Dingle Bell Rock - Merry Christmas, Nelvana Creator John Adrian Darley Dingle! (68 years late)

Merry Christmas, Mr. Dingle.

The Toronto Star's online archive are a treasure trove of nuggets from the past -- if you're willing to spend hour after hour slogging through their labour intensive and slooooow search engine. But for every dozen wrong turns, you also find things both surprising and inspiring.

1941 was a banner year for Adrian Dingle, one of the leading lights of the Golden Age of Canadian comics as the founder of Hillborough Studios, the collective behind Triumph-Adventure Comics and birthplace of Nelvana of the Northern and the classiest comics of the Canadian Golden Age.

It was a different time for painters in the late 1930's. One could still make a living with portrait commissions and gallery showings. Young Dingle was very much a part of his local art scene. One can find numerous mentions of his portraits for various school officials and appearances at local art shows advertised in the Star as the forties approached.

Most people with any knowledge of Canadian Comics are aware that in the early forties, restrictions were placed on the import of US paper products like magazines, books and comics due to foreign exchange issues. Several publishers rushed to fill the void, with Maple Leaf Publications' Better Comics and Anglo American Comics' Robin Hood And Company virtually tying as the first to hit the newsstands.

Ever mindful of an opportunity to make money from their artistic chops, Dingle and several Toronto-area, artist friends formed Hillborough Studios and began to create their own comics. The Hillborough comics are some of the most intrinsically Canadian comics of the era and it's hardly surprising. In the early twentieth century Canada began to explore a more nationalistic approach to painting in an effort to define the country and provide its art scene with an independent identity. The most famous examples of this are painters like Emily Carr and the Group of Seven. The success of this approach encouraged the Group of Seven to expand in the thirties, renaming themselves The Canadian Group of Painters to reflect their enlarged roster of artists.

The fact that the public so embraced the Group of Seven as a national institution gave rise to the Eastern Group of Painters, founded in Montreal, Quebec in 1938. This group felt the Group's limited focus was too limiting and fought to restore more variety of subject, substance and geography to Canadian Art. Thus, by resisting a national approach to art, the EGoP, actually helped bring Canadian to a new, mature level of variety.

All this could not have been lost on the young artists who joined Dingle in his desire to create their own comic book. Since they were Canadian artists they were going to create decidedly Canadian comics. The pages were peopled with canuck characters through and through: Dingle's own Nelvana of the Northern Lights (easily the most famous character to emerge from the period along with Johnny Canuck) and Clue Catchers, co-written with his fiancee and later bride, Pat), H.B. Ohrt and Leon James' Spannner Preston", Canadian pilot and squadron leader, Rene Kulbach's Tang and Out of the Woods, a sweeping western epic and the misadventures of a hapless Canadian bear in the deep woods, A. L Alexander and Glen Guest's Derek of Bras d'Or, based on the life of Angus MacAskill, the Cape Breton giant and Jon Darian's amusing one-pager the Mums, featuring the fueding couple Maxie and Minny Mum.

Dingle's Nelvana of the Northern Lights and her brother,
Tanero. She's a native Goddess and he's... oddly blonde.
Perhaps he's an albino Inuit?

The first issue of Triumph-Adventure Comics is dated August, 1941. Since magazines were cover dated ahead to allow for more newsstand time, it is likely Dingle and crew had been working on the book since early 1941 and it was released in July. But in the mean, time, the young artists still had rent to paid and profile to keep up.

According to this Star article, (amusingly placed next to an announcement that Adolph Hitler would the target of choice at a coming archery tournament) Dingle and fellow Hillborogh artist, Rene Kulbach (creator of the western saga, Tang) still found time to contribute to the war effort. The Peel Kennel Club hosted a garden party in which artists Dingle, Kulbach and artist Andre Lapine would sketch your pet for free in exchange for a contribution to the Red Cross Bomb Victim Fund.

