The Return of the Cap'n

I've written about Captain Canuck before -- check out my entire week of Canadian goodness here -- and I think you get the idea that I'm absolutely enamored with the idea of a National Canadian Superhero, a comic book character who can somehow boil down to essentials what it means to be Canadian. And, like our comic counterparts to the south, this is true -- only backward. Captain Canuck was patterned to represent Canadian values, and now he's used as proof of those values, in some kind of twisted Disneyworld logic: if Captain Canuck is supposed to represent Canada, and Captain Canuck is "A," then Canada must be "A," as well -- even if the initial premise is incorrect. Captain Canuck was first created by Richard Comely in order to bring together the disparate visions of what a Canadian actually was, and the series tried to foist a Canadian mythos onto the popular culture of the Great White North, much as Canadian Nationalist ideas tried to do back in 1967, with the rise of Expo '67 and the ill-fated "Chimo" greeting. In the irony that we often find ourselves faced with today, the significant replaced the signifier; i.e. the symbol gave meaning to what was being symbolized.

But that's a story for another day. Because today, we have a story that couldn't possibly be tied to traditional, or even subversive, Canadian values. Unless, of course, Canadians are big on aliens that look like wads of splooge:

Yes, this is the story of Captain Canuck's unpublished fifteenth issue. Written and drawn before CKR Productions folded under the absurd conditions of the Canadian publishing industry, this issue would have seen the light of day if Comely and Co had succeeded in their scheeme to sell shares of the "Captain Canuck Corporation" to eager northern kids itching for a fix of down-home superheroics. Sadly, Captain Canuck, though wildly popular, could not make enough money to stay afloat, and the story of "The Stygian" -- no relation to the other Stygian -- would be denied to the kids of the 1970/80's.

Written by creator Richard Comely and the last Canuck issue to be illustrated by George Freeman, the story takes place after Tom Evans -- the good Captain's secret identity -- has been stranded in the "present" of the 1980's following an alien encounter in his future of 1993. In the dead of winter in Calgary, Captain Canuck has taken to construction work to support himself as he, presumably, tries to find a way back to his time. A fellow worker discovers a discarded purse, and, Canadian of upstanding character that he is, Mr Evans heads out to return it to its rightful owner.


Discovering that the purse belongs to a missing woman, he acts on a hunch -- literally, as there is nothing in the comic to indicate exactly where he gets the idea to go traipsing about government labs -- and visits the offices of the Stabler Research Group, where he comes face to face with every Canadian's arch nemesis: the locked door.

On the other side of the door are a group of scientists whose names and personalities are of absolutely no consequence. What does matter is what they've inadvertantly created: THE STYGIAN!

Part being of pure energy, part being of melty-cheese, the Stygian must feed off of the energy of people and electronics to survive. Other than this survival imperative, we don't know much about ol' Styg', but you can bet that if he does this to Captain Canuck:

then he's no damn good in my book.

Canukc, knowing nothing about the type science fiction aliens that he's battled for most of his life, inadvertantly lets the creature loose upon an unsuspecting Stampede City, where it's assumed that he passed up the great untapped potential energy of cow pats, instead settling on the lethargic energy of your average Canadian citizen. After a thrilling* chase throughout downtown Alberta, Canuck seems to be on the brink of finishing the creature off with a good whack on the side of the head with a manhole cover:

Unfortunately for the reputations of the boys in blue everywhere, the assault is interrupted by a group of vigilant police officers, who are far too focused on arresting the man in the arresting pajamas, and not the being of limitless power looming over him.

Our story ends with the Stygian getting away, and the poor boys and girls of 2004 (when this story was finally released to fans for the first time) are left on another cliffhanger that has yet to be resolved. But those aren't the only mysteries we're left pondering; I've got a few questions myself: for one, how does a being created from pure energy succumb to being smacked in thr skull with a steel plate? For two, can anyone in Calgary tell me what these terrifying, lanky giants in the background of this panel are supposed to be?


I'm going to assume they're some kind of artwork, and not, say, the Stygian's terrifying compadres.

Well, there it is -- the last, unreleased issue of the original run of Captain Canuck, killed in its prime by the realities of publishing in Canada. It wasn't lack of interest or sales that did Canuck in -- in 1979, the Captain was the highest selling comic book in all of Canada, as related in Captain Canuck #7, and you can tell from the panels I've reproduced here that Freeman's art was pretty great for an independent book in the late 1970's (or hell, for a comic book period). No, Canada's first and greatest superhero was deep-sixed by a government that, while claiming to value Canadian content, actually created conditions that were anathema to the continued existence of a true Canadian hero.

