Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Justice League Great White North?

In this reboot of DC Comics has planned for September we are hear a plan for more diversity among the characters in the titles, but so far there is one group of people far to under represented as far as I can tell, and that group is Canadians. Now yes I am a proud Canadian and I love this land I call home, in fact it is the primary focus of what I study, but I’m not here to talk about that. No I am here to talk about the lack of Canadian characters in the current pantheon of characters over in the DC Universe. Yes DC dose have some Canadian characters, at last count I could recall 2; Flying Fox and that Shadow Mountie guy that James Robinson is used in the first issue of his current Eclipso story in Justice League of America. Canada isn’t this perfectly polite little country that people like to depict it as, Canada does have crime it’s just not as bad as the U.S. because we don’t have the same population. We all don’t watch hockey, all our police aren’t Mounties, we aren’t all lumber jacks, we don’t all live in igloos, we don’t drink maple syrup, we are how ever very similar to Americans. Now yes our countries and cultures are different we still take in the same media. DC I have a question for you, on same day release as the states, what’s your largest market out side of the U.S.? My guess would be Canada, come on we are right above you, we are you closest largest foreign, and your first ever favorite trading partner. Now I say all this about Canada and the U.S. because I feel as if we need to be shown acknowledgement for our importance to you. Marvel has a whole slue of Canadian characters; two of which are probably two of the biggest names for Marvel; Wolverine and Deadpool. Well over in the DC Universe you have to start to wonder if Canada even exists in the books, and I feel this reboot would be the perfect time to right this wrong. Now I’m not saying go all over board and that DC should create their own version of Alpha Flight but that they could used this reboot to maybe give a slight birth place tweak to a major character and/or a hand full of minor characters. There is no reason for DC to come up with Canada Man, but what about a Snow Owl? It could be the Toronto based member of Batman Inc. Or like I said change of birthplace, why not make it so Victor Stone a.k.a. Cyborg be born in Vancouver. Heck they could even have a western story take place for a couple of issue in Alberta since old west Alberta had strong tie to America (I should know, the town I live in has still got an American Fort in it) as well as had a prominent railway line (also know a lot about that his my town is known primarily for its train bridge). Now come on writers of DC do you want Canada to be something that you loose Marvel, or do you want to draw a line in the sand and take this market as your? As a Canadian I ask that you don’t let the only representation of Canadians in comic books be; Wolverine, Deadpool, Alpha Flight, and the Windigoes. Through retooling and new ideas we could build a bigger brighter future for Canadians in your universe.

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