The Estonian-Canadian Kulbach, was already an acknowledged "expert" on the fine art of rendering animals and Tang still resonates today due to his fine draughtsmanship. Dingle is referred to as "a portrait painter of note" known for his "fine oils of familiar scenes along the Lakeshore" while Lapine was considered an "A-1 animal painter". The article further enhances the value of the experience by declaring, "The work of these artists is well known and is prized by those who possess sketches." Seeing Dingle and Kulbach's work in Triumph-Adventure Comics, it is apparent that the Star article was a masterpiece of understatement.

The first two pages of Rene Kulbach and Frank Brookwood's Tang from

Triumph-Adventure Comics #1. I wonder if Brookwood is a pen name for Rene,
who took on sole credit for Tang soon after its debut, save for his brother, Andre?

That Triumph-Adventure Comics hit the stands in August is impressive. What is more impressive is the fact that for the next six issues, Dingle and his compatriots kept up a remarkably high level of quality throughout the run. For the rest of the year , Dingle was putting out a top quality comic and prepping a second title for the Hillborough line.

Top-Flight Comics, billed as a "new Canadian magazine of illustrated stories". For the new book, Dingle secured the aid of more artist friends: Hugh Caulfield, Clayton Dexter, Dingle himself and "well-known Canadian artist" Hunter Barker.

Top Flight Comics was well-named indeed, with its
top line-up of young, Canadian artists.

Caulfied contributed the strip Happy Holden, featuring a pilot who gets lost in a prehistoric world beneath the Arctic with his passengers, a scientist and his lovely (naturally) daughter. The strip insists the tale was written by Jack London but I have not found anything in London's works that matches up. I sent copies of the tale to a Jack London expert (whose actual response, sadly seems lost in alaptop crash earlier this year) who did not think the tale corresponded to anything London wrote either. Perhaps, "inspired by" would have been a more apt description. Or perhaps Caulfield truly did know Jack and persuaded him to contribute a tale. At this point, I am more inclined to believe the former and yet, the credit is there, bold as you please.

Hugh Caulfield's Happy Holden splash page fromTop Flight Comics #1. Is the Jack London story credit
a caseof wishful thinking or a tremendous coup
for Hillborough Studios?

Clayton Dexter contributed an extremely, well-drawn tale of The Rapier, the swashbuckling adversary of pirates along the Spanish Main, who are led by the dark-hearted Captain Sinister. Barker, apprently a keener, drew two strips for the book, The Searunners, a tale of two boys adventures on the high seas, and Trigger Dunston, a two-fisted mountie who always gets his... well, you know the drill. For his part, Dingle turned to the classics for inspiration and created The Sword of Destiny, about a young who is transformed into a hero by the sword Excalibur and transported to wherever evil needs a thumping.

Dingle's Sword of Destiny from Top Flight Comics #1.

Like I said, 1941 was a good year for Dingle. And he capped it off sixty-eight years ago today, December 13, by marrying Patrica Neville Symmes in St. James cathedral with a reception at Maloney's Art Gallery. The wedding was described in a lengthy Toronto Star article dated the same day. Descriptions of the gowns and wedding party take up a good paragraphs, making the ceremony as lush as the wedding of Prince Charles and Diana and give one a sense of actually having been there. The gown, worn by Patricia's mother on her wedding day, is sumptuously described:

"...the bride wore a gown of heavy ivory duchess satin. the draped bodice of chiffon had a low V-neckline; the long ruffled sleeves were designed with a banding of satin from the shoulder to the wrist. The full skirt, finished with a wide ruching of double box pleating fell into a train over the long court train, lined with gold and silver metallic fell and a panel of heirloom lace belonging to the bride's grandmother. Her veil of Brussel's lace, belonging to the groom's mother, was arranged from a Russian coronet or orange blossoms.

Her only ornament was her mother's gift, a tiny rose diamond cross that had been given to her great grandmother on her wedding day. From her mother's prayer book, which she carried, fell gold streamers, knotted with tiny cream rose buds."

But you don't have to imagine it. You can see it this admittedly poor quality photo published in the Star the following Monday, Dec. 15th!


Have you ever seen such a happy, dapper groom outside of a Fred Astaire movie? Dingle's matrimonial style is second only to that of his disguised detective character, the Penguin! (No relation, of course.)

