Justice League Canada!

I'm still struggling with accepting that this is not an April 1st type of situation.

I've abbreviated the article below.  Click on the Star link to read the ful version.

Toronto Star: ...On Friday afternoon, at Toronto’s sprawling Fan Expo convention, DC Comics will announce that its flagship superhero team — which has included such celebrity superheroes as Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and Green Lantern — is going to uproot from the U.S.A. and be headquartered north of the border in the spring of 2014. The ongoing Justice League of America series will be renamed and feature a new Canadian character alongside some of the world’s best-known heroes.

Better yet, it will be written by Toronto’s own Jeff Lemire, who has become one of DC’s superstar writers, and now gets the chance to bring those heroes to his familiar stomping ground.

Much of the action will take place in Toronto, Lemire says, but the actual team will be based around James Bay and Moosonee.

...

“It’s not really like Alpha Flight, as we’re not creating a bunch of very Canadian characters,” Lemire says.

“Like those characters are all almost clichéd Canadian archetypes. This is still very much set in the regular Justice League universe and the team will still have some of the bigger named superheroes, but they will actually be located in Canada now, and there will be a couple of new members who are Canadian. So obviously as a Canadian, and as a Canadian storyteller, it’s something I’m very proud of.”

Lemire said the idea initially came from Dan DiDio, DC’s publisher, and he admits that he, too, first thought it was a joke. But when he realized his boss was being serious, he gladly accepted the challenge and “has kind of gone crazy with it.”

The northward migration will come after the ongoing crossover comics event Trinity War, in which the current three Justice League teams clash, and the ensuing Forever Evil, in which the villains of the DC Universe take over.

“As a result of that, without spoiling any of that story, there will be major changes in the Justice Leagues, and in the spring, the current Justice League of America team goes through a dramatic change and some of the pieces that are left behind will evolve into this new Justice League Canada team.”

Lemire says that the new Canadian character is going to be a big story point, and he can’t reveal too much, but he says: “I’m trying to make a character that reflects a real part of our cultural identity, who could be a real Canadian teenager. That’s what I’m really after with that.”

In addition, Lemire says that he will be bringing back Adam Strange, a Silver Age DC character, a swashbuckling archaeologist who is transported to the far-off planet of Rann. In this new incarnation, he will also be Canadian. Comics continuity can be a mind-bending thing to try to explain, but one of the reasons Lemire has a free hand with characters is that DC relaunched all of its titles two years ago in an initiative called The New 52, giving all of their long-standing characters a fresh start.

Lemire can’t say who will make up Justice League Canada, but says it is a “dream team” of A-list DC characters and some of his favourite oddball and more obscure heroes.

“It really is just trying to make an honest portrayal of the places and the country and people that I know. That’s why I’m setting it in Toronto and Northern Ontario, because those are the places that I really know well,” he says.

“I’m just trying to create a genuine backdrop for these stories that are big and cosmic in scope, but are still really grounded in a real place. As long as I keep that focused, I’ll probably avoid clichés, but sometime those clichés are clichés because they’re true, so I’m sure some of that will slip in there.”

So it's more Justice League IN Canada than a true Canadian Justice League, but assuming that we're not getting punked, it's still pretty damn cool.

Never thought of Adam Strange as Canadian, but I don't know that his nationality was ever a huge factor in his stories.  It may have never been stated, for all I know.  I've always liked him as a guest appearance character but have never read books specific to him, that I can recall.

So between Booster Gold supposedly being Canadian (can we assume membership?) and Sandman on Earth-2, DC now has a few "converts".  I would prefer new characters, or existing Canadian characters fleshed out since most have had limited exposure, but I'll take what I can get.  I have a feeling this is a temporary change for the series, so let's enjoy it while we can.