Discussing the minutiae of comic book collecting.
Discussing the minutiae of comic book collecting.
Your friend and mine, Walter Durajlija, the “Big” in Big B Comics, has initiated a panel discussion of Canadian Comics that will take place at Niagara Falls Comic Con (June 8-9) at the Scotia bank Convention Centre.. The panel itself…
Interest in Canadian war-time comics, popularly known as the “Canadian Whites” is growing and with a scarce and limited supply of them available, their values continue to escalate. The other day I picked up one of my WECA books and…
There were four main publishers of Canadian comics in the WECA era. Anglo-American Publications out of Toronto and Vernon Miller’s Leaf Publications out of Vancouver started the whole thing off in March of 1941 with the issue of Robin…
The Funny Comics was the penultimate main title to come out of Commercial Signs/Bell Features in the early forties. First came Wow Comics in Sept. of 1941, then Dime Comics and Active Comics in Feb. of 1942, followed by Joke…
Ted(d) Steele With April Fool’s day just passing by, I want to bring attention to perhaps the quirkiest comic creator from the WECA period, Tedd Steele. Theodore Arthur Steele was born on April Fool’s Day, 1922 and his creative juices…
No, this is not going to be a piece about good girl art in the WECA books, nor about the small handful of female heroes (Nelvana, The Wing, Polka-Dot Pirate, Betty Burd etc.) that graced the pages of those…
The use of this term “WECA period” or “WECA books” is probably unfamiliar to a lot of you. I use these terms to more accurately describe the First Age of Canadian Comics—those books more commonly and affectionately referred to as…
A few weeks back, in my “Team Canada” post, I made the point that WECA era books did not produce a super hero team like the JSA at National. This week I want to make note of the fact that…
Imagine that time in Canada during the early forties with the spectre of war looming over the homefront. No internet, no computers, no reality shows (except for war newsreels) or TV to speak of and everything in film-noir black-and-white. The…
There’s that significant moment in silver screen history when Judy Garland, as Dorothy, steps out of her black-and-white Kansas world, through the door of her tornado-transported farm house, into the rich, full-colour, munchkin-filled Land of OZ. This really didn’t happen…
The last of the Big Four WECA publishing companies to come on the scene was Educational Projects out of Montreal. The first WECA books appeared on the West Coast and Toronto through Maple Leaf Publications and Anglo-American Publications respectively in…
One of the “precious” (not actually in the “Gollumnal” sense of the word, but almost) pleasure of being a comic collector for 50 yrs, is the magic of finding something you’d thought you’d never come across. In the last couple…
Brok Windsor was a relatively late comer to the WECA period. He debuted in Canada’s West Coast Publisher’s (Maple Leaf’ Publications) Better Comics Vol. 3 NO. 3 from April/May 1944, just over half-way through this Golden Age of Canadian Comics. Brok…
Here’s a WECA splash mystery. Dave Sim was kind enough to send me copies of WECA related material from issue 2 of Now and Then Times as well as digital copies of his early seventies fanzine called Comic Art News…
Looking back at Canada’s First Age of Comics, the WECA period (1941-6), we find that it never produced a team of superheroes like the JSA/JLA, The Avengers, The Mighty Crusaders, or Alpha Flight. Among the three “big” publishers we find…
Hockey is back!! In appreciation of this, I want to share a relevant WECA splash. It’s a good thing that comics can’t be prorogued or locked out, but, in a way, maybe that’s what happened to American comics when Canada’s…
As is well-known now, the War Exchange Conservation Act (WECA) enacted on Dec. 6, 1940 stopped all American comics from coming into Canada. Canadian entrepreneurs took advantage of this vacuum and produced the first Canadian comic age with the appearance…