The following year would see Dingle abandon Top Flight and continue Triumph Comics under Cyril Bell's Bell Features imprint. I suspect the decision stemmed from the difficulty of juggling the publishing and sales of two comics with drawing the books, coupled with the likelihood that Dingle may have lost artists to the war effort and perhaps, simply appreciated the security of being Bell's art director.

But that in no way diminishes the tremendous accomplishments of 1941. What a year!

And thus, to mark the holidays and the anniversary of the Dingle's wedding, we wish Nelvana's creator and one of the torchbearer's of Canada's golden age of Canadian Whites a very happy holidays.

Merry Christmas, Mr. Dingle.

Beavers Up!

Comic Canucks - Derek of Bras d'Or

They say they grow them big in Texas, but no one grew them bigger than Angus MacAskill, the true life giant of Cape Breton who served as the inspiration for Triumph Comics' Derek of Bras d'Or. The legendary feats and gentle demeanor of MacAskill served as a perfect template for writer Glen Guest and illustrator A.L. Alexander's comic book hero.

And this is one case where the comics seem incapable of exaggerating their character's feats of strength!

Triumph Adventure Comics #4,
pub. Hillborough Studios, Nov. 1941.

First, a little background…

The Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online assures me that Angus MacAskill was born in 1825 on Harris in the Hebrides, Scotland (though the Angus MacAskill Museum page at www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk's page on the MacAskill museum insists he was born "at the north end of the island of Berneray, in the Sound of Harris"). Angus was the fourth child of Norman McAskill and Christina Campbell, whose brood would eventually number either ten or thirteen, depending on the source. Somewhere's about 1831 the whole family immigrated to Cape Breton and settled on a farm on the south side of St Ann's Harbour. The district was dubbed "Englishtown" because the current inhabitants "had not the Gaelic".

As a baby, Angus was so small he was not expected to survive but he would more than confound that prediction. Though a normal-sized child, Angus soon sprouted. By 14 he was large enough to have earned the nickname Gille Mor (Gaelic for Big Boy) and by his twenties was so tall his father lifted the roof of the family home and raised the ceilings of the kitchen and living room. Kind of a seventeenth century Extreme Makeover: Home Edition without the helpful sponsors.

MacAskill and Major Tom Thumb,
in a publicity photo contrasting
the two human marvels.

By the age of 22 Angus had reached a full-grown height of 7 ft 9 inches, weighed between 425 to over 500 lbs., depending on your source and time period cited, and the palm of his hand was about a foot long. MacAskill’s gentle nature was such a contrast to expectations of one so large, that he “…endeared him to all who had the pleasure of his acquaintance", according to his obituary in The Acadian Recorder obituary of Aug. 16, 1863, by way of Wikipedia.

As with any tales passed on partly through word of mouth, the specifics vary, but the basics stay pretty consistent. One thing all accounts agree on is that Angus was unique in that that he was perfectly proportioned despite his size, with none of the usual growth abnormalities associated with such stature. TheHumanMarvels.com, a website devoted to amazing examples of the human race, explains:

In 1981 the Guinness Book of World Records recognized MacAskill as the largest true giant to have ever lived, the strongest man who ever lived and the man with the largest chest measurements of any non-obese man.

The distinction of his status as a ‘true’ giant hinges on the fact the Angus was purported to be free of any growth abnormalities. His stature was proportional in every way and his immense size and strength was due only to his natural genetic gifts.

MacAskill worked on his family's farm and as a fisherman to make his way. In a time when strength was respected above most else, the Gille Mor earned the respect of all and came to be known far and wide as the Cape Breton Giant or simply, Giant MacAskill. Though MacAskill’s immediate family were of normal dimensions, this article by Abagael MacAskill, one of MacAskill’s descendants reveals there was a precedent for Angus’ massive size.

During my travels I learned that Angus is not the only giant in the family line. His grandfather was called Neil Mor (Big Neil) and matched Angus in size. Written records are sketchy back that far so this is not "officially" documented- just passed down through the generations.