Great Moments in Mounties: Less-Than-Model Behaviour From the Men in Red (Captain Canuck, Vol. 1 #3)

Yeah, alright, I'm up, I'm up. What day is it? Sunday? Oh, good, I didn't sleep through the weekend - wait, what? Next Sunday? Aw, crap.

So, yes, I may have overslept a tad, and neglected this fine blog for almost a week now, but you should have realized that I would never give up trying to achieve immortality via the internet so abruptly - not without a well-reasoned excuse, anyway.

The last time we looked into the proud tradition of Mounties in Comic Books, we saw Batman and Rob battling evil Quebecois in service of an apparent summer camp for RCMP personnel. Tonight, we'll learn that there's no guarantee that the Men of the Mounted will be portrayed authentically even when the comic comes from the northern side of the border - Captain Canuck #3 is our principal piece of evidence in making that case. I previously published a week-long-ish tribute to the Captain (and his many wacky merchandising schemes) that you can look over here.

Let's recap a little: in 1975, Richard Comely and Ron Leishman would sense a hole in the market where a patriotic Canadian superhero should have been, and so they set about self-publishing Captain Canuck, a comic book series following the adventures of Canada's top C.I.S.O. agent as he foils plans by Commies and other new-world-order-types to usurp Canada's true place as a natural-resource-fueled super-power. Despite solid popularity, costs for such an independent book were high, and the company could not continue publishing Canuck at a price that was competitive with imported American superheroes, and only 14 issues could be released sporadically from 1975 to 1982 until Captain Canuck ultimately folded. He would return three more times (or more, depending on where you happened to live) between 1993 and 2005, but the general decline in comic book sales, coupled with poor distribution and the constantly shifting creative directions of Captain Canuck's copyright holder (the views expressed in his 1982 magazine, Star Rider and the Peace Machine, are not exactly what we would call "marketable") would defeat the Captain in every one of his attempts.

So, that's Captain Canuck.

Now, meet Captain Canuck in his formative years.



As Captain Canuck #3 opens, the oddly-inked eponymous hero is working with his fellow C.I.S.O. officers, the super duo known as "Redcoat and Kebec" (Redcoat is in red, Kebec is stuck with the colours of the flag of his namesake), as the crack security organization moves in to arrest a "crooked MP," Rosechuk. This issue never reveals exactly what Rosechuk - or "Rosey," as his criminal buddies like to call him - is up to, but one thing is certain: the Canada of alternate-1993 (the "future" portrayed in the series) must have one hell of a penalty for corruption, since he escapes the clutches of C.I.S.O. using this:



a skyscraper cum missile silo.

Although Captain Canuck is the second-greatest Canadian bad-ass - pulling just ahead of William Shatner, but slightly behind that Prime Minister who held conversations with his dead dog - he is, in fact, vulnerable to a rocket's flaming exhaust, and must be transported to a hospital to be treated. This is where we have our first glimpse at the Mounties of the Future (TM), who are dressed more sensibly, if not more Judge-Dreddy. That's where any dignity the Mounties might have been given in this comic stays, though, because we're barely given six pages until eeeevil Mounties show up in full Musical-Ride regalia.

The dark RCMP officers are there to kidnap the Cap'n, because their boss, crooked MP Rosey, wants to make sure that C.I.S.O. doesn't have any information on his source of funding... and... uh... is that a pitcher of urine next to the Captain's bed?



Huh. Strange thing to keep there.

Bodily fluids aside, another villain has gotten word that Captain Canuck is in the hospital, and he's dispatched his own people - another kidnapping squad, determined to find out who Captain Canuck really is, and then to hold him hostage for the mysterious Mr. Gold. The two abductors, one a doctor turned informant named Borden, the other a professional named Wilby, get into the hospital room by posing as doctors. As they're preparing the Captain, the two faux-RCMP officers arrive with orders to move Captain Canuck to another hospital - "for security reasons." Captain Canuck asks his maker for a little strength, but it's really the collision of two thugs' greed that allows him to take advantage and kick some fake Mountie ass.



With a little unexpected help from "Dr." Wilby, the Captain is perfectly fine. But the thug in the scrubs has apparently come prepared, because he whips out what appears to be RCMP identification. Oy vey, another false Mountie! Is anyone in the RCMP really who they claim to be?

