Let your hearts be gladdened...Nelvana will return!

One of the original goals of this blog was to shine whatever small amount of light I could on some of the Canadian superhero characters from the 40's.  This country's history in the genre appeared to be sadly overlooked and under-appreciated.

Being that there are currently far more Canadian characters, publishers and creators than I'd originally expected to find, I inadvertently deviated from that goal.  Most mentions of Nelvana refer to her appearance on posters and the like, though the basics of her origins are included in the "Superheroes to call our own" post from February 2012.

I mention this now because of recently-announced plans to reprint Nelvana's adventures of the time.

Lost Heroes researchers Rachel Richey and Hope Nicholson (Richey also manages the Comic Syrup blog, while Nicholson is listed among the Lost Heroes producers as well) have acquired the rights to reproduce Nelvana's stories.  They plan to do so following a crowd funding campaign which will begin on October 1st.  You can follow their progress through this Facebook group.

Nelvana creator Adrian Dingle is said to be have been inspired to create Nelvana by Group Of Seven artist Franz Johnston's stories from the latter's travels to the Arctic.  Nelvana, in turn, was at least to some degree the inspiration for Alpha Flight's Snowbird character.  Snowbird's mother is named Nelvanna, with an extra "n", presumably to avoid legal issues.  Her grandfather is named Hodiak, similar to Koliak above.

Nelvana was often assisted in defending the north by her far less celebrated brother Tanero who shared dad's inability to have his true seen by "whites".  Tanero would usually avoid this by changing shapes to that of a flying Great Dane.

Well, that's ONE way...

These books are a lot of quirky fun and having them properly collected would be a real treat.  I'm excited to see this project move forward.