Still more fascinating is the history prior to this. The MacAskills were not a clan, but rather a sept of the McLeod clan. It is written that the McLeods considered the MacAskills the most favored servants because the whole tribe was known for their unusual size and strength back to their Viking roots!

…Almost two centuries have past since the birth of Angus and there have been no more giants. I can confirm from the family reunions that the present MacAskills are all of average stature.

MacAskill’s feats grew in renown long before crop failures and an economic downtown in 1847 and 1848 forced him to tour as a curiosity to earn money. Such demonstrations stemmed mainly from doing his chores as only he could accomplish them. This living, breathing “tall tale” could tip a half-ton boat to empty bilge water (a task that normally took six men) and set a 40-foot mast into a schooner “as easily as a farmer set a fence post in a hole”.

He could could jog down the street with 300 lb barrels of pork under each arm or hold 50kg kegs by two fingers. People also claimed to have seen MacAskill lift a full-grown horse over a four-foot fence and once silenced taunting sailors by carrying a ship’s anchor (weighing in excess of 2700 pounds) down a wharf.

In the late thirties and early forties, young painter Adrian Dingle and his artist friends likely picked up many such tales and local colour as they traveled around to paint. The adventures of folk heroes like Giant MacAskill were oft repeated in magazines, newspapers, books and through word of mouth. So at the dawn of 1941, when Dingle conscripted those same friends into forming Hillborough Studio and launched the proudly canuck Triumph Adventure Comics, it made perfect sense to use some of that folklore to create a uniquely Canadian features.

Dingle famously combined elements of Inuit legends with a dose of science fiction to create Nelvana, the most beloved Canadian comic book character that no one really knows much about. For their contribution to Triumph, writer Glen Guest and artist A.L. Alexander recast MacAskill’s adventures into a modern setting and Cape Breton Island’s handsome young Derek MacGregor of Bras d’Or was born.

Sketches of Angus MacAskill and his comic book
progeny, Derek MacGregor of Bras d'Or.

I’m not sure when Derek debuted in Triumph Adventure Comics, I haven’t seen issues 2 or 7 (the last of the Hillborough issues before selling the title, minus the Adventure part, to Bell Features). I can confirm he appears in issues three to five, with a promise of more tales to come. Truthfully, issue 3 sure reads like his first outing.

Other than some modern trappings, Guest and Alexander made little effort to differentiate their character from the real Giant MacAskill in Triumph Comics 3, quickly involving him in an incident taken from real life legend. According to a variety of sources, an American fishing vessel came to St. Anne’s to buy bait, and her Captain challenged the well-known MacAskill to a wrestling match. The Cape Breton giant refused and when the 300 hundred pound visitor verbally lambasted him, MacAskill lost his temper and tossed the brute over a woodpile ten feet high and twelve feet wide.

In the Derek of Bras d’Or yarn in Triumph 3, the unfortunate braggart is Rex O’Donnell, a champion wrestler from the big city. Guest and Alexander combined the infamous woodpile toss with another famous MacAskill tale; that of intimidating another tormentor by squeezing his hand until his fingers bed! As the city slicker runs off, never to be seen again, we know within the first three pages that Derek is one tough cookie!

In short order, Derek competes at the highland games, winning every event including the caber toss, hammer throw, hundred-yard dash and the broad jump. But a prize bull, likely enraged by the bagpipe music, breaks free, scattering the crowd and endangering a wee “Scotch Lassie” competing in the sword dance. Derek staggers the beast with one punch and saves the day.



Hillborough Studio was comprised of very accomplished artists with styles all their own and Alexander was no exception. His work on Derek resembles that of a woodcut, lending an element of verisimilitude to the folkloric storytelling. Despite his odd figure work at times, Alexander's work on Derek is full of detail and elegant etching, lending a real senses of place to its Atlantic Coast setting. It is quite similar in approach to American artist Harry G. Peter’s unique sense of design on Wonder Woman and Heroic Comic’s Man O’Metal feature, although it's unlikely he'd have seen Peter's work at so early a date. Their figures, animals, and action sequences are handled in comparable fashions.

