Canada Day is here again, and what better topic for today's patriotic posting than Captain Canuck, Canada's favourite (if not only) superhero.

The first homegrown Canadian entries into the superhero market were Johnny Canuck and Nelvana of the Northern Lights, who made their debut in World War II during an American ban on comic exports.  Johnny was an adventure hero/pilot along the lines of the American Blackhawk Squadron comics, and, like Wonder Woman, Nelvana found her origins in the world of mythology, although in her case, in Inuit legends rather than Greek. (Just for the record, Nelvana's 1940 debut beat Wonder Woman to the punch by a full year.)

Following the demise of Johnny Canuck and Nelvana after the war, there was a long gap in the Canadian comics market*, a gap which lasted until 1975 when 24 year old artist/author Richard Comely released Issue One of Captain Canuck under the banner of Comely Comics.

Set 18 years in the future, when Canada has become one of the major world powers, Captain Canuck's story is really that of Canadian International Security Organization agent Tom Evans.  While on a camping trip with the Boy Scout troop that he leads, Evans is the victim of alien abduction.  When he and his Scouts return to civilization, Evans discovers that:

Suddenly I was twice as strong! I could lift twice as much and move twice as fast as I could before! It wasn’t long before the heads of C.I.S.O. were also aware of my new power and they had a plan on how to capitalize on it.

C.I.S.O. directors and specialists created a costume and a code name. They wanted to create an image – a symbol of C.I.S.O. authority and power – a show piece for Canada!

To be honest, the early issues of Captain Canuck suffer from average art and mediocre storytelling, but over time the Captain began to develop his own unique style and attracted a solid (if almost exclusively Canadian) fan base.  Sadly, financial issues led to an early demise for Captain Canuck, although over the years there have been two other incarnations of the Captain, along with various special editions, mini-series, collections and so on.

In spite of this relatively unsuccessful career, Captain Canuck seems to hold a special place in the Canadian mythos.  He continues to receive media attention, he appeared on a stamp in 1995, and the National Archives now have ownership of some of the original Captain Canuck artwork.

And I guess I'm part of that ongoing interest, although I come by it honestly - I bought three or four issues of Captain Canuck back in the 70s. In fact, I sent Mr. Comely a fan letter when I was about 17, and to my youthful astonishment I received a hand-written response within a week.  To my intense regret, I cannot for the life of me lay hands on that letter, although I've looked in all the logical places.  In my defense, I have done eight or nine relocations since then, and things do get lost over time, but let's be optimistic, maybe in the next box of miscellaneous memorabilia that I open...

Happy Canada Day, everyone!

- Sid

* Strictly speaking, not a completely empty gap, there were one or two one-off parody comics published, but Captain Canuck is arguably the first fully-fledged attempt to create a Canadian comic book hero after World War II.

"My name is Erik Lensherr. You killed my mother, prepare to die."

Professor Charles Xavier: Erik, you said yourself - we're the better men. This is the time to prove it. There are thousands of men on those ships, good, honest, innocent men. They're just following orders! 

Erik Lensherr: I've been at the mercy of men just following orders... never again! 

X-Men:  First Class

I've explained my doubts regarding prequels in a previous post, and to be honest, left to my own devices I probably would have skipped X-Men: First Class.  However, the reclusive Ms. Smith decided that she wanted to see the latest adventure of Charles Xavier's students on the big screen, and given the rarity of movie outings with Laurie in the last few years, I felt that it would be unreasonable to refuse to accompany her.

That being said, I was unexpectedly pleased by First Class, which turned out to be a far more interesting and dramatic piece than I had anticipated.

Ostensibly, First Class deals with the origin of the X-Men, and how Professor X and Magneto met and became friends before their eventual moral division.  (Not to mention the whole wheelchair question.)  However, it's immediately evident that First Class is really about Erik Lensherr, and Charles Xavier ends up with something very close to a supporting role.

Lensherr, as portrayed by Michael Fassbender, is a surprising anti-hero whose magnetic abilities are still developing.  Fassbender has a commanding on-screen presence and his Magneto is a forceful, dynamic character who is willing to sacrifice anything and everything in the name of vengeance.

However, I was intensely disappointed by the change in motivation behind that desire for revenge.  One of the more intelligent developments over the lifetime of the X-Men has been the move toward mutation as a metaphor in the discussion of prejudice and bigotry.  The question of mutation as a "curable affliction" is resonant with connections to being gay, and Storm provides an obvious link between the treatment of mutants and the treatment of people of colour. This concept has been part of the X-Men plotline for decades now, with the 1982 Marvel Graphic Novel God Loves, Man Kills being one of the best stand-alone explorations of the idea.