As the story comes to a close, the Captain and the pretty nurse who was so intent on getting him naked are herded into an ambulance the evil "Dr. Wilby," where the good doctor immediately degenerates into a third-rate Dick Tracy villain, throwing out enough "sweethearts," condescending adjectives, and demented laughs to fill a graphic novel written by Frank Miller.

Oh boy! I wonder how the Captain will get out of this one! I'm a little kid in 1975, and I'm overwrought with anticipation! I just can't wait to look for Captain Canuck #4 on the news-stands next month! But I do wait. And I wait. And I wait some more. Because this is when Captain Canuck dies for the first time. Captain Canuck fans had to wait until 1979 to get the ending to this story. What the crap, Canada? First you give me stereotypical Mounties, and then you make me wait 4 years to read the ending of Captain Canuck #3? Egad. If that happened today, I don't know how anyone would be able to stand for it.

Captain Canuck Week: Friday Night Fights

Pfft... Canada? Bahlactus laughs at Canada. They've barely got a military at all. They're the "nice" country. They're so polite.




That's what we call peace-keeping.

Captain Canuck Week: What Are Super Agents Made Of?

It's what you've all been waiting for! It took four years to get there, but in Captain Canuck #5 we were given a glimpse into what made Captain Canuck super enough to qualify to be a super-agent. You'll notice that Bluefox, C.I.S.O.'s other super-agent, is conveniently omitted from the origin story. Hmmm...

Captain Canuck Week: The Merchandising

I'd like to think that Captain Canuck was a labor of love. I'd like to believe that it was an idea born out of two young Mormon guys who wanted to present a vision of the American superhero, but representing their principles, and maybe even espousing general Canadian ideals, and if they can make a living doing it, so much the better. Like I said, I'd like to believe that the process is "creativity first, riches later." Of course, the cynical side of me knows that it just can't be so.

Captain Canuck looks like it was made primarily to form spin-off industries: the sheer diluge of offers for t-shirts, posters, and other assorted crap is staggering. There's the usual fare, stuff I can understand, like t-shirts and fanclubs:



and posters, you gotta have posters, posters are easy:



For a new character, yo'd think that they would stop there, maybe slow down and wait for the dude to take off before they try to license him out further. But they went onward with pens and other miscellany:




Then, we start entering WTF-territory:





Plaques? Wooden plaques? For an independent, not-really bi-monthly, Canadian comic book? Well, it could be worse, I guess. They could start hawking stock in the company to a bunch of ten-year olds and change their name to the "Captain Canuck Corporation:"

Captain Canuck Week: The Man They Call Catman

Captain Canuck introduced a number of back-up features, none of which proved popular enough to warrant their own book: Jonn was about an intergalactic astronaut who crash-lands on a sword and sorcery world; Beyond was a similar adventure with a more medieval-slant; the Chaos Corps appeared, mercifully, only once; and then there was Catman.



Catman had great things to live up to. He'd been advertised to appear in Captain Canuck since #1. He was later slated to appear in Jonn #1, a solo series for our intrepid space Conan, but since their wasn't any chance of that happening anytime soon, his arrival was delayed. Catman never showed up until #4, which you might remember as being the first issue produced after a four-year hiatus. Yikes. This purple fucker certainly had some expectations to live up to.

Unlike his similarly-named counterparts from the DC universe, Batman and the villainous Catman, Comely/CKR's Catman was a mostly-naked man with advanced powers bestowed to him from an alien who kept bigfoots (bigfeet?) as pets.

While adventuring in the arctic on an expedition to film the elusive Sasquatch, Jason Corey is, like all cats, distracted by a shiny object in the distance. When he heads off half-cocked to investigate, he falls down a crack in the ice and is almost killed. He's saved only by a wizened old man who treats his injuries, but also keeps him imprisoned within his home for weeks, or perhaps months - Jason isn't sure, but he knows he can't even attempt escape since the old bastard took his clothes, meaning he'd be a Popsicle if he ever found a way to leave the place.

The old Yoda surrogate also harbors a dark secret - he's actually an alien from the planet Arrimo, and crash-landed on Earth over 200 years ago. Rather than attempting to repair his ship and leave, he's instead taken to living under the arctic ice and keeping wild ape-men locked up with him for his own amusement. The bigfoots don't really have a point in this story other than to aggravate Jason, it seems: he risks his life to get pictures of these things, and some old alien dude is keeping 'em on ice! The nerve.