An example of H. G. Peters' work on

Heroic Comics' Man O'Metal...

...And illustrator A. L. Alexander's similar
approach to Derek of Bras d'Or.

That style is well-displayed in Triumph Adventure Comics 4 as Derek joins his friend Captain Angus Trites and his son John on board the Silverqueen for a deep seas expedition to harpoon swordfish. In a rare case of an animal giving as good as it gets in a contest with Derek, the impaled swordfish returns the favour to Derek’s dory, leaving them clinging to the side as the pierced hull fills with water.

On the way back to the harbour, the Silverqueen spots a modern menace in the form of an enemy U-Boat near Lundy’s Head (presumably near Lundy, Nova Scotia, in Guysborough County). Captain Trites signals a patrolling Canadian Corvette while Derek proves he’s crack shot as well as a pugilist by shooting out the U-boat’s periscope with the Captain’s rifle. The corvette’s depth charges force the blinded U-boat to surface. Derek helps take the survivors prisoner and wishes he weren’t too young to join the war effort directly.


I'm unfair to single this one, unusually sensual, page of Derek art by A.L Alexander out, but it does share something else with H.G. Peters Wonder Woman work; the tendency to send mixed gender and sexual messages with awkwardly kinky posing and situations!

Of course, some messages aren't so mixed...



But I digress...

In Triumph Adventure Comics 5, Derek’s storyline keels more toward typical comic stories of the day, while still maintaining a sense of the small, coastal town in which Derek lives. Derek stumbles upon an attempt the rob local bank, largely it seems, through his natural East Coast suspicion of outsiders, or anyone “from away”. Derek tackles the crooks as they flee the scene. Snake Eyes, the gang’s luger-wielding leader, is happy to shoot Slick-Joe, his safe cracker, to get at Derek but the giant is too much for them. He holds two of the gang members while the others disappear into the night with their loot. Still suspicious, Derek sees the remaining thugs pull away from the wharf with money meant to sponsor a dope deal.

The final panel asks, “Will Derek intercept this gangster mob?”

Sadly, I have no idea.

Anybody wanna send me the covers and contents of Triumph 2 and 7 so we can all find out? Pretty please?

Learn more about Angus MacAskill at his Wikipedia entry here, and at www.TheHumanMarvels.com.

More info on the Angus Macaskill Museums can be found here for the one on the Isle of Sky and here and here for the one in Englishtown, Nova Scotia.

A pic of MacAskill's grave in Nova Scotia can be found on Flickr, here.

Beavers Up!

My Nefarious Career - How Comics Made a Master Criminal of Me

The second book I ever stole introduced me to the world of Canadian comics and a man I would come to treasure as a dear friend, Leo Bachle, aka Les Barker, aka Johnny Canuck.

This passion I have for Canadian Comics is his fault.

But it all started with a fervor for comics in general. Like many young comic fans I spent much of my childhood perusing the spinner racks at the local, five and dime store in London, Ontario, Canada, looking for the perfect combination of comics and junk food to spend my hard-earned allowance on. I rode on an ever-expanding tour of the stores within bicycling distance to find the next issue of any story I was particularly interested in.

When I came upon a treasured issue in a new store, it was added to my route. I made a point to return there regularly, assuming more spectacular comics would be unearthed over time. The Mac's Milk Variety store in which I found the very first issue of Captain Canuck was forevermore a target on my bi-weekly mad dash. I returned to London's University Hospital, which was a two bus ride across town, for months after the physio on my injured knee was over because I discovered the X-Men's Dark Phoenix saga in their gift shop and I desperately needed to know what was going to happen.

Eventually I found Multi-Mag on Bloor Street, a downtown magazine shop two blocks from the Art Gallery of Southern Ontario that had an extensive (and more importantly, a consistent) comic array. This was during the first burst of indie creativity in the early eighties. Here I found and collected Pacific Comics; Dave Steven's Rocketeer, Ditko's Missing Man and Jack Kirby's Captain Victory. Blocks away down Richmond Street stood pro-marijuana activist Mark Emery's City Lights bookshop, a London landmark where I discovered the joys of his extensive back issue collections. It was here I discovered Kirby's Fourth World.


