Our virtual two-day symposium on Canadian comics: “80 Years and Beyond” seems to have been a proper success—especially for an inaugural effort. We had over 160 people register, and all the sessions were eclectic, engaging, and informative. The sessions brought…
Well, here we are, 80 years since the publication of Better Comics No. 1 in March 1941. At that time, the Luftwaffe was peppering London with bombs, Rommel was pushing us around in North Africa, Jews were being transported to…
News I was at my friend Bob MacMillan’s place last week and he showed me two Colossal Comics with Adrian Dingle covers I had not seen before. These do not have war-themed images like the three covers we are familiar…
Those last few months of 1946, those last few months of the WECA period, and what happened to each of the titles that were still being put out are still very murky. Not one of the issues that we now…
In the summer of that year Anglo-American put out Freelance Comics No. 1 (July/August) and then just after that Grand Slam Comics No. 1 (Sept./Oct.) and then Three Aces Comics No. 1 (Nov./Dec. 1941). This rounded off that first year for Anglo-American with all original Canadian material and characters such as Freelance, The Crusaders, Pat the Air Cadet, and Don Shield. At this point, however, Anglo-American decided to veer off this Canadian path and contract with Fawcett in the States, not to reprint their superhero stories, but to use their scripts for redraws. Of course, government acts prevented them from reprinting American comics outright (reprints weren’t really legalized until the war was over) in Canada, but not from drawing their own versions of the Fawcett scripted stories.
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One great result of having a forum to make posts about WECA comics is that the readers can make corrections and cleanups of what I’ve written as well as offer new information that can fill in essential blanks, see my post from two weeks ago for example. Here are a couple more “blanks” for you all.
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Many times over the last year or so I’ve wondered about what became of the original locations of all the WECA era Canadian comic book publishing houses. Are the original buildings still standing or have they been razed to make way for modern money making enterprises? I glean the following address information from the indicia of the actual comics.
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No, this is not going to be a piece about good girl art in the WECA books, nor about the small handful of female heroes (Nelvana, The Wing, Polka-Dot Pirate, Betty Burd etc.) that graced the pages of those…