Obi-Wan frequently leaves the human alone for several hours to snoop around his spaceship, so one day Jason gets the bright idea to actually attempt escape, and follows the old guy to see where he goes: Jason sees him use an amulet-like device that changes him purple, and surmises that it must shield him from the cold - if Jason could obtain the trinket, he might be able to escape the ship without freezing to death.

Luckily for Jason, his host is getting rather forgetful in his advanced years, leaving the device lying out in the open for him to find. Faster than you can say, "Holy crap I'm a rip-off of Batman and the Creeper," Jason escapes and is free to live a mostly-normal existence, albeit one in which he never has to buy winter coats again.



Catman's origin tale ends with the appearance of Jason Corey's sister, Susy, and she asks him a question more fitting of a post-Super-Bowl interview: "What are you going to do now?"


Okay, so he doesn't actually say that. But he does mention clearing their father's name, and nailing some guy named "Ellingson." Kinky, but also frustrating: we never, ever, find out who their father is, what he's done, or who Ellingson is. Captain Canuck #3 would be the only appearance of Catman, save for an illustrated short story that appears in #6.

Catman would return in the 1993 series, Captain Canuck: Reborn, but he would change his name to "Splatter," never have alien powers to begin with, and go around shooting criminals with a paintball gun. Man, the guy just can't catch a break, can he?

Captain Canuck Week: Introducing the Captain

Welcome to Blackmarket Pies' celebration of all things Captain Canuck, Captain Canuck Week!



First published in 1975, Captain Canuck was the first national Canadian superhero, emulating Captain America for a country that was just beginning to acquire a national-consciousness, following the late-sixties' wave of Expos, new flags, and Ookpiks. Created by artists Richard Comely and his friend Ron Leishman, and clad in red and white, Captain Canuck was a government agent who worked to take down multiple conspiracies - from a primarily communist threat from 1975, to an alien threat in 1979, to the more paranoid super capitalist/communist plot in 1993, to drug-dealing bikers in 2005.


The books were printed on paper that was of a higher quality than most American comics at the time. That, unfortunately, was about the only thing of any quality in the first issue - the art was odd, the writing choppy, and the dialog was stilted. Things picked up in #2, and by #3, the art and writing were solidly mediocre. The Captain would turn out to be unpredictably popular (well, for Canada, anyway), but high costs were enough to shut down Captain Canuck by the third issue.

The Captain would be back in 1979, tough, with the art under-going an incredible improvement in #4, and then leaping off of the page once George Freeman took over in #7. Comely worked as writer in every issue of the book until #13, where it was announced that he was leaving to return to freelance work. However, Comely himself implies that he was "dismissed" from CKR Productions, the company that had produced the comic since #4. Professional turmoil in comics? Inconceivable!

CKR Productions would fold with #14, but the Captain would return in 1993 for 4 issues of a new "Reborn" series. It was not well-received.

Completely re-envisioned in 2005 with the "Unholy War" series, Captain Canuck would return as a comic-book reading RCMP officer who had trouble keeping his secret identity under wraps. It was intended as a 3-issue mini, but had a fourth issue released in September 2007. There have been no further developments with the character since then, but previews of the "War of the Independents," coming in 2008, suggest that both versions of Captain Canuck (1975-1981 and 2005) will be involved.

And now that you're fully versed in the basics of Captain Canuck, it's time you took part in the amazing adventure that was the Captain's introduction to our fast-paced, modern, Canadian world: Captain Canuck #1 (remember, it's a COLLECTOR'S EDITION!)

The story: "Arctic Standoff!"

The time: the far-flung future of May 8, 1993.

The scene: a missile monitoring station in the desolate vastness of Northern Canada. A bearded weirdo in a jumpsuit alerts his superiors of incoming hostile aircraft before he's blown to smithereens. The aircraft is manned by two helmeted men who have limited experience with punctuation that does not include the exclamation mark, and maybe the ellipsis. They inform the Canadian authorities that after taking out the lone technician reading a magazine in the middle of the wilderness, they are now in a position to negotiate the complete turnover of the nation of Canada to their interests, in exchange for not initiating the "total thermo destruction of Canada." I guess that means they were planning to melt us.

In response, the CISO (helpfully decoded as being an acronym for the "Canadian International [?] Security Organization") sends in their two specially-tained super-agents: Captain Canuck, in the red jammies, and Bluefox, in the blue electro-Long Johns.