Placing Magneto's origin in the Holocaust provided historical depth to the metaphor, which deepened and extended the motivation behind his struggle against humanity far beyond his original role as a common criminal. Having Lensherr's mother killed by the evil mutant Sebastian Shaw - Kevin Bacon taking a villainous turn -  cheapens that metaphor:  as I've already discussed, comic book characters with their origins in parental trauma are a dime a dozen.

As with previous X-Men movies, the script stirs the traditional comic book timeline with a large spoon.  Cyclops, Iceman and the Beast were all approximately the same age in the original X-Men, whereas First Class introduces us to the young Hank McCoy, before his metamorphosis into the blue-furred middle-aged figure we meet in Last Stand.  One of his teammates in First Class is Havok - Alex Summers, who in the original comics was Cyclop's younger brother.*  Another team member is Sean Cassidy, the Banshee, originally an Irish mutant who had been in a relationship with Moira MacTaggert.  In the movie, MacTaggert is both at least a decade older than the Banshee and, mysteriously, transformed from a scientist into a CIA agent.

Questions of continuity aside, the appearance of the X-Men at the Cuban Missile Crisis creates an interesting precedent for future X-Men prequels.  Marvel Comics takes place in what, for want of a better expression, we will call the real world. Whereas Batman prowls the alleys of Gotham, Spider-Man swings through the streets of Manhattan, and although Superman and Captain America both originated during the 1940s, it's only the Captain who made his way to Europe to fight Hitler. 

Having resolved one historical crisis, where will the X-Men next appear?  Will we discover that Lee Harvey Oswald was a renegade mutant?   See Magneto failing to prevent Martin Luther King's death? Or, worse, causing it...

- Sid

* Normally I object to this sort of thing - for example, considering that Star Trek was set on a galactic stage, the cast ran into a lot of friends and relatives - but given the genetic nature of mutant powers, it makes perfect sense for siblings and children to be part of the story.

The Permanent Floating Riot Club.

Well, it seems that there are people who like riots. 

Larry Niven, Flash Crowd

One of the most difficult things for a science fiction author to do is to extrapolate all the possible end results of an innovation in technology.  As an example, a good science fiction writer in 1930 might have successfully anticipated the eventual mass acceptance of the motorcar, and probably seen the inevitable need for freeways and gas stations that would result. An extra-ordinary 30s SF author would have also projected traffic jams, parking tickets, gas wars, road rage, and six-dollar-an-hour parking meters.

Science fiction and fantasy author Larry Niven has always been very good at exactly that sort of if-this-goes-on extrapolation.  Niven's semi-organized Known Space future includes, among other things, the invention of the teleportation booth, and Niven beautifully explores the various effects that such an invention would have on our culture. This exploration includes the disturbing phenomenon of the "flash crowd", which in his stories is portrayed as something far too close to what Vancouver experienced last Wednesday after the Canucks lost Game 7 of the playoffs.

Niven's stories have the advantage of instantaneous travel - people are able to be on the scene of a disturbance literally within seconds, ergo the title Flash Crowd for his first story dealing with this problem.  In Flash Crowd, a roving wireless cameraman reports a disturbance, which instantly makes its way to network distribution, leading to a instantaneous influx of viewers who happen to be curious, angry, or just plain bored enough to jump into the centre of a riot.

What Niven doesn't anticipate in his flash crowd scenario is the Internet - in other words, social media.*  When you think about it, between cell phones, texting, Facebook, blogs, and YouTube, how hard would it be to assemble a group of, say, five hundred people in relatively short order?  We don't have the advantages and disadvantages of teleportation booths, but the added ease with which news of an event can be disseminated makes up for the lack of being able to get there in fractions of a second.  (And apparently this is exactly what happened after the trouble started here:  people invited their friends to head downtown and join in the fun.)

More interestingly, Niven also anticipates a more disturbing aspect of riots:  the fact that some people like them.  In The Last Days of the Permanent Floating Riot Club, a followup to the original 1983 story, Niven described a group of criminals who specialize in taking advantage of flash crowds and the opportunities offered therein for theft and looting.  Disturbingly, Vancouver seems to have played host twice now to the Canadian equivalent:  black-masked anarchists, last seen causing trouble at an Olympics protest parade last February**.

However, if Niven fails to anticipate the Internet, he also fails to anticipate the other side of human nature.  The Facebook-organized volunteers who spent Thursday morning cleaning up Granville Street never make an appearance in any of his flash crowd scenarios, but let's be fair, "The Permanent Floating Kindness Club" doesn't have the same impact as a title for a story.

- Sid

* As with the Spanish Inquisition, no one expected the Internet, although I'm willing to perjure myself on that after a little research.  Maybe Arthur C. Clarke - there's a bit in 2001 which is pretty close.

** I have to be fair here.  Reports vary as to whether the instigators of the post-playoff rioting were part of the same group that caused the problems at the Olympic protest.  I suspect that the great majority of the rioters last week were just drunken idiots - but I also suspect that they may have been joiners rather than initiators.