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.

Halloween Reading: Mr. Monster Origins

Who better on Halloween than Mr. Monster?

I actually got this book a few weeks back, read about half of it, then decided to save the final part for tonight. Man, I LOVE this book.

Looking into Mr. Monster earlier, without having read any issues in nearly 20 years, I was somewhat mistaken in a prior blog post about his Canadian identity having been stripped away. Jim Stearn was identified as Canadian in his most widely-known appearance, from Super Duper Comics #3 in 1947, which is reprinted within Chapter 2 (of eight) of Origins. The retelling is done in an interesting way; we read the "real" story of what happened while one of the supporting  characters reads the comic book version.

Origins adds that, in order to avoid taking over the role of Mr. Monster, a young Jim Stearn left Stearn Manor and moved to Canada to earn his medical degree. I believe Stearn Manor is in New York state, so Stearn would be a Canadian citizen but likely not Canadian born.

The present-day version of the character is his son Strongfort "Doc" Stearn. So Strongfort is sort of half-Canadian and half...huh...well, you really should read this book.

I believed that the book would focus on Strongfort's upringing and training, but that's not the case. He's actually not born until the end of chapter four. The early issues detail Jim Stearn's career and the senior Stearn remains involved in the later issues as the story begins to look into creepy little Strongfort's early childhood.

Extra treat: As pointed out by Jim B in a comment to my previous post, there is another Mr. Monster appearance which tends to be overlooked. The Jim Stearn(e) version's origin was told in Triumph Comics #31. The story is displayed in this book, however its seven pages are copied onto two, making them quite small. Still, it's nice, not to mention logical, to have it in an Origins package.

By my limited recollection of the other Mr. Monster books, they were quite different in tone; more of a quirky humour, cartoonish style. It may be that the darker tone of Origins was more appealing to my personal tastes, but the character is interesting regardless and I think I'll be collecting more of his adventures down the road. Hell, maybe I'll make it a Halloween tradition for as long as there is material with which to do so.

Captain Wonder!

I've never been crazy about the option of digital comics, but landing on the Digital Comic Museum last weekend changed my mind somewhat.

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! ;-)