The United States Wages War on Canada – in the Pages of Comic Books
By Dan BrownCanada and the United States have gone to war only once. Starting in 1812, before Canada was even Canada. But in the realm of pop culture, there have been any number of battles between the True North and its superpower neighbour. There’s Michael Moore’s only fiction film, the comedy Canadian Bacon.There are the pulpy Richard Rohmer novels Ultimatum and Exxoneration from the 1970s. And there are graphic novels such as Little Bird. The focus of this column is on another comic book, We Stand on Guard. In these tense political times, you might want to check it out. Published in trade-paperback form in 2017, We Stand on Guard was a six-issue Image Comics series picturing the armed resistance to a U.S. takeover of our home and native land. It’s packed with all kinds of references only diehard Canucks will get – for example, the action starts in the future in the year 2112. What a rush. And what name do the resistance guerillas give their small band of freedom fighters? Why, the Two-Four of course. Written by veteran hand Brian K. Vaughan, Steve Kroce supplied the art and Matt Hollingsworth the colours. The most dominant colour in the book is white, as much of the action takes place in Canada’s north at an abandoned mine the rebels have turned into their hidden base of operations. The official reason for the American military venturing north is to avenge a surprise attack on Washington, D.C. The real reason? America, dried out from climate change, needs new sources of water to refresh the parched dust bowl the American heartland has become. I love the look of Kroce’s near-future Canada. One of the reasons the graphic novel packs a real punch is the mechanical-versus-organic theme running through the book: Massive hovering metallic war machines face off against the plucky Canadians, who even have a trained coywolf on their side. The invading soldiers also have an N-word they use to refer to people here: Nucks, the shortened form of “Canuck.” There are no superpowered beings coming to Canada’s rescue in We Stand on Guard, it’s ordinary folks who must answer the call. But there are Superman references, which call attention to the fact this is a comic book – the Americans would never declare war on our country in the real world, would they?I hate to say it, but on Sunday, American President Donald Trump confirmed in an interview with Fox News before the Super Bowl that he is serious about his intention to make Canada the 51st state. I don’t even like trade wars, let alone real ones. The problem is, these conflicts often lead to unintended consequences that none of us can anticipate. When pre-Confederation Canada squared off against the U.S. during the War of 1812, the end result was a White House in flames. No one saw that coming. So I hope the friction between our two nations can be worked out soon – and without any violence. Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 32 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly graphic-novel group.
Dav Pilkey Proves My Theory About Childhood Crimes
By Dan Brown I have a theory. It goes like this: All the things we got punished for as kids, are the same things that make us successful as adults. Dav Pilkey is certainly proof of that. (It’s pronounced “Dave.”) Who’s he? He’s the guy who failed at childhood but is an astonishing success as a grownup. And the things that got him in trouble when he was younger are the same attributes behind his outrageous triumphs now that he’s older. Pilkey is in the news this week because a movie he inspired, Dog Man, is the top-earning film in theatres right now. Pilkey drew and wrote the comic series upon which the animated Dog Man motion picture is based. It features a dog-headed police officer and was popular enough to seize the No. 1 spot at the weekend box office. Pilkey has also created many other comics series, including the Captain Underpants books, which you may have heard of. But the adults in his life weren’t always encouraging. In fact, his fantastic creativity is the reason why as a young learner, Pilkey’s desk was placed outside the classroom – in the school corridor away from other students. “When Dav Pilkey was a kid, he was diagnosed with ADHD and dyslexia,” the author’s note in one of his books explains, “Dav was so disruptive in class that his teachers made him sit out in the hallway every day.” However, he was not deterred: “Luckily, Dav loved to draw and make up stories. He spent his time in the hallway creating his own original comic books – the very first adventures of Dog Man and Captain Underpants.” At least one of his teachers tried to put a stop to this. “In the second grade, Dav’s teacher ripped up his comics and told him he couldn’t spend the rest of his life making silly books. Fortunately, Dav was not a very good listener.”And thus a comic empire was born. Pilkey’s other characters include Big Dog and Little Dog, Dragon, Cat Kid and Super Diaper Baby. I don’t know about you, but the unnamed Grade 2 teacher from Pilkey’s past calls to my mind these Pink Floyd lyrics: “When we grew up and went to schoolThere were certain teachers whoWould hurt the children in any way they couldBy pouring their derision upon anything we didExposing every weakness, however carefully hidden by the kid” I know there are many supportive adults out there, but the ones at Pilkey’s school aimed to crush his spirit; all they actually accomplished was to guarantee he would become one of pop culture’s best-known and most successful creators. Almost every other author working today would love to have his track record. Nor does my theory apply just to the creator of Dog Man. Not to make this about myself, but I feel like I was treated the same way by a few of my teachers – even if my desk never got permanently moved out to the hall. When report card time came around, mine were filled with comments from teachers that went something like this:“Daniel spends his time in class socializing and talking too much with the other children.”