A real keeper: Dick wallpaper

The first in a series of posts from Heritage Signature Auction #807, a catalog from a comics and pop culture auction that took place at the San Diego Comic Con in July 2003.

Behold, Harlan Ellison's "provenance" statement for a roll of Dick Tracy wallpaper! (Wimbledon Green, eat your heart out!)

Will the real Iron Man please stand up?

I'm ashamed to admit it, but I think I missed out on an opportunity for blockbuster blog post a few weeks back. Even after going to see the Robert Downey Jr.-fuelled Iron Man last month and witnessing the ample coverage of its out-of-the-gate success, I completely blanked on the fact that nearly three years ago to the day I had written a piece about the original Iron Man; the Canadian Iron Man no less.

Back in the spring of 2005 I was working at the CBC in Toronto and was going through one of my periodic love affairs with superheroes (it's OK; my wife is totally cool with it). This time my affections were focussed on the "Canadian Whites," a series of short-lived but highly popular superhero comics that existed during the Second World War. Among the better known characters of this era were Johnny Canuck and Nelvana of the Northern Lights (who I discovered, preceded Wonder Woman as the first female superhero by a few months.)

Printed in black and white and often on cheap paper, the comics had a rough charm about them — a charm only amplified by their names: the Polka-Dot Pirate, Freelance, Canada Jack, Stuffy Bugs and Senorita Marquita.

Anyway, as obscure as the Whites were it dawned on me that no one had actually confirmed who the first real "made in Canada" superhero was. (Though, if you believed these guys you'd think otherwise.) So, with a bit of sleuthing I managed to find out that the first true Canadian superhero was …. Iron Man. Seriously.

Created by Vancouver artist and animator Vernon Miller, Iron Man debuted in Better Comics No. 1 in March 1941. Any description I could muster will pale next to a simple image. Like this one from Better Comics No.2 with Iron Man in full fighting form:

Pretty great huh?

White's Iron Man (which preceded Marvel's by a couple of decades) was the sole survivor of a destroyed civilization who lived and brooded underwater, surfacing occasionally to help out a couple of trouble magnets named Ted and Jean.

After countless hours of independent research I wrote a short pithy piece about Canada's Iron Man for the CBC Arts Online site, which all things considered was a perfect match. Looking back on this fine hero, it kills me the amount of blind adulation nationalistic comic fans heap on characters with little to no Canadian connection. Meanwhile, perfectly thought out home-grown characters are left to moulder in neglect. I mean, Canada's Iron Man was ahead of the curve; part Submariner (he preceded Namor) and part Tony Stark.

Nothing against the US of A's Iron Man, but he's never exactly been a heavy hitter. Apart from his changing costume, he just seemed like Donald Trump or Gordon Gekko in armour.

I just wish I was on the ball! As is, I feel like i was either three weeks too late or three years to early. I guess it's Better late than never.

(ps: I urge anyone curious about the Canadian Whites to visit Golden Age Canadian Comics Books. I have no idea who's responsible for this site, but it's the first I've ever seen to offer full scans of these rare books. A true gem!)

The C-word

According to toady's National Post, being "Canadian" has taken on a whole new meaning in the southern United States:

In the U.S. south, is Canadian a new racial slur?

- B.

An investigation of investigative comics

I wrote a feature piece on the surprisingly old - to me anyways -medium of investigative comics (or "comix reportage" as one publisher recently dubbed it) in the new issue of THIS magazine. This is the first time I've written for the awkwardly-named proudly-socialist publication, so I wasn't sure what to expect (requests to include more quotes from Naomi Klein maybe?). But I'm happy to say it was a pleasurable doctrine-free experience; they're a swell bunch of folks.

Anyway, here' s a link to the piece. And here's a snippet, starting with the words of noted comics journalist Joe Sacco:

“The great thing about comics is that they’re so loose and so little had been done with the form that I didn’t feel like there were any footsteps that I had to follow,” [Joe Sacco] says. “Comics then, and maybe even now, were like untrampled grass and you could walk across it in any direction you wanted. It’s one of those mediums that’s so open to interpretation.”

Sacco is by no means the only cartoonist to take advantage of this creative freedom. Though he’s credited with giving comics journalism its name, many other cartoonists have worked in a similar vein, including Peter Kuper and Seth Tobocman (founders of the socialist comics magazine World War 3 Illustrated), British cartoonist and anti-capitalist Sue Coe (an alumni of the groundbreaking “commix” anthology RAW), Canadian Guy Delisle (with Pyongyang, Shenzhen and his forthcoming book about Burma), and even the likes of Robert Crumb, Harvey Pekar, Kim Deitch, Bill Griffith and Leonard Rifas, the rabble-rousing leftist cartoonist who created Corporate Crime Comics during the 1970s.

But to many comics historians, including Jeet Heer and cartoonist Art Spiegelman, the roots of today’s comics journalists can be traced nearly 150 years further back, to the American Civil War. When the war began in 1861, newspaper and magazine editors were hungry for images to run alongside their coverage of the divisive confrontation. Unfortunately, nascent photographic technology wasn’t advanced enough to allow photographers to capture battles, says Heer.

“During all of the 19th century wars, like the Crimean War and the Civil War, the main defining images weren’t photographs of the battlefield, but from illustrators who were sent out there,” he says from Regina. “There are photographs of the Civil War, but they’re always after the battles because the cameras required exposures of five to 10 minutes.”

One of the most enjoyable things of doing a wide-ranging piece like this is you get to do some real digging and can occasionally come across some really neat stuff. In this case, it was journalistic work done by Harvey Kurtzman, original editor of Mad magazine, architect behind Little Annie Fanny and all-around comics innovator. They couldn't include any of these 1950's gems in the THIS piece due to copyright issues, but here's a sample of the Jimmy Cagney profile he did.

Anyone interested in the other journalistic comics Kurtzman did should check this out. It's beautiful stuff.

All things said, I'm pretty happy with this piece of writing. My only regret? The picture I sent them for the contributors page (too surly) and my bio, which is about 200 words longer than anyone else's. I didn't know - i swear!

Later - B.