Get Re-Auroralized!!
Ivan celebrates Nelvana's crowd funding success, then discusses Canadian Whites and Overstreet.
Comic Book Daily
Discussing the minutiae of comic book collecting.
Comic Book Daily
Discussing the minutiae of comic book collecting.
Ivan Kocmarek
Grew up in Hamilton's North End. Comic collector for over 50 yrs. Recent interest in Canadian WECA era comics.
Read MoreGet Re-Auroralized!!
Hamilton’s Comic Past
Saturday will be the first comic-themed con held in Hamilton in many a year. I hope we can make it a success and then an annual event that can be expanded to the whole weekend. My small contribution will be moderating a panel on Hamilton’s connection with comics and...
Stamp of Approval
If a comic book concept with a fairly slender thread connecting it to Canada (Joe Shuster the illustrator behind the creation of the character was born in Canada) can merit this ceremony, why can't a 75th anniversary of the birth of our own genuine and rock solidly Canadian comic books merit at least an equal value. I know we had that issue in 1995 that contained stamps of Johnny Canuck and Nelvana but this is different.
Bell Reprints and Covers
The first happened during the WECA period itself when, in 1945, Bell Features decided to issue 6 compendiums of stories from earlier issues. These took features already published and brought them together in large (68 pg.) books that sold for 15 cents.
Home Ice
Let me then try to point to a few times in the WECA books that specifically locate the action on Canadian soil or at least, in some way, make it clear that the story is taking place in Canada or, finally, directly connect the story to Canada.
Casting Call
The brief seventies awakening to and appreciation of the Canadian war-time comic industry began with Michael Hirsh and Patrick Loubert’s November, 1971 publication of the compendium of Bell Features material they called The Great Canadian Comic Books (Peter Martin).
Fan Expo 2013 | Whites Panel Aftermath, with Audio
Our FanExpo panel on the Canadian Whites was held on the final afternoon just a couple of hours before the whole show closed down. We ended up getting just about 50 people in the audience… not bad for a relatively esoteric and arcane subject.
Fan Expo Whites Panel
FanExpo opens today and I have the good fortune of hosting a panel on Canadian war-time (WECA) comics. I urge all readers who are attending FanExpo on Sunday to attend this panel if they have the opportunity because we expect…
Avrom Yanovsky
Avrom Yanovsky was born in Krivoy Rog, in the southern Ukraine in 1911 and two years later his family emigrated to Winnipeg. His parents were political activists and were involved in the Winnipeg general strike of 1919. During the twenties…
Oscar Schlienger
Oscar Schlienger was born in Basel, Switzerland in 1905 and he received some training at the Cole des Beaux-Arts in Geneva in portrait painting. He emigrated to Canada and settled in Montreal in the summer of 1930 and worked there…
Sid Barron
Sid Arnold Barron was born in Toronto on June 13, 1917 and from his obituary written by Tom Hawthorn for the Globe and Mail in 2006 (he died on April 29 in Victoria) we learn that he was an…
Mel Crawford
Mel Crawford was born in Toronto in 1925. His parents divorced when he was four and he went with his mother and her parents to Drumheller, Alberta for a few years and then they all moved onto Oklahoma to live…
Jack “Crash Carson” Tremblay
I’d like to take a small respite from this small blog for a few weeks to work on a couple of other things. I plan to post the short columns I did for Leif Peng and his Daily Inspiration blog…
Top 20?
I was talking with Walter Durajlija the other day about doing an entry on the WECA keys and he suggested a good task might be to start to create a list of the top twenty WECA (1941-46) books much…
Winner! Gagnon!
One aspect of the WECA comics (1941-46) that truly made them Canadian was the great effort they went to in order to engage their readers. One of these central ways was the almost monthly implementation of contests right from the…
The Big Book
In the last couple of days I’ve been thinking about what the world of WECA comics (Canadian Whites) really needs and, besides the searchable index/data base and a price guide, what I think that this area really needs is a…
Texting Murray Karn
On Saturday, August 25, among many other winners, three Canadian comics creators will be inducted into the Hall of Fame category: Katherine Collins (Arn Saba) from more recent decades and Vernon Miller and Murray Karn from earliest days of Canadian…
Canadian Comic Panel
Just wanted to do a quick report on the Canadian Comics panel that we held at Niagara Con this past Saturday (June 8). The panel was comprised of Hope Nicholson (producer for the upcoming “Lost Heroes” documentary which will air…
How about a date?
By the end of 1942 all 7 main Bell Features titles were in place. These included Action Comics, Commando Comics, Dime Comics, The Funny Comics, Joke Comics, Triumph Comics, and Wow Comics. All but a handful had no date of…
Art for Art’s Sake
The quality of the artwork in the Canadian WECA books has often received unwarranted malignment for its primitive, almost amateur quality. Though it’s true that this was sometimes the case for the fledgling comic book industry of the early forties,…