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Sunday, January 6, 2013

Canadian Heroes all over the map

Added a new toy!  Hope it works!

There's a new button at the end of the bar under the banner.  It is rather unimaginatively called "Map".  If you right click to open it in a new window, you will be taken to, well, a map which displays the birthplace and/or base of operations of a number of Canadian comic book characters.  They are separated by categories at the bottom left, that you can choose to isolate or remove from view using the legend at top right.  Use the scale at top left to zoom in and out.

Some notes:
  • Daydreamer is not a member of Alpha Flight but I couldn't have her in the Indy category either, so she's with the Marvel team.
  • Credit to Heroes of the North for eschewing the obvious choices for home towns.  For example, Acadia is in New Brunswick, but rather than make her a Moncton native, she is from Bouctouche.
  • Look WAY up to find Snowbird.
  • The old South Park gag about "downtown Canada" could well have been based on DC Comics.  Not a single character has a defined place of birth.  Plastique is clearly from Quebec, but where?  And in the case of a character like Sparx (whom I suspect has faded out of continuity with the New 52 anyway), her home town of Timberton is in British Columbia, but fictional.
There are some glaring omissions due to lack of info, or perhaps of clarity of that info.  Even though he is bar none the most prominent Canadian character in comics, Wolverine's actual birth place is actually quite vague.  I have seen it referred to as both southern and Northern Alberta, making it somewhat hard to guess.  I've also found one source which claims he was born in New York state.  Strange that this wouldn't have been determined by now.

In many other cases, there is consensus, but not specification.  Marrina was born (hatched?) on the coast of Newfoundland, but I don't know where on that coast.

Anyway, I have 30 characters currently listed, but it's still being worked on.  If the map does not display properly for you, please slip me a word at jf4nier@gmail.com to let me know.

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