Another Treat from Chapterhouse in October

It seems that every month the Chapterhouse Comics Group manages to toss a nice surprise among its future solicitations. In addition to the compilation of the original Captain Canuck series, they are reprinting (and completing) Beyond, a fantasy story that served a back up feature in the CC book at the time, and will begin publishing the adventures of The Pitiful Human Lizard shortly.

In October, the sixth issue of the regular Captain Canuck series is released, but for the first time the four issues of the "Captain Canuck West" book will be collected as well.

CAPTAIN CANUCK: UNHOLY WAR TP
(W) Riel Langlois
(A) Drue Langlois
(CA) Kaare Andrews 

No one killed his partner; he’s not part of a top secret government project: what if a man became a super-hero just because he knew he could? RCMP constable David Semple dons the guise of Captain Canuck to take on the Unholy Avengers, an outlaw biker gang menacing the Canadian west coast.

Chapterhouse reprints the Unholy War of the West Coast Captain Canuck by Riel and Drue Langlois. Originally released in a 4-part limited series in October 2004 under Comely Comix, this 120-page Trade Paperback includes exclusive interviews and pre-viously unseen extras.

Going on potentially faulty memory, I believe the book was originally intended to be a 3-issue limited series and a fourth "special" issue was later released. Even if that last issue was slightly oversized, a page count of 120 seems high for reprinting four comics so it sounds like the extras will make it worthwhile. I'm in.

This little bit of news led me to a couple of others. Looking for details about Unholy War on Chapter House's website, I saw the promo image in regards to a Northguard Compendium to come in December. I have the original series (I believe five issues) in trade format, as well as the three-issue Mandes Conclusion mini series which followed, but I trust that Chapter House will make the format and extras alone worthy of picking this up. The original material was in black and white so do we dare hope for...colour?

The other image that caught my eye while trying to gather information was displayed on the Pitiful Human Lizard Facebook page.

Pitiful Human-Lizard issue 5 will introduce a brand new suburban superhero by Adam Gorham and Greg Harms. Prepare yourself for the Mississauga Marauder!

Right on. There will be a launch party for that specific issue on August 8th but no doubt it will also be included among future Chapter House solicitations, as will all future issues. PHL creator/writer/artist Jason Loo states as much on the Facebook event page.

Halloween 2014 awesomeness!

Confession: Every time I see some local kid dressed as Captain America for Halloween, a small part of me dies. :-(

But when I see great Halloween outfits such as the ones below, I could come back to life more often than James MacDonald Hudson! :-)

All are lifted from Facebook groups, and each respective group is linked through the picture.  I take credit for nothing, I display only because I dig.

First off, Captain Canuck West.

The above is actually from Winnipeg's Central Canada Comic Con (but it was taken and posted on Halloween, so it counts). It's cool to see that version of the character still have some legs. You know what else would be great? Check out what Marvel is doing with Spiderverse and transfer that over to the Captain. All versions of the character in one book/story line. How much fun would that be?

Next, we have Nelvana:

The lady is named Amy Kenny.  Not sure about the dog. ;-)  As far as I'm concerned, that's her brother Tanero.

Last and certainly not least...The Red Ensign from True Patriot!

This was credited only to "a fan from Ottawa".  I love seeing a more recent character with a limited publication history get this kind of treatment if only to add a little exposure.

Good on ya, folks!  For what little it's worth, I appreciate the effort and the originality!

E.H. Joes: Real Canadian Heroes?!

Ah yes.  E.H. Joes.

I meant to have this post done this past weekend while the G.I. Joe convention was on, but missing my self-imposed deadline is not a huge deal; Name aside, E.H. Joes has nothing to do with those other Joes.

My first exposure to E.H. Joes was this rather awesome piece of art.

Clicking on the picture will take you to its page on comicartfan.com and Joes writer Davis Dewsbury's explanation that the piece is a tribute to the cover of Captain Canuck: Unholy War #3.

This bad dude is named The Colonel.  I had to find out more about him and when I did...it wasn't quite what I expected.

E.H. Joes is a web comic strip from Double D Comics.  The above art doesn't quite describe its tone but the title of the first volume certainly does; "Attack of the 500 Foot Horny Naked Stripper".  Guess what it's about??

Is it funny?  Well, it's crude and juvenile, so...yes!  But as a mild warning, it's probably not to everyone's taste.  Click here to read their adventures and check out the "specials and one-shots" page for a wicked coloured version of the above image.

Mountie Madness part 3: Space Mounties

French is my first language and like many for whom that happens to be true, I grew up reading Asterix, Tintin, Lucky Luke, etc.  Those books managed to be both fun and educational.

This one...maybe not so much.

I wonder if, as I learn more about Mounties in literature, I'll be able to see a clear turning point when they went from respected lawbringers like King and Preston in the 50's to a silly joke.

Not that I don't love the idea of Mounties in space.  What's not to love about that??!

But this book just sounds lousy.  To recap the recap, Marcus Brodie and Gordon MacPherson are two irredeemable slackers who are shipped off to a strange planet by their asshole superior. They arrive to find out that their primary function will be to deliver the mail.  They also find out that their predecessors all died in mysterious ways, then get themselves into hilarious shenanigans, each situation wackier than the last!

Here's a sample page:

Meh.  It doesn't appear to be very good and therefore as though it was very successful. Only three books were released, the first in 2001, the last in 2004.  Nothing since.

But coming across this reminded me of another option that I had totally forgotten:  Superspace.

Remember the ending to Captain Canuck: Unholy War #4, or rather the four page preview at the end?  That Captain Canuck (David Semple), after giving up his mask and returning to mountie work "full time" was abducted by a spaceship.

The ensuing story was told over eight webisodes.  They are still available on the Hot Hail Comics site and were created by the primary people behind CCUW, Riel and Dru Langlois, as well as a few others including Myles Langlois.

There is another title named Apollo Gauntlet available as well but I admit to not being familiar with that one.

Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to have been much activity from Hot Hail in the past three years or so as many of the site's pages are dead or blank.  I do know that Dru Langlois drew the cover to the third issue of Red Leaf Comics' The Leaf last year but I have not found any recent work by Riel.

If anyone is aware of any additional work being done by the Langlois's in this field, I'd appreciate being directed to it.