“Daniel would rather read his comic books than the class-assigned readings.”“Daniel doesn’t care enough about his school work and prefers to draw superheroes.” You can probably guess where I’m going with this. Eventually, I graduated from elementary and high school. Then, years later, my job path took me into journalism, a career in which I’m required to strike up conversations with the people around me all the time. For decades, I’ve made my living talking to strangers. Turns out all that socializing was good practice. As a kid, I read Marvel comics like Fantastic Four and the Uncanny X-Men. Now I write about the entertainment industry and report on the latest superhero blockbusters because those throwaway comics of my school years have moved to the centre of the cultural discourse, a development my teachers didn’t see coming. And as I look back on all the sketching I did in elementary school, I realize that was when I started developing the observational skills that would serve me so well as a reporter. So, parents, take note. If your child has their nose stuck in a book all the time, that habit will likely pay off down the road. It will open doors you can’t even see from this point in their life. They may very well wind up a writer like me. Or, if your son’s or daughter’s favourite thing to do is play hockey, you may have a future athlete or coach on your hands. If your progeny seem to have an unhealthy interest in bugs and animals, they may one day turn out to be a scientist or veterinarian. You get the idea. Look, I don’t know what your kids like to do. But I do know there’s a more-than-fair chance that what seems like a silly pursuit could one day turn out to be more than just a childish fixation; it just might become their life’s work. Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 32 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly graphic-novel group.
It’s 1975 All Over Again
By Dan Brown There’s a calendar from 1975 on my wall. Each month has a Marvel superhero on it like Spider-Man, the Hulk, Thor and Captain America. With this apparent antique pinned to the wall,, it’s easy for me to imagine I’ve travelled back in time to the era of Gerald Ford, Archie Bunker, bell-bottom jeans, and the fall of Saigon. To be clear, the calendar I’m talking about is actually a re-issue of the Mighty Marvel Calendar from 1975. As it turns out, some marketing genius figured out that 2025 and 1975 share the same calendar dates. I'm guessing the question then became, “Why not just put out the old one again?” The resulting calendar is a slick piece of work, fashioned from sturdy cardstock and bound with a plastic spiral. (Yes, I do have a calendar fetish, I always buy several different ones for home and office.)I say it’s brilliant marketing because it represents a huge potential return on a minimal investment. Marvel already owns all the art, plus the characters featured each month have only become more popular in the intervening decades. As well, 1970s nostalgia is all the rage these days. Aided by the Mighty Marvel Calendar for 1975/2025, let’s imagine it is January 50 years ago, shall we? So what was going on back then? Here in the Forest City, Jane Bigelow was the first female mayor of London. Our nation’s economy was reeling from an ongoing energy crisis.Nicknamed “gas guzzlers,” cars were the size of boats. Compact, fuel-efficient vehicles looked to be a growth industry, yet these Japanese imports were still the subject of ridicule. In the early months of 1975, there was talk of how the motion-picture adaptation of Peter Benchley’s best-selling Jaws paperback had turned into a troubled production. Besides, who went to movies in the summer anyways? Speaking of pulpy sensations, people could still not believe that a crime family had been portrayed on the silver screen as people with regular personalities in The Godfather and its 1974 sequel. It was almost like these movies were saying criminals have a lot in common with ordinary human beings, a shocking concept. A string of dystopian sci-fi flicks mirrored the zeitgeist – when people in 1975 looked into the future, it wasn’t a pretty picture. The Star Trek animated Saturday-morning cartoon from the early 1970s hadn’t done much to spread Gene Roddenberry’s idea of a utopian future society. On the radio in early 1975, you didn’t hear Elvis Presley much anymore. The airwaves belonged to acts like Fleetwood Mac, ABBA, the born-again Bob Dylan and an upstart by the name of Bruce Springsteen. Could he be the future of rock and roll? As for comics, well, they were for kids – though creators like Will Eisner insisted comic books should be taken seriously as a form of literature, even with their cheap paper and splotchy colours. About this time in January of 1975, DC jacked the price of individual comic books up to a quarter from 20 cents. That summer, Marvel would offer a new team of Uncanny X-Men to readers, including a short Canadian mutant with metal for bones who had originally been the villain in a Hulk storyline. In the letters columns of those bygone Marvel comics, readers made their desire known: Somehow, sometime, someway, Marvel heroes had to make the jump to the big screen.Why, one correspondent even argued, Charlton Heston would make a perfect Magneto.Do you miss the 1970s? Do you wish you had been alive back then? Let me know in the comment box below! Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 32 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly graphic-novel group.
