Eh-List Superhero

How can I care about the Captain America movie when there’s no Captain Canuck movie on the horizon? It was just announced that Chris Evans was offered the role of Captain America in the upcoming The First Avenger: Captain America. Evans is best know for playing The Human Torch in the absolutely awful Fantastic Four movies, and he’s one of those generic pretty boy actors, which kind of makes him ideal for the traditionally boring Captain America. (Not that there weren’t some compelling, edgy, politically-charged storylines in the comic book, but it’s safe to assume the movie will bask in the character’s traditional flag-waving W.A.S.P.-itude.)

Or, maybe, it’ll be a really interesting film if the makers play with the implications of the character – however, rather than speculate on Cap’n ‘merica, I’d like to wonder aloud why there’s no Captain Canuck movie.

Many of you are saying, “Captain who?,” which is obviously the main reason. Captain Canuck, as you can read all about here on Wikipedia and here on the character’s official site, is our version of Captain America, flag-themed body suit and all. He was created by Ron Leishman and Richard Comely, and appeared in comics in 1975. I remember having a bunch of the issues (there really weren’t that many) when I was I kid and thinking that they just didn’t have the BAM! POP! POW! of the Marvel and DC comics that I was used to. And, true enough, the comics really didn’t have the muscle – this was a much smaller, lower budget, DIY endeavour than the product coming out of the large, long-established companies south of the border. Nevertheless, I always liked the way CC looked, and that he was Canadian. I still have those beat-up floppies and they hold a special place in my heart.

Captain Canuck has come and gone in different variations over the years, with his origin changing, which didn’t exactly help the hero gel in the minds of his countrymen, either. The first version of the comic had CC an agent of the government, in the futuristic world of 1993, where Canada is the world’s biggest superpower. You read that correctly. Assuming you didn’t just choke on a Timbit, you’ll appreciate the unintentional hilarity.

I interviewed Comely several years ago for a newspaper feature I wrote about Canadian superheroes; he’s a very nice guy (a Mormon, in fact, which has informed the righteous nature of the character) who genuinely loves and stands behind his creation, but he’s also far from the cutting edge of comicdom. His version of the character is really a throwback to original Captain America or Superman. A couple years a go I picked up another, newer reincarnation of Captain Canuck and found its attempts to be “edgy” pretty unconvincing. Probably the biggest reason the heroic musclehead hasn’t actually become our version Captain America, is that we don’t do the sort of naïve nationalism that’s so essential to the character very well. However, we are very adept at making fun nationalism, and that’s key to a Captain Canuck movie…

A little Googling and I found a Toronto-based company called Sinking Ship Entertainment that’s working on a Captain Canuck movie. There’s almost nothing on the company’s site about the film yet (suggesting that it's a long way off), other than “…this feature film will turn Canada into an action-packed playground complete with an exploding CN Tower.” What does it say about us that the main selling point to a movie about our national superhero is that his story involves the destruction of one of our most prominent landmarks? And have you ever heard Canada described as “an action-packed playground?

I don’t know if that means the tone will be serious, but it’d be unfortunate if the company went in that direction. For starters, they’d have to lose the crotch-hugging, red and white unitard, and that’d just be a shame. I don’t think anyone would buy it if it wasn’t a comedy, and the concept of ripping on such a naïve, flag-bearing national hero seems like the natural thing to do. (Would Comely approve? Probably not.)

I say let Captain America defeat terrorists and military threats; I wanna see Captain Canuck foiling maple syrup heists and punching out radioactive moose-men. Because if you can’t be A-list, at least be unabashedly Eh-list.

-Dave Alexander