Canadian Caped Crusaders
From Harper’s:
Nelvana was Canada’s first comic book superhero. Until the end of 1940, U.S. comics had claimed sovereignty over North America. Superheroes such as Superman (cocreated by Canadian Joe Shuster) and Batman colonized Canadian newspapers and comic books to such an extent that local artists had to move south for work—Halifax’s Hal Foster created Prince Valiant for William Randolph Hearst; Albert Chartier, an artist from Quebec, worked with New York’s Columbia Comics, home of Skyman and the Face; and, nearby, Ontario-born Charles Spain Verral wrote Street & Smith’s Bill Barnes Comics. The Canadian comic book industry was rescued only after the country attempted to address its trade deficit with the United States by passing the War Exchange Conservation Act (WECA), which restricted the import of “non-essential goods,” including comic books (though American strips continued to run in Canadian papers). No longer competing with juggernauts like Marvel and DC Comics, Canadian artists began creating their own caped crusaders.
At the outset of the war, Adrian Dingle found himself in his early thirties, unemployed, unable to enlist in the military because his hearing was damaged following a series of childhood ear infections. Two of his friends, brothers Andre and Rene Kulbach, also happened to be out of work, so the trio launched a bid to become war artists. “We got a large petition signed by a number of Toronto artists,” Dingle told a Canadian zine years later, “and the result was just the usual: ‘When we want lemon juice, we’ll ask for it.’ So in desperation we all got together and started Triumph Comics on about a $400 budget.”
In 1941, the three men founded Hillborough Studios and got to work on Nelvana. For funding, Dingle and the Kulbachs joined forces with an anonymous investor to produce Triumph Adventure Comics, its only title, in August of that year (Franz Johnston shared the copyright and cowrote the first issue with Dingle but did not participate further). Visually, the sixty-page volume stood out. Many comic book artists at the time were unskilled teenagers who were too young to go to war, but Dingle had worked for years as an illustrator. “Dingle’s artwork was distinguished by its elegant, bold design and by his mastery of chiaroscuro,” Bell wrote in his 1992 book on the history of Canadian superheroes, Guardians of the North.
Triumph Adventure Comics contained a handful of stories about spies (Spanner Preston), giants (Derek of Bras d’Or) and cowboys (Tang the Wonder Horse & Buddy)—among them was Nelvana of the Northern Lights. According to Trina Robbins, author of The Great Women Superheroes, Nelvana was preceded in the United States by only three female superheroes: the Woman in Red (March 1940), Miss Fury (April 1941), and USA, the Spirit of Old Glory (July 1941). She beat Wonder Woman by four months.
