ICYMI Art - Acadia by Donald Caron

Sweet maple syrup is Donald Caron ever good.

The Heroes of the North team revealed the gem below yesterday.

Right click and open this in another window.  The quality is excellent.

As stated on the fundraising campaign page, the image is inspired by Acadia's origin story in the second omnibus.  Some of those books were difficult to find in stores so if you wanted to get your mitts on them, now would be a good time.  The three are being offered for $35 in total (shipping included) among the perks.  It should be pointed out that each book is 80 pages in length.

If that's a little rich for your blood, you might want to try the 15 for 15 (dollars) deal. All of the season one comics are offered in pdf format.  I don't know specifically which stories that includes, but I suspect most of them are origins of the various characters, so if you have yet to sample the HOTN product, this is a good way of going about it.

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! :-)

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.

HEROES OF THE NORTH: MISSIONS solicitation

Heroes of the North do as good a job as anyone of using various forms of media to get the word out about their product, but nonetheless I wanted to include the solicitation for the next Omnibus on here.

HEROES OF THE NORTH: MISSIONS
Cover by Geof Isherwood
Writers: Ty Templeton and Yann & Michel Brouillette
Artists: Richard Pace, Dan Parent, Geof Isherwood, David J. Cutler, Gibson Quarter (with Guilermo Ortego).
Price: $4.99
Full Color, 80 Pages Nordik and 8 Ball team up to elucidate cold blooded murders.  8 Ball and Black Terror bring down a counterfeiters ring.  The Canadian, Fleur-de-Lys and Nordik thwart a zombots attack in Riverdale, Toronto. A CDO agent discovers what it means to be The Canadian. A young orphan becomes Acadia.  All that in more in this 80 pages follow-up to the Heroes of the North: Dark Origins!

Last we'd heard, they had intended for this to be available in July but it bears pointing out that Ardden now includes it among their September releases. This clashes slightly with what Heroes of the North recently posted on their blog.

Mr. Richard Pace, who was to pencil and ink the most excellent Ty Templeton scripted comic of The Canadian had to bailed out of those duties for health reasons. Consequently, we now welcome Daniel Wong to the team, who will pick up on Mr. Pace’s duties and will heroically attempt to nevertheless help us deliver the book on time for the end of the month for the upcoming Heroes of the North: Missions comic book coming out this summer via Ardenn Entertainment. Which is where we remind you to order the book from your favourite comic book retailer!!! Hopefully we manage to make that deadline and get that wonderful story in the book!

The above was only posted on June 12th.  It would seem unusual that plans have changed that drastically in such a short time so perhaps the book will be available for purchase from their website before actually hitting stores in September.  In any event, it should be a good one!