It’s A Golden Age For Animation
By Dan Brown A quick glance in the rearview mirror before we get any deeper into 2025. As last year drew to a close, there was the usual wall-to-wall news coverage in December recapping the highlights and low points from the last 12 months. As all of those stories were airing on TV and running in the papers or online, I noticed something interesting that had happened in the entertainment world, specifically something about the top-grossing movies in 2024. Maybe you noticed it, too. There’s no denying it: We are now living in a new golden age of animation. Long gone are the days when animated stories were relegated to the ghetto of Saturday-morning TV cartoons for children. Also long gone are the days when decent animated movies were rare. Don’t believe me? Just take a look at 2024’s Top 10 films (according to Box Office Mojo) worldwide:1/ Inside Out 2 2/ Deadpool & Wolverine3/ Moana 24/ Despicable Me 45/ Dune: Part Two6/ Wicked7/ Mufasa: The Lion King8/ Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire9/ Kung Fu Panda 4 10/ Venom: The Last Dance The first thing that jumped out at me: The biggest movie of the year, Inside Out 2, is animated. (Don’t tell anyone, but I’m the one person on the planet who didn’t like the original Inside Out, it was hard for me to sit through it. Gimme Ratatouille any day.) But wait, there’s more. A full four out of the Top 10 movies are animated. Almost half the titles on the list!And if you consider computer-generated imagery to be a form of animation, which I do, then every movie in the Top 10 was an animated story to one degree or another. There are other signs of this new golden age. For example, when Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem came out two years ago, the creators leaned into its roots as a comic – reviewers said it looked like a comic book come to life. That's how good it looks. And those animated multiverse Spider-Man movies from the last few years have been better than many of the live-action superhero movies made in the same periodAnd don’t get me started on the popularity of anime!This is why it’s an exciting time for animation fans. It was Walt Disney’s dream for cartoons to be taken seriously, so he created the first full-length animated feature back in 1937, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Fast-forward to our current era, in which animation is an element used in nearly every film with mass appeal. This new breed of animated movie is even getting critical respect. The quality of these films has improved so much that in 2002, the Academy Awards set aside a category for the best animated feature. Pixar’s 2020 picture Soul won in that category, and some observers came up with convincing arguments that it deserved to be nominated as the overall best picture, animated or otherwise. All of which has me tingling. Now, I don’t know if comic fans are automatically animation fans.But I am confident that the shift I’ve noticed means something positive for those of us who love graphics. Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 32 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly graphic-novel group.
