Then, having done so, he realized that he couldn't also reset Ben and Johnny's character development, which basically meant that it was a good five years before Alicia even appeared in a comic again because there was suddenly so much emotional baggage attached to the character--and even now, her appearances are very sparing for someone who was once an integral part of the FF. Alicia has really never recovered from the retcon. (And arguably, neither has Johnny, but that's a topic for another angry rant.)

I still have to laugh at finding an old interview with Tom DeFalco on the FF run, which featured the quote, "I want it to start out bad, and just keep getting worse and worse." With straight lines like that, who needs punchlines?

but, you know, we can’t neglect the ladies.

That's I-Ching talking, right there.

(I’m soooo very not an Alicia fan. And here she is taking the # 30 supporting character slot that should belong to Willie Lumpkin.)

I won't let the year go by without Willie, I promise. I think he's awesome and he was on the list for this week, but, you know, we can't neglect the ladies.

Well, Alicia looking EXACTLY like Sue is central to her first appearance.

Supporting plot motivator/theme re-itterater would be more accurate.

(I'm soooo very not an Alicia fan. And here she is taking the # 30 supporting character slot that should belong to Willie Lumpkin.)