"I can't see the difference."

"Can you see the difference?"

Finally, two honest to gosh comic shops opened across town and though bicycling to them was an exhilarating, lengthy, and sometimes harrowing experience, it was well worth the bi-weekly exodus to bring home those comics and know the next issues would not require any more detective work.

But before all that, this insatiable passion for my four-colour, saddle-stitched drug of choice was served mostly by my local variety store and second hand comics passed on to me by friends and family or found at flee markets and yard sales. In other words, comics were hard to come by and information about comics even more so. Despite growing up in the era of the fanzine and the rising comics fan, none of that information reached my young door.

Then, when I was five or six we moved closer to the Westmount Mall and my fledgling criminal career began in earnest.



The Westmount Mall in London, Ontario is now a multi-floored glass aquarium of shops and boutiques. But in the seventies it was a classic, one story neighbourhood mall. The main hallway, tiled in deep amber ceramic hues, was kept shadowed in lower light in the hopes that the brightly lit shops on either side would beckon you toward them like a moth to the retail flame. Anchored at either end by an Eaton's department store and a Dominion grocery, it served all the neighbourhood's needs.

The Coles bookstore was set up in an oddly angled corner and the design of the store took advantage of the configuration. You could wander through staggered shelves and displays and step up and down the multi-leveled platforms, seeking your books in small nooks where you could really spend some time perusing a book before purchasing. The store eschewed long aisles in favour of pockets of books; little corners and islands of browsability. This layout allowed you to slow down and take your time, absorbing the stock and unearthing hidden treasures.

Coles was a magical place for me, as were libraries. And my mother always knew she could park me there for a while as she shopped and I wouldn't go anywhere, lost as I was in this amazing world of the printed page.

Though I browsed all over, I tended to stop in the hobby section, fascinated by the world of miniatures. I always longed to work with dollhouse style sets in the hopes of making animated films with them, despite having no idea quite how to go about doing that and no access to a camera of film technology of any kind. Later, as a spate of science fiction films sparked an interest in home filmmaking, I devoured the books and magazines on home-made special effects.

I spent so much time reading and re-reading books in Coles, completely unmolested by the patient staff, (or perhaps I was simply under their radar) it came to feel like a second home. The books I liked never seemed to move off the shelves so even the ones I couldn't buy were always there for me. And then a completely unique book appeared on the shelves.

This book so excited me I was vibrating inside and out. It haunted my dreams. I returned time and time again to flip through its pages. I was aware that comics had been around a long time due to the reprints DC Comics had begun printing in the back of their books. They were often my favourite things in the books. This book was filled with reprints, but they were nothing like the ones I had seen. This book held a treasure trove of history; its cornucopia of undiscovered heroes and lush art was like a siren call to me. Flipping through I was opening a door to whole new, expanded world. In contrast to the garish colours of DC reprints, these comics were all in black and white. None of the artists were familiar to me and yet their styles were all quite distinctive. It was a time of Nationalistic fervour as Canada was still giddy over the passing of it’s centennial and America was approaching its bicentennial. Therefore I was always subtly aware that DC’s reprints were jingoistic and American. These reprints were jingoistic and Canadian.

Whoa, what? CANADIAN????!!

It was The Great Canadian Comic Books by Michael Hirsh and Patrick Loubert, designed by Clive Smith. The trio would go on to found Canada's most successful animation studio and, for a time, were my employers. After buying up the plates and artwork from much Bell Features later run of comics they had created a documentary film and interviewed several of the stalwarts of the era. They had also created a short radio drama based on Speed Savage and created a travelling Art Show with the assistance of the National Gallery of Canada. This was the first book to show Canadians that we had our own golden age of Canadian comics to be proud of. I had even seen their documentary in class once, totally mesmerized by these superheroes and comics I had never heard of.

