The early post-war period was one of turmoil for publishers of Canadian comics. Montreal’s Educational Projects didn’t even make it into 1946. The last issue of Canadian Heroes carried the cover date of October 1945. The reasons why Educational Projects…
Comic Link Focused Auction The comic book portion of the ComicLink Focused Auction ended Thursday September 29th. This auction was the follow up auction to the historic Featured Auction that ended September 8th. Those people down at ComicLink sure know…
There are a number of elite collectors of Canadian war-time comics. This tiny handful has managed to unearth these rare diamonds in the rough (in garages, barns, attics, trunks, and basements) and, through dogged persistence, ace detective work, and love…
For this post let’s stick to the Bell heroes as they appeared on the cover of six of the seven titles; we’ve got to make an exception of The Funny Comics because it featured one central character, Dizzy Don, who got every cover appearance for the 20 issue run with Bell. Also, the first 13 issues of Commando Comics feature generic soldier covers as one would expect and there are a couple of more generic soldier covers in the runs of the other titles (e.g., Dime 18 and 19, Wow 21). So let’s just look at the covers for the runs of Wow, Triumph, Dime, Active, and Joke Comics and see which characters are most featured on their covers.
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This time there were 66 books on offer and most were of lower or very low grade. Would the auction for these books support the strong results of the last ComicLink Whites auction in February, or would the results fall flat because of the lower grades and not many really key books?
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A couple of interesting original art pieces by Edmond came up on Heritage this week and this made me want to draw attention to his WECA work in this week’s post.
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Some of the most interesting Lazare creations are the orphan “left-overs,” those stories that were one-shot “try-outs” or “fillers” and there were eight of these. The first three were in consecutive issues of Triumph Comics Nos. 20-22 which is a Bell title for which Lazare never did a feature character.
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“Johnny (Jack) Canuck.” He was a personification of our national identity much in the same way that America had “Uncle Sam” and Britain “John Bull,” who started to be depicted in political cartoons just a couple of years (1869) after Confederation. Like all national personifications he is an hyperbole, let’s say like a lumberjack riding a Timmie’s donut inner tube down the rapids a river of maple syrup and using a hockey stick for a rudder.
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The brief seventies awakening to and appreciation of the Canadian war-time comic industry began with Michael Hirsh and Patrick Loubert’s November, 1971 publication of the compendium of Bell Features material they called The Great Canadian Comic Books (Peter Martin).
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On Saturday, August 25, among many other winners, three Canadian comics creators will be inducted into the Hall of Fame category: Katherine Collins (Arn Saba) from more recent decades and Vernon Miller and Murray Karn from earliest days of Canadian…
