Canada's forgotten superheroes

This year’s Doug Wright Awards, which recognizes excellence in Canadian comics and cartooning, will be honouring the Canadian Whites, a group of artists and comics that birthed a roster of forgotten Canadian heroes in the World War II era. Two living members of the group will be on hand to accept the Giants of the North hall of fame award on Saturday evening in Toronto. The awards are a feature event at the Toronto Comic Arts Festival.

Awards co-founder, Brad MacKay, uncovers the history behind this little-known league of artists.

Who are the Canadian Whites? Where did they get that name?

They were a group of 100 or so Canadians, mostly men with a couple of women, many of whom were teenagers working as artists on comics during World War II. It’s also the label put on the original Canadian comics themselves that were published at the time.

From 1940 to 1946, a pop-up homegrown Canadian comics industry was born due to wartime austerity measures. The government had passed a bill – the Wartime Exchange Conservation Act – that restricted the import of magazines and comics from the U.S. that Canadians had been reading.

So almost overnight, owners of printing presses who were, until then, turning out church pamphlets and the like, realized there was an opportunity because all these popular comics weren't going to be available. They started with reprinting some of those books, skirting the rules until they couldn't get away with that any longer, and then they courted, hired and trained a group of artists, all these kids, who would produce original work.

The name “Whites” came from the fact the publishers didn't have enough money to print in colour. So the covers were full colour, but the interiors were black and white. It became a bit of a derogatory term – those “Canadian Whites” – for the books because they didn’t have the same level of quality as Marvel and DC books from the time.

There are only four living members of the group today: Jack Tremblay, Jerry Lazare, Mel Crawford, and Murray Karn.

Did Joe Shuster, creator of Superman, run with this crowd?

No, Shuster’s family left Canada when he was 9 or 10 years old for the United States, which is where he drew Superman.

He would come back to Toronto to visit, and he pulled inspiration from the city remembering his youth. Metropolis is based on the landscape of Toronto.

So, what happened to the books?

After the war, they stuck around for about a year and then disappeared once kids could get their hands on the more popular books by Marvel and DC again.

They were long forgotten until a few years ago when they became a bit of a Canadian curiosity. There have been one or two books on them. The documentary Lost Heroes debuted at Toronto International Film Festival and was released earlier this year, and there is a Kickstarter-funded book about Nelvana debuting at TCAF this year.

Why is this era considered by some to be the Golden Age of Canadian Comics?

This period in comics is known as the Golden Age – the Silver Age followed from the late 1950s to 1970 and the Bronze Age from 1970 to 1985. But from a Canadian perspective, nothing has preceded it. It was definitely a unique era in the history of Canadian comics.

What influence did these characters and creators have on modern comics?

I doubt much. The reason these are fantastic books is that finding them is like unearthing the lost city of Atlantis. They were long forgotten until a few decades ago. They are unique, a curiosity – a one-time thing that will never be recreated. Even if the artwork is at times juvenile, these are fun, charming books to read.

Why weren't these books successful in the long run?

It's a typical Canadian story. Without the government support, this wartime import duty ban, the books couldn't maintain the sale. Readers wanted the flashy colour stories from the brand-name heroes that they couldn’t get their hands on for 5 or 6 six years; probably much like the TV industry.

So the industry just died out, and the guys went on to work on other stuff. But the comics died.

Over the years, some comic companies have sprouted up but most have gone away. Today our success stories in comics are a handful of publishers that include Drawn + Quarterly in Montreal, Koyama in Toronto, and Conundrum in Nova Scotia, but they don't do superhero books.

It seems to be very difficult to create a successful Canadian hero that doesn’t seem hokey. Not just a successful book, but a compelling “Canadian” character with a good narrative. Why is that?

Marvel and DC have probably saturated the market – DC puts out 52 books a month and Marvel probably something similar – and so there is no hole the fill.

There have definitely been small players who have tried but we've had much more success with literary comics. The Canadian comics community has grown exponentially. There is lots of talent in this country, but they’re creating more literary books, which is what we've become known for now internationally.

Read also:  Who was Doug Wright and why an award named after him?