Captain Canuck and his, I assume, Quebecois partner, were created by the government of Canada when "the predictions of Canada becoming the most important country in the world became a reality in the 1980's." Apparently this was because we had a lot of oil, trees, and rocks.

After travelling in an underground monorail system to Quebec, then on a pink jet to the arctic, then on a snowmobile further into the arctic, then on foot for a few kilometers, then on a dogsled the rest of the way, the two Super-agents arrive... somewhere... to clandestinely take out the terrorists threatening to thermo-destruct the true, north, strong and free. Kids, if you're looking to get into the art of compressed storytelling, do not take notes from Captain Canuck#1 - unless your editors have ever uttered the phrase "this needs more polar bear wrasslin'."

But, alas! Bluefox is revealed to be working for the other guys! Those other guys seem to be anti-capitalists, but we're never told what kind, or who they're working for. It depresses me to think that the CISO, now the security agency for the most important country in the world, saw fit to produce only 2 super-agents, but didn't think it would be prudent to ensure that 50% of your team weren't Commie traitors. Hindsight's 20/20, I guess.

After a page where the good Cap' explains why people in Russia do not smile, he commences with the ass-kicking that Canadians are known for (albeit without the sticks and drunkiness). That "crazed" Bluefox manages to push the big red button, though, and the prairie provinces have a about a half an hour before they're vaporized by incoming missiles. Wait, missiles? When the hell did missiles come into this? I thought we were heading for thermo-destruction? Do you ever have those moments when you're reading a comic and you feel like you're missing something big, like maybe the editors completely lost a few of the expositional captions along the way? That's what reading this whole story feels like.





Anyway, Canuck, after having no problems shooting his ex-partner in the spine, heads outside to "pull the plug" on the missiles - no, really, to stop the launch of what we can only assume are nuclear missiles, he rips the power cord in half, a contrivance so unrealistic that it made me appreciate the down-to-Earth qualities of silver-age Superman.



He succeeds, and the reader discovers, to his or horror or delight, that CISO had decided to send in some back-up agents to help stop the invasion of a vast, frozen wasteland. The reader also discovers the horrible, subtle propaganda inserted into the Cap's adventures:



Yes, God did indeed help the lone commander disobey direct orders, coming idiotically close to initiating nuclear Armageddon (unless he, you know, shot up the building containing the big plug that Captain Canuck pulled, or something). Religion was a regularly occurring theme in the early Canuck stories, stemming from Comely's Mormonism, but all references to the big guy stopped at issue #3. I'd have to assume that CKR Productions insisted that Comely refrain from any overt endorsement of religion, to avoid alienating readers and advertisers.

Other items of interest include the entirely inexplicable...


and art so good, you won't believe it ain't real:




"Arctic Standoff," the main story of Captain Canuck #1 (COLLECTOR'S ITEM), didn't make a whole lot of sense, and the art was terrible. In fact, in the immortal words of Chris Sims, it was not very good. The series did get better before it got worse, though. In fact, I don't think it ever got worse during its original run; it didn't have time to.

If I've interested you enough in the good Cap'n, it's easy enough to get your hands on a copy for yourself: #1 is extremely common around the net, and it seems that there's even an autographed copy up on eBay every week.

And, hey! Here's something even I didn't know: according to Wikipedia, "Marvel had approached Comely for the rights to use Captain Canuck in Alpha Flight, but were refused, so Byrne created a new character."

Oh, man. How awesome would that have been? I wonder why he refused...

Come back tomorrow to learn about one of the Cap's many back-up features: the man they call Catman.

The Return

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaand I am back! After who knows how long spent away from the comforting glow of the interweb, I return to its gentle caresses, more in need of money and time than ever. Of course, I couldn't make my comeback fight on just any old night... it's gotta be during the main event, the Friday Night Fights, squaring off against the two-fisted sure bet that is Bahlactus!

And tonight we're outsourcing the concussions straight from the Great White North, with the knock-out punch from Captain Canuck #3, which burst groin-kickenly onto the scene wayback in '75, providing definitive proof that the Mounties were in on the conspiracy from the very beginning:

(you're gonna want to click that and make it bigger)
But, what conspiracy? And who the hell is Captain Canuck, exactly? Good questions, my friends. And they will all be answered, because next week? Next week is his week:



Starting Monday, be prepared for 7 full Strangely-Brew'd days of the other Captain, Captain Canuck! Think you can handle the greatest hero of the middle power, Bahlactus?

Prove it.