Captain Canuck Returns?

Primal · Jun 26, 2005

<hr color=navy>Jun. 26, 2005. 12:22 PM
<table border=0 cellpadding=1 cellspacing=2><tr><td>Captain Canuck clings to life

CHRISTOPHER HUTSUL
STAFF REPORTER

The story was set in the future — the 1990s to be precise. Canada, with its rich natural resources, had become a global superpower. From coast to coast, the Canadian way of life flourished. But not all was good in the Great White North; mobsters and rogue Communist cells threatened to topple the government and corrupt its people.

The sanctity of our frostbitten dominion, as the story went, rested in the hands of Tom Evans — known to foes and fans as Captain Canuck. The red-and- white-cloaked superhero patrolled the Arctic on snowmobile, described distances in kilometres, and whupped bad-guy butts with good old Canadian knuckle sandwiches.</td><td>

SIMON WILSON FOR THE TORONTO STAR
Comic creator Richard Comely in his Cambridge, Ont. studio: He believed in the need for a Captain Canuck.</td></tr><tr><td colspan=2>
When Richard Comely launched the series in 1975, Canada finally had a superhero to call its own.

But the Captain and his creator soon learned there was a huge difference between superhero and superstar. The franchise garnered decent media attention during its initial run, enjoyed respectable sales and was later honoured with a series of postage stamps based on the Captain released in the '90s. But ultimately, the comic was unable to make an impact on mainstream audiences or the comic community. People remember the comic — they just don't remember it being good.

The writing was clunky, the art was stiff and the stories were devoid of the camp one might expect from a Canadian hero. Even Comely, who had no experience in creating — or reading — comics, admits now he rushed into the project. But the freelance artist, 24 years old at the time, had a hot potato of an idea in his hands, courtesy of fellow artist Ron Leishman, and couldn't wait to get it out into the world.

Looking back, the fact that the comic left something to be desired should be overshadowed by the fact that young man brazenly took on the roles of artist, writer and publisher to make the concept a reality.

"I worked hard at it, and the only reason I worked hard at it was because I believed in it," says Comely, now 54 and living in Cambridge, Ont. "I felt that's what we needed. There was a Captain America; why couldn't we have something like that in Canada?"

The first issue pitted a rigid Captain Canuck and his sidekick Bluefox against a band of Communists seeking to take over Canada. On their way to the confrontation, they ride snowmobiles, wrestle a polar bear and get rescued by an Inuit named Utak. Captain Canuck then uses his super-human strength to create a makeshift dogsled bridge out of an ice floe. About 10 pages into the comic, Bluefox double-crosses Captain Canuck and sides with the Communists (which has to be some kind of record for sidekick betrayals). Pistols get fired, fists get thrown and missile launchers get disarmed. Just another day in the Yukon, right?

Fans had to wait until issue No. 5 to read about the origins of the mysterious Communist-crusher in the tight pyjamas. There we learned that Tom Evans was a top Mountie who was drafted into the fictional Canadian International Security Organization — a government body designed to defend Canada's newfound might. While camping with scouts, Evans gets abducted by aliens who proceed to conduct a battery of tests on him (as aliens are known to do), leaving him twice as powerful and twice as fast. CISO capitalizes on its staffer's new strength, and hands him the Captain Canuck title and a fancy new suit to go with it. Evans, ever the patriot, is up to the challenge.

"I feel that Captain Canuck had to take a strong view on Canada and nationalism," says a friendly-sounding Comely from his office in Cambridge. "I didn't think of him as an international crime fighter. He was a Canadian, he belonged to Canada ... He could be involved in international affairs, but his devotion had to lie with Canada."

This unwavering patriotism was the Captain's strength, but it was also his weakness. Whereas other heroes were tormented and complex (think Batman, Spider-Man, Wolverine), Canuck was earnest to a fault.

"He's a generic, straight-shooting, clean-cut hero, which may have been part of the comic's problem," says Darren Latta, a Kingston-based freelance writer and creator of a Captain Canuck fan website. "He wasn't that distinctive. He wasn't neurotic ... He was just this unflappable guy."

But Latta got a kick out of seeing adventures unfold in places he recognized.

"I read something referring to smog-ridden Sudbury," he recalls. "What struck me about Captain Canuck was that from a Canadian point of view, here was a hero doing grand deeds, and I knew the references."

