Captain Canuck Essay

There have been many versions of Captain Canuck since the birth of the original comic book in 1975. Captain Canuck was created in a wholly Canadian fashion, from the images presented in the comic itself: “From futuristic Mounties to a maple-leaf emblazoned snowmobile, Comely incorporated numerous Canadian references,” (Edwardson 190); to the matter in which it was produced – almost completely vertically integrated in a Canadian manner (minus the American distribution company). And while the idea nationalism was rampant in the 1970s, there obviously was not enough enthusiasm, though praised heavily by Edwardson, to keep the comic going for more than three issues. Even though the Canadian edition of TIME magazine praised its “Canadianness”, it was also criticized for its art style as being amateur. I think this aligns strongly with how much of Canadian media is criticized: we are proud of it because its Canadian but it’s also pretty amateur in nature. This is seen not only in comic books, but also in radio, TV, film, art, etc.

The image above is two pages from Captain Canuck #1. Pretty much everything presented is something Canadians identify with: the maple leaf on Captain Canuck’s
The first thing I noticed this time was its improvement in quality, while still keeping a lot of the symbols we consider to be Canadian, albeit maybe just a bit more modern: Captain Canuck’s super suit with the maple leaf displayed on it, the French sentence used, and the characters wearing parkas. It also looks a lot more like a superhero comic book – the storyline and characteristics of Captain Canuck being much more like that of Superman or some other American comic. However, I also noted it looks a lot more “American”, but I can’t quite figure out what that means myself. Maybe it’s the art style, or is that just distinctly North American in itself? I suppose that’s hard to distinguish when both cultures are so