Patriotic pride swelled within my heart every time I visited my precious book. I studied the art within its pages, trying to commit every brush stroke to memory. I would lovingly put it back on the shelf, hoping no one else would find it and reiterate a vow each time I was forced to leave it behind. "Never fear book. One day you and will be together."

My mind whirled feverishly. It would take too long to save for this book. I spent weeks returning to Coles to peruse those black and white pages, always worried that this time I would to find them sold out. But there it was, every time. I came to realize my allowance would take months to add up to enough to buy this book. I was tempting fate to leave this treasure alone. Soon, someone would snap it up and it would be gone from my life forever.
But there was way. I knew it was possible to steal the book. The first book I ever stole had been a crime of passion and opportunity. I had snuck it out under my coat from this very Coles almost without realizing I was doing it. So I knew it could easily be done again. But to actually plan a robbery? What kind of person did that make me, even at eight?

A desperate one.

I was lost to my baser urges. I emptied my gym bag (Phew! Those gyms clothes needed laundering anyway) and headed to the mall, a young rebel determined to free that book from its lonely, retail existence. I found my lovely book and tipped it into the open bag, hiding my actions with my back. ZZZZZIIP! The bag closed, I browsed a little longer and causally walked out. I had done it. My horror at my criminal act was outweighed by the depths of my need. Now the successful, master criminal could be properly sick with guilt outside.

In my own defence, I only ever tried to steal one other thing in my life. And was caught and banned from the mall for a year! A torturous time for me in which I felt like everyone I passed knew me for the marked man I was. Afterwards, I tended to shop at Coles very loyally, eager to fork over cash for the books I admired. I t was my way of making up for my misspent youth. But right then, racing home with this nationalistic treasure in my bag, I felt only cursory guilt. This book was simply too special to me. My ethics were simply drowned out by the love and fascination I felt as I poured over each page.

I was secure in the knowledge that I, and only I, would ever care for this book the way it deserved.

At home, I devoured the book, pored over it day after day and gave it a place of honour on my shelf... after several months hidden under my bed until I felt confident my mother would consider it a piece of literature that had always been a part my books. The book gave a general history of Bell Features, one of several comic book companies that rose briefly in the forties to fill a void on Canadian newsstands. It also gave a cursory overview of the many characters that filled the books. Instead of full stories, Hirsh and Loubert published tantalizing snippets as a way of showcasing as much variety in artwork and story as possible.

Three artists stood to my young mind. The elegant brush strokes and sophisticated work of Bell Features art director, Adrian Dingle, the creator of Nelvana of the Northern Lights. The cartoony yet manly art of Fred Kelly (creator of the original Mr. Monster). And finally, the unmistakable work of Leo Bachle, creator of Johnny Canuck and host of other characters.

Leo understood the heroic ideal of action comics better than any of his contemporaries at bell. Every pose was heroic. You’d rarely go more than a page without Johnny, flying, running, leaping or socking some Nazi in the jaw. Leo, a handsome teen, designed Johnny, and indeed, most of his heroes, to look like his own chiselled features. He was close to the age of his readership and knew what they wanted was to picture themselves as these heroes. And Leo always gave the readers what they wanted. Heck, in Johnny’s first appearance he was already a confirmed thorn in the side of Adolph Hitler himself.

I didn't know at the time I would go on to become friends with Leo, who eventually changed his name to Les Barker and became a much-sought after comedian and performer. In meeting Les in person and growing to know him and his family I discovered that our connection ran much deeper than mere comics. We shared a sense of humour, a sense of pride and a desire to do things better than anyone else. I miss Les every day. And any step forward I take in my attempts to bring knowledge of Canadian comics to a modern audience, I dedicate to him.

This much delayed journey (Hey, life happens. Right?) has also helped me rediscover a love for comics in general. So this Blog will likely cover a lot of what’s out there now in addition to our jaunts into the Canadian past.

Thanks old friend, for helping me rediscover my childhood passion.

The first book I ever stole?

The tale is almost identical, though lacking in maple-drenched, nationalist fervour. It was the Great Comic Book Heroes by Jules Feiffer.

Beavers up!