In 1976, just three issues into the series, Comely was forced to put the project on hold. The comic was selling, but the production costs were greater than the revenues. He moved to Cardston, Alta., a border town of 3,500 people, where he became the editor — and cartoonist — for a small newspaper while soliciting funding to relaunch the series.

<hr width=45%>`He's a generic, straight shooting, clean-cut
hero, which may have been part of the
comic's problem'

Darren Latta, Fan webmaster<hr width=45%>

By the time he was ready to publish Captain Canuck No. 4 in '79, he'd shrewdly decided to hand the pencils and ink over to George Freeman and Claude St. Aubin, both skilled draughtsman, while continuing to write the stories. The new look was well received by comic fans, but the funding dried up in late 1980. Comely believes he could have kept publishing the comic if he'd chosen to print it in the U.S. instead of the more costly Canadian printing house he'd hired out of principle.

"If I printed it where all the other comics were being printed, I would have paid a third of the price," says Comely. "But I thought, `How could I print this anywhere than in Canada?'"

In the mid '80s Comely moved to Cambridge, where he worked as a freelance writer and illustrator, drawing for ad companies and gift card makers. In 1991, as he was gearing up to release the next round of comics, he had a serious car accident that left him with two broken arms.

The injury didn't slow him down. In 1993, Comely Comics presented Captain Canuck Reborn. The new series told the story of Darren Oak — a man determined to bring down his older brother's plan to create an evil global government, thereby spoiling Canada. It lasted three years and four issues before being shelved yet again.

The latest incarnation of the franchise surfaced just last year. It may come as a surprise to many contemporary Canadian art fans that young darling Drue Langlois, formerly of Winnipeg's lauded Royal Art Lodge art collective (of which the famed Marcel Dzama is a member), and his brother Riel put out a three-part Captain Canuck series titled Captain Canuck, Unholy War.

Riel, a fan of the strip as a kid, says he was looking for a way to break into the comics world, and thought reinterpreting the character would be a good way to do so. He wrote a script, enlisted his brother to do the art, and teamed up with Comely, who served as editor on the project. The result is a handsome, well-drawn package.

Riel has been a fan of the comic since he was 7 years old. Apparently, he was endeared to the comic by the polar bear scene.

"I was living in Churchill at the time and it seemed like every week we'd have an assembly (at school) where we were basically terrorized about how dangerous polar bears were. And there were all these polar bear traps around town ... So I think from a psychological perspective I really bonded with this character who went toe-to-toe with this supernaturally fearsome beast."

Unlike Latta, Drue and Riel appreciated Captain's lack of angst. They played that up in their rendition of the character.

"We were both pretty sick of the dark characters, like Spawn ... how everything's a drag and how being this superhero is a burden, and how Wolverine is `I just hate myself,'" writes Riel. "We were thinking it would actually be pretty fun to be a superhero ... who didn't pose on rooftops and brood all night."

Ironically, due to interest in Drue's art career, the Langlois brothers' comic could turn out to be a collector's item of greater value than the original comics from the '70s. For those who bought the first issue as an investment, it will come as a disappointment that it's now worth, according to local comics buyers, about $5 — around the same value as a new issue of Superman.

"I always like to be quoted telling people not to buy comics as an investment, but rather to read them," says Peter Birkemoe, owner of The Beguiling, a Toronto comic book store. "In this case, I'm not sure if I can recommend this one as a read."

Those are tough words to absorb for a patriotic self-publisher who dared to dream big. But all the criticism in the world won't erase the 24 Captain Canuck comics that have been published, nor will it dampen Comely's will to keep the franchise alive.

The creator, who's now paying the bills as a video editor while writing for an American video-editing periodical, is currently in talks with a production house about the possibility of a three-part movie deal that would be followed by an animated series. Clearly, Comely believes in Captain Canuck as much as Captain Canuck believed in Canada.

"I take some pride in the fact that many people still have warm memories of the series," says Comely. "I think people still feel that Captain Canuck is the bona fide Canadian superhero. There have been a few other attempts at Canadian superheroes, but none are remembered because they didn't get the mileage.

"I made some bad business decisions back then. I didn't exploit it as much as I could have ... Obviously, there've been ups and downs. It's a tough business. I envisioned that I'd somehow manage to continue the series. Which isn't to say that I'll never publish another series — I probably will if the conditions are right. Right now, the big prize after 30 years would be film and TV."</td></tr></table>
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Source: The Toronto Star

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