Canadian Heroes

Canadian Comics: - www.nlc-bnc.ca/superheroes. This site covers a long list of Canadian superheroes from the forties on.

Heroes of the Canadian Comics - maintained by Mac Murdock, who regularly contributes to this site

"The first Canadian national superheroes – Nelvana, Johnny Canuck, and Canada Jack – emerged during the Second World War, when a foreign-exchange crisis led to a ban being placed on the importation of U.S. comics, including popular titles such as Superman (co-created by Canadian native Joe Shuster) and Batman. In part an outgrowth of our national political-cartooning tradition, the early Canadian comic book superheroes threw themselves into the battle against the Axis Powers, both abroad and on the home front. This period, which witnessed an explosion of English-Canadian comic book publishing, is now described as the Canadian Golden Age of Comics. In Quebec, no similar heroes appeared in the comic book field, which was dominated, instead, by religious comics.

During the nineteenth century, political cartoonists developed symbols, like John Bull (the United Kingdom), Brother Jonathan or Uncle Sam (the United States), and Miss Canada, to personify various nations.

Canada was also represented by another popular cartoon symbol: Johnny or Jack Canuck. Initially Johnny resembled an earlier national symbol – the habitant figure utilized to personify French Canada. Later, as Canada expanded westward, he became more Western in his appearance, sporting knee-high leather boots and a stetson.

With the end of most original Canadian comics publishing in 1947, Canada's superheroes disappeared, and the country entered a phase of foreign domination that lasted until the early seventies. In English Canada, kids grew up with a mélange of U.S. comics. In French Canada, the era was dominated by religious comics like Hérauts and by European comic art and Quebecois translations of American comics. In the early seventies, however, new alternative and underground comics (or comix) publishers emerged in Canada, and some creators began to dream of a second generation of national superheroes. The search for Captain Canada or a similar superhero had begun.

One measure of the U.S. domination of the comics medium during the fifties and sixties is that when Canadian superheroes finally did return during the 1969-1974 period, the first characters were buffoons. It was as if Canadian comics artists and writers recognized the absence of Canadian heroes, but could not quite – after a twenty-year diet of foreign comics – bring themselves to take such figures seriously. Nevertheless, following a spate of outrageous Captain Canadas and other intriguing satirical national superheroes, it was evident that there were creators who were bent on depicting national-superhero figures in a more serious fashion. Contributing to this resurgence of interest were the publication of Patrick Loubert and Michael Hirsh's The Great Canadian Comic Books, a book-length study of the Bell Features comics, and the touring of a related exhibition mounted by the National Gallery, "Comic Art Traditions in Canada, 1941-45," which together served to introduce English-Canadian comics creators and fans to their lost heritage. A similar process was also underway in Quebec with the publication in 1973 of the first historical survey of Quebec comics in a special issue of the literary journal La Barre du Jour." - used, with permission, from the aforementioned Canadian Comics website, as an excellent summary of the history of the Canadian superhero comic.

Canadian Whites - The Canadian Golden Age Comics

The Atlantis Universe - Captain's Canada, Atlantis, Freedom, etc.

Arcana Studios

Canadian Liberty League

Captain Canuck

Creations of John Byrne (and Wolverine, who I know isn't one of Byrne's, or even a creation by a Canadian, but still deserves mention)

Northguard and Angloman - from the pen of Mark Shainblum

Quebec Comics

ReBoot

Speakeasy Comics

Vortex Comics

Other Canadian Heroes

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