I'm going to talk about Golden Age Canadian heroes on a radio show later today (remember when I used to do Geek-Out? well that show has gone from a 1½ hour geekstravanza to a 15-minute spot; I'm NOT complaining), so I might as well marry my blog's content to it. Because these are exciting times for fans (or would-be fans) of "Canadian whites", comics made here after WWII closed our borders to certain outside products like, y'know, Captain America and Batman. Why all the excitement? Because since Nelvana of the Northern Lights was Kickstarted into a full-fledged collection (out in the States soon from IDW, if I'm not mistaken), the same comics historians - Rachel Richey and Hope Nicholson - who went around the country collecting pages from her stories are splitting forces to Kickstart TWO similar collections, one featuring the Nazi-fighting Johnny Canuck, and the other a character I know very little about but he sounds like Tarzan meets Doc Savage in a lost land beyond the British Colombian woods, Brok Windsor!
Nelvana beat Wonder Woman to the stands by a few months, so her cred is assured, but these others? Well apparently, Johnny Canuck's creator Leo Bachle tried to immigrate to the States in the 40s, but Johnny was apparently so important to Canadian morale, the government wouldn't let him leave until he'd completed his backlog of adventures! As for Brok, he's more of a mystery to me, which is no doubt part of the attraction. And he might just be French-Canadian despite the name, because he calls people "mon ami"! Here are some links if you want to get in on the ground floor:
Johnny Canuck on Kickstarter
Brok Windsor on Kickstarter
On the second floor, Nelvana's already out, but you do know you can get a look at her stories by clicking this handy
Nelvana of the Northern Lights label, right?
The other thing that pushed me to talk about early Canadian superheroes this week is the announcement that Superman will be featured on four collector coins from the Canadian Mint. Only one is really worth it in my opinion:
The others are okay (gold coin S-shield from the animated shorts, classic Superman) or terrible (New52), but this one's beautiful, with certain sections of Action Comics #1 in color and the rest in sterling silver. And before you ask, no, we do not normally use 10$ coins. The economy isn't great, but it's not THAT bad yet. Surprised to see Superman in a Canadian superheroes discussion? You must be new. Now, I don't think of Superman as particularly Canadian, since he was born in the States (no matter what that
Heritage Minute wants you to think), but he does have a Canadian parent (Joe Shuster), which makes him about as Canadian as Doctor Who. In other words, just enough that we'd want to appropriate him.
News item with more on this.
Comments
Poor Time Lord.