Manic Monday--Canada Is Far More Violent Than We Thought!!

A typical day in the life of Tom Barry of the Royal Mounted!!

Two men shot (including one wrong man!), one fatally. What do you have to say for yourself, Tom Barry?

Truly, it was a perfect day!!

BTW, should we mention that these brothers talk with completely different accents/dialects?

Oh, Canada...

From Wonderworld Comics #4 (1939). Yes, this was that George Tuska.

Manic Monday--The Adventures of The Canadian Hourman?

I bet you never knew that Rex Tyler was a Western hero!

No, not *that* Rex Tyler...

 This Rex Tyler:

What the hell?

Read our caption there...this is the Canadian Rex Tyler!!

Now, if you read that--"vast forces of outlawry still alive to this very day"--and just look at the guy, you're probably thinking that this a traditional Western comic.

Nope.

It's a 1947 Canadian comic book, set in modern times, when cars and everything were available. But everyone acts as if it's not post-WWII, and we're in ye olde West. Heroes camping out, with grizzled (and barely literate) sidekicks:

Everyone's riding horses:

And the bad guys are owlhoots wearing neckerchief masks who ambush you in the wilderness!

There's plenty of exciting gunplay and fisticuffs...

...and our plot is about bad people trying to seize a silver mine!

And our hero gets his reward under a full moon...

Aside from that car, there's no indication that this story didn't take place in 1878, as opposed to 1947.

Well, I guess if the 1980s didn't make it to Canada until 1993, I guess the Old West could stretch out a few decades longer than it did here, too...

Still, given the later machinations of time travel and whatnot, prove to me that this isn't the classic DC Rex Tyler trapped in the past for awhile...

From Red Seal Comics #22 (1947), as reprinted in Top Adventure Comics #2 (1958)

Manic Monday Triple Overtime--One Last Attempt For Accuracy In Western Comic Covers!

The covers of comic book westerns have been lying to us all morning!

So let's take one last stab at truth and authenticity:

No, I'm sorry, there's no way one can claim that Rod Cameron was "the screen's toughest cowboy."

No, no, no--there's not even an alternate universe where someone can say with a straight face that Rod Cameron is "moviedom's most famous cowboy."

Well...hold on...actor Rod Cameron was Canadian. So maybe there was one place in all of the multiverse where he was both "the toughest" and "most famous" cowboy.

We'll have to ask Siskoid...

Rod Cameron Western #1 was from 1950. #11 was from 1951.

Friday Night Fights--Professional Style!!

It's an international/time-travel/museum heist/natural disaster/super-hero mashup for this week's Friday Night Fights!

It's 1980, and a time-tossed Captain Canuck is stuck in a small Canadian town, which has been evacuated because it's about to be engulfed by "the forest fire of the century!"

Oh, also in the town? Crooks who've looted the local museum of priceless artifacts and are trying to get away!

Can Captain C stop them, and still get himself (and the beautiful female undercover cop who has been tagging along with him) to the evacuation site in time to avoid being char-broiled?!? Let's watch!

Oh, Canada!!

Spacebooger thinks that if this wasn't a MacGyver plot, it should have been!

Captain Canuck beats the crooks, gets the girl, and rescues everyone from the fire in Captain Canuck #14 (1981), written and drawn and inked by George Freeman, coloured and lettered by Jean-Claude St. Aubin

Now is the time for you to go and vote for my fight. Why? Because Canada, dammit!! So go vote! 

Manic Canada Day Pleading The Fifth--Canada's Second Greatest Hero (And Yes, It Is Who You Think)

 Sorry, Wolverine, you lose again...

Happy Canada Day!!

Manic Canada Day Fourth Wall--What Canada Thinks That Americans Think About Them...

\

In their defense, Mike and the bots were being forced to watch a really, really terribly Canadian movie...

Seriously, we love you, Canada--Happy Canada Day!!

Manic Canada Day Third Period--Canada's Greatest Hero (No, It's Not Who You Think)!

What, you expected Wolverine?

Who is the Red Panda, you may ask?

The Red Panda, famed protector of 1930s Toronto! Hiding his true identity as on of the city's wealthiest men behind a bright red domino mask, The Red Panda dispenses two-fisted pulp justice with strength, courage and eerie hypnotic powers. Joined in his quest by that Famed Fighting Female The Flying Squirrel, this Terrific Twosome holds high the lamp of justice in a dark time!

