Canada Day gifts

Canada Day is not normally a gift-giving holiday, but as a fan of Canadian comics, it might as well have been Christmas in July.

I'd been out of town, without TV and internet, since Friday afternoon.  Within 15 minute of being home, I found I'd received an e-mail from Jack Briglio on behalf of the True Patriot team.  They had already stated that the hardcover version of the book was not ready to be shipped yet, so I had no expectations in regards to that project.  But the pdf version of the book was good to go.  Mr Briglio was sending out the Dropbox download link.

I wasn't disappointed at all with the final product.  For all the preview material that had been provided, there were still still some surprises in the book's 100 pages.  I admit that there were characters I was looking forward to reading about more than others, but some of the less anticipated ones turned out to be more entertaining than I'd expected.  Faith Erin Hicks' Superhero Girl was one, as was Arrowhead (above) by Jay Stevens.

The next two surprises did not involve immediate delivery.  Heroes of the North announced on Facebook that the long-awaited 20th episode of their web series would be available on July 8th, as well as a couple of other interesting bits...

Believe it or not, but Episode 20 is finally coming July 8!!!
First official appearance of Hornet, last appearance of Nordik (in the episodes, she will live on in comics), a SHOCKING ending and the introduction of the NURSE IN CHIEF and ACADIA...

Good to hear that Nordik will still have some sort of presence, but that doesn't come as a huge surprise.  Acadia's appearance does and its quite welcomed.  If my memory is sound, only Pacifica (right) will have yet to appear among season characters though both she and Acadia have had their origins told in Omnibus books.

The other future-dated news item came from Glass Monkey Studios.  I've known about a character named The Incredible Conduit for some time (then published by Legacy Comics) but have not written about him for the simple reason that I have not been able to get my hands on his books.  This may fall in the "good problem to have" category for writer/artist Tony Gray; the first issue of the book was sold out (and unavailable digitally, unfortunately).

Now the following item was posted on Facebook on Friday.  I only came across an additional mention of it earlier today on Twitter.  Here they are, in order.

Time to start getting pumped-up for the all-new "Tales of the Incredible Conduit" #1 coming NEXT MONTH from GlassMonkey Studios! Look for a BIG ANNOUNCEMENT SOON regarding a RELEASE PARTY featuring an in-studio TOYS/COLLECTIBLES AUCTION!

All-new "Tales of the Incredible Conduit" #1 coming THIS MONTH! Forget all you think you know.

Won't be hard, I knew little other than what's I'd read on the Legacy website's promo pitch, and that Conduit is based out of Windsor.  Here is a newspaper ad from a few years ago.  At the time, the Windsor Star was publishing a newspaper strip of the character.

Perhaps now that the books are being published by Glass Monkey, the character is getting a full reboot., or it may be that there was far more going behind the scenes of his origin than readers were told.  I have no idea, but look forward to finding out.

Last, and certainly not least, I found out about a half hour before it was added to the website that the first episode of the Captain Canuck animated web series was going to be released. I was happy to contribute to it several weeks ago and for what it's worth, am very pleased with the results. It is embedded below.  You can also check out captaincanuck.com for news, merchandise, etc.



Happy Canada Day indeed! :-)