Superman Goes to the Dogs
By Dan Brown I’m not a huge Superman fan, but I am a sucker for a cute dog. That’s why I love the Superman trailer that blew up over the holidays. Debuting Dec. 19, the clip is a promo for James Gunn’s upcoming movie about the man of steel, which is scheduled to land in theatres this summer. It got a lot of attention for a certain canine co-star. Krypto, who is Superman’s dog friend, shows up in the trailer, dragging a wounded Supes across a snowy landscape after being summoned to rescue his best friend.“Krypto, home. Take me home,” the injured hero wheezes. The trailer was a big deal because the white-furred mutt did not appear in the various Superman motion pictures starring Henry Cavill, Brandon Routh, and Christopher Reeve. Meanwhile, in DC Comics, the pooch from deep space made his debut back in 1955. Just like his master, he wears a red cape and flies in the comics. Perhaps the trailer is an attempt to reach dog parents like myself (I have two pups at home) to broaden the Superman fanbase ahead of the film’s release. Or maybe it’s just another quirky James Gunn touch – he’s the filmmaker who made a name for himself with Marvel’s Guardians of Galaxy trilogy. Truth be told, I haven’t read a whole lot of Krypto stories – many “serious” fans write the powerful pet off as a silly part of the Kal-El mythos. But I do have one Krypto-connected graphic novel to recommend.Check out Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow? It collects a two-part adventure that was first published back in 1986. Krypto appears in it. I don’t want to give too much of the plot away, but I’ll explain how this story came to be. It’s an unusual story because it brings actual change to the DC Universe. That could happen because DC was wrapping up Superman continuity so that it could be restarted after the DC universe was rebooted in the series Crisis on Infinite Earths. The Superman everyone had known since the character was created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster in 1938 was coming to an end. Writer Alan Moore and longtime Superman artist Curt Swan had a unique opportunity. They could kill characters, for instance, and they would stay dead. The premise: All of Superman’s major villains unite to corner him in the Fortress of Solitude. (I'm wondering if the snowscape featured in the Superman trailer means we will get to see the same fortress in the new movie.) Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow? is the last Superman story, as well as the last Krypto story. I will say no more, other than to reveal it made me cry when I read it the first time because the one big Krypto scene packs an emotional punch. And despite the pencils by Curt Swan, who was also the first artist to draw Krypto, it’s a bit of a dark tale. So congratulations, DC Studios, I wasn’t in the market for a new Superman movie – his origin story has been told too many times on the silver screen – but with Krypto aboard, I might actually watch the thing. If any diehard fans have their own recommendations based on their favourite Krypto stories, I’d love to hear them in the comment box below! Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 32 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly graphic-novel group.
Come Out to GNG This Saturday!
By Dan Brown I can think of no better way to spend a Saturday morning than having a spirited discussion about graphic novels with smart, interesting people. So consider this your official invitation to take part in this year’s first monthly meeting of the L.A. Mood Graphic Novel Group. It takes place Saturday, January 11 at 11 a.m. over by the gaming tables. The street address is 100 Kellogg Ln. here in London. No previous experience in graphic novels is required. You don’t have to have strong opinions or even a long history with comics and superheroes.All you need to be willing to do is read the books and be open to where the conversation goes! The group began in June of 2008 after store co-owner Carol Vandenberg said to me, “We should have a book club for graphic novels. What do you think?” Book clubs were a new thing back then. Genius idea! As far as I can tell, the L.A. Mood Graphic Novel Group, or GNG as it is known to regular attendees, was one of the first book clubs, in this country at least, to focus exclusively on graphic novels and comics. If my memory serves, the first graphic novel we talked about as a group was Watchmen, DC's dark parody of superhero comics by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. Did we know the discussion would lead to a comment from Gord Mood (the other owner of the comic store and Carol’s husband) about how the story reflected the reasoning process of thesis, antithesis and synthesis? We did not.And that’s the beauty of GNG. I can never anticipate ahead of time where the conversation will end up. All I know is I come away from every monthly meeting thinking, “I learned a lot.”We’ve covered many different types of graphic novels since the club launched.We’ve read classics of the genre such as Maus. We’ve done superhero books featuring characters like Batman and the X-Men. We’ve done horror comics such as Something is Killing the Children. There’s been books by Canadian creators, wordless comics, bestsellers, obscure manga, you name it. The great part is there is always so much to choose from. Does that mean everyone is obliged to love every selection? Naw. But chances are you’ll find something to appreciate at some point. We meet the second Saturday of each month until the end of the year. The January meeting is an especially good one for newcomers to attend because it’s our annual pitch meeting. This is when each member comes up with possible titles to read in the year ahead and as a group we slot them into a particular month. For example, in July, to coincide with Canada Day, the group has developed a tradition of picking something with a Canadian flavour. So get in on the ground floor for 2025 now! You are in no way required to buy the books from L.A. Mood Comics & Games, although Carol does offer them to customers at a discounted price. We’ve had members bring e-book versions, copies borrowed from the library, or a used copy they picked up at Goodwill. If you’re interested in how comics are made, guest speakers have also come to address us. Byron graphic novelist Derek Laufman, for example, came to discuss his work. Essex County’s Jeff Lemire, before he exploded onto the comic scene, stopped by, as did the creators behind the Kill Shakespeare series. This has led also to field trips (we once went to an exhibit of Seth’s imaginary town Dominion at Museum London) and movie nights (like the time we watched the R.Crumb documentary together). The one thing I can say for sure is, all these years later, my horizons have become so much broader. I would love to see you around the table on Saturday, so please consider attending this week. We're looking forward to meeting you! Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 32 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly graphic-novel group.