Red Panda is an ongoing (free!) podcast series from Decoder Ring Theater (9 seasons, 106 half-hour episodes so far). There have also been novels, and a couple of comic stories put out by Monkeybrain and available on Comixology. All set in the intricate and growing pulp universe of creator Gregg Taylor.

So celebrate Canada Day--go listen to or read some delicious pulp pastiche!!

Manic Canada Day Bonus--The Best Music Ever To Come Out Of Canada!

What, you were expecting Rush?

Manic Canada Day--Canada Gets Its Own Super-Hero!!

It's imaginary story time again!!

In this tale, instead of Kandor, Brainiac shrunk Kryptonopolis!!

Thus, Jor-El and family were off planet when Krypton exploded, and Kal-El was never launched to Earth!! In fact, the El's, no longer dead, had a second child--Knor-El!!

Well, via circumstances too complex to go into, the bottle city of Kryptonopolis ends up on Earth. And after the seeing the crime and evil on stuff we have here, Jor-El decides to use the one and only dose of enlarging gas he has to make a hero for Earth.

But who to choose? Well, how about a Paradise Island style athletic contest?

Of course, Jor-El's sons are the sole survivors...

And Knor-El wins!! He goes to Earth as Superman!!

He establishes a secret identity!!

But soon enough, trouble strikes, as an inexperienced Superman has his first encounter with...kryptonite!!

What to do?

No, not "spraying a quick-hardening green luminous lead paint quickly out of tiny opening in the belt buckle." Like that would work!

No, remember when we told told that there was one and only one dose of enlarging gas? We were lied to!

So Kal-El goes to Earth, and rescues his brother!

But what now?

A) The paper is in English?

B) That is one HELL of a mustache for the Man Of Steel! Tony Stark, eat your heart out!!

And so...

HYPERMAN!!

So, Canada, in your 100th birthday, DC gave you an imaginary, hand-me-down hero!!

This had better turn up in Multiversity...

Happy Canada Day!!

From Superman #200 (1967)

The Adventures Of Batroc's Canadian Cousin?

Presenting the adventures of...

Oh, Lumber Jack, what mischief have you gotten yourself into this time?

True, true...

Zut alors!!!

For the record, I would pay one trillion quatloos to see this guy face off against Captain America...

From Master Comics #96 (1948). No actual French Canadians were hurt in the production of this post.

Blame Canada!

So, I'm looking at Fawcett's True Confidences #3 (1950), because, hey, who doesn't need a little Golden Age romance?

But I'm stopped by the ad inside the front cover...

Really? An ad for Marvel comic books inside a Fawcett book?

Hey, it's nice to see our old friends Kid Colt, the Two-Gun Kid and Patsy Walker. And it's also nice to see the extensive number of romance books they were putting out:

It's also amusing to see a bit of a Freudian typo, as what is identified as "Marvel Comics Group" above is identified in the smaller print as...

Heh.

Anyway, I just attribute it to some type of ad trade between Fawcett and Marvel/Timely/Atlas. Until I get to the inside back cover:

Wait--let's interrupt this essay for some nightmare fuel:

AHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

Well, Fawcett advertising two other comic companies in their pages threw me for a loop, until I noticed in both ads:

Ah. Bell Features. That explains a thing or two about a thing or two.

During WWII, Canada banned the importation of American comic books (don't fret--it was part of a ban of all "non-essential" items to help preserve Canada's balance of trade). Well, several Canadian publishers quickly leaped into the vacuum,  and Bell Features was probably the most successful of them. (For more details, see Siskoid's coverage of some of the Golden Age Canadian comics).

But once the war ended, the ban was lifted, American comics flooded the market, and many of the Canadian publishers went belly up. But Bell clearly understood the maxim "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em." By 1947 they ceased publishing most of their own original material, and began publishing the Canadian version of the conquering Americans.

Hence, Marvel and Fawcett and Archie comics "published by Bell Features." Mystery solved.

For the record, the strategy failed in a few years--Bell went out of business in 1953

See--you learn something new every day, even from Golden Age romance comics...