Nelvana of the Northern Lights - The Action Figure!

Oh for what might have been.

One aspect of the rise of the action figure into the collectible market is the sad fact that not all the characters a comic fan might love will get their own toy. But customizers don't let that stop them. They build their own versions of the figures using parts from other toys. So even the most obscure characters are no longer out of reach.

Victor Kraven is a crackerjack toy customizer who takes great delight in custom building action figures. He recently completed a Nelvana of the Northern Lights for my e-friend Ray over at Phil Latter's Canadian Comics group. And it was too fantastic not to share!

Man, how could I but dream about a whole line-up of beautifully crafted Canadian heroes from the forties along my shelves?

Victor's website is here. His Nelvana page is here. The talented dude is open to commissions too.

I went through the extensive examples of other customs he's done, looking for some Canadian content. He's working on an All-Star Squadron (a team of World War II-era DC Comics heroes encompassing most of the heroes featured in actual DC wartime comics and some original characters) line-up that will hopefully one day include Roy Thomas' Flying Fox, one of the DC Comics Universe's few canuck superheroes.

However, in early issues of All-Star Squadron, the team did act as bodyguards of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill on his trip to meet with US President Roosevelt and Canadian Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King.

In issue #8, Churchill is attacked by a Nazi killer, The Black Assassin, in the Ottawa halls of Canadian Parliament. Victor's Black Assassin page is here.

Later, on a Canadian train, Churchill is again attacked, this time by Kung, a shape-shifting, Japanese assassin who originally appeared in Wonder Woman #237. Victor's Kung page is here.

So while these two nefarious characters are not Canadian, they were certainly operating on Canadian soil in the early days of the war. I wonder how long they would have lasted against Captain Wonder, Nelvana, Freelance and Brock Windsor?

Thanks to Micheal Bailey for keeping his abandoned but still informative All-Star Squadron site (The Perisphere) up after moving to other things (like ). Micheal's site was designed to give us the lowdown on the entire All-Star run but only made up to issue #8. Lucky for me that was the exact the exact issue I needed to check! The cover scan above was also borrowed from Micheal's page. I claim no copyright over the characters depicted here.

Beavers up!