As a child growing up in the 1980s and 1990s, I was innocently unaware of the fact that many of the cartoons that I watched were produced in Canada. Companies like Nelvana, Atkinson Film-Arts, Cinar and later Mainframe Entertainment and…
As a socio-cultural anthropologist, the issue of representation has been part of my academic trajectory since I was an undergraduate. How issues such as gender and race are depicted in popular culture (and by whom) are topics that have been…
What would a Canadian newsstand have looked like in terms of comic books during the summer of 1941? Well, there would have been a dearth of them to begin with because the war-time government ban on the importation of almost…
I often wonder how many WECA (or, if you prefer, Canadian Whites) collectors there are out there? How many of them are outside Canada (in the States, in the UK, in Europe, or even in Australia/New Zealand)? In any case,…
By my reckoning (and I hope I haven’t missed any), there were 48 WECA comics on offer in last month’s ComicLINK auction. You can check out results from the October auction here and last year’s summer auction (which will also…
We’ve just come to the end of 3 summer ComicLink auctions (you can check earlier results from a couple of years ago in a two of my old columns: Feb. 2014 and April 2014 ). These summer auctions featured almost a…
Patrick Loubert, who was born in Toronto in 1947 and Michael Hirsh, who was born in Belgium in 1948 but moved to Toronto when he was three and then to New York City for most of his teen years, were…
After last Saturday at Niagara Con, which seems to have found a more than viable venue in our Southern Ontario tourist hub and appears to draw more visitors each year, a bunch of us went back to the new Big…
Because it's Canada Day week I want to do a bit of a more involved special column about the figurehead of the Canadian Whites this time--Nelvana. This mini-skirted, semi-mortal, maid of the Arctic skies has firmly become the totem (the chosen emblem) of the Canadian war-time comics.
Read MoreNelvana
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.
Read MoreBell Cover Stars
Overall the documentary was a slick and informative effort. It reminded me a little of the recent PBS Superheroes three-parter because it made heavy use of talking heads in front of green screen projections. This allowed the film itself to take on a sense of comic book levity and healthy self-deprecation. A comic book doc has to be heavy on graphics from the books themselves and this one didn’t let us down in that respect.
Read More“Lost Heroes” Premiere
The latest ComicLink online auction finished last night and on offer were three dozen slabbed Canadian comics with all but two of them WECA books. The biggest irony of the final tally for me was that the highest prices were commanded by essentially reprint material.
Read MoreComicLink Whites Auction
For those of you who are true fans of Canadian comics, including all WECA Canadian Whites diehards, then Lost Heroes is for you. This film about Canadian comics premieres 7 PM Friday February 28th at The Royal Cinema, 608 College Street, Toronto, Ontario, M6G 1B4.
Read MoreLost Heroes Premiering Friday Feb 28th in Toronto
As pointed out by a faithful reader Comic Book Daily has provided quite a bit of coverage for the Nelvana Of The Northern Lights Kickstarter reprint, but one issue seems to have been unaddressed.
Read MoreNelvana Kickstarter: Creator Compensation, Production
Ivan celebrates Nelvana's crowd funding success, then discusses Canadian Whites and Overstreet.
Read MoreGet Re-Auroralized!!
Triumph Adventure Comics #1, Hillsborough Studios, August 1941 I’ve had my sights on this Spotlight for a long time and with all the excitement being generated by some great news about the principal character there could be no better time to…
These two ladies had obtained the rights to Nelvana of the Northern Lights, and are working on getting the comics reprinted. If you don’t know why this announcement is so amazing let me fill you in...
Read MoreNelvana of the Northern Lights is being Reprinted!!
FanExpo opens today and I have the good fortune of hosting a panel on Canadian war-time (WECA) comics. I urge all readers who are attending FanExpo on Sunday to attend this panel if they have the opportunity because we expect…
I was talking with Walter Durajlija the other day about doing an entry on the WECA keys and he suggested a good task might be to start to create a list of the top twenty WECA (1941-46) books much…
Your friend and mine, Walter Durajlija, the “Big” in Big B Comics, has initiated a panel discussion of Canadian Comics that will take place at Niagara Falls Comic Con (June 8-9) at the Scotia bank Convention Centre.. The panel itself…
