I had been searching for information about the war time heroes; Nelvana, Johnny Canuck, etc. From time to time I would land on another blog or site which featured a few pages from those 1940's books or on rare occasions a full issue.
The DCM is a gold mine though. Free, downloadable, public domain, golden age comics that obviously would be extremely difficult to obtain otherwise. And if the amount of content alone were not enough to impress, having a specific Canadian section is a juicy cherry on the sundae. They made it easy to access the early issues of Triumph Comics (among others) and our title character in particular, Captain Wonder.
Vernon Miller's Iron Man is considered the first Canadian superhero. But Captain Wonder is the first mask-and tights type. And while Iron Man was created by a Canadian, he lived in the ocean (???). "Capt. Wonder" (as his name was usually written), on the other hand, was in-your-face Canadian. To wit:
Did you pick up that he was a young Canadian going back to Canada to fight Canadian evil? In Canada?
Our boy had the strength of 100 men, great wisdom and speed, the power to fly like a bird and swim like a fish (which has to be better than swimming like iron).
He may not have had many appearances but it's still surprising to me that he's not better known. Not that our first lady Nelvana and Johnny Canuck don't deserve their iconic status, but this guy was our Superman! Dude should have been on a stamp or something! ;-)
