Reading up on the early Canadian comic books of the 1940s. I remember a hardcover book about them from the 1970s which was one of the first non-fiction books about comic books I ever found in a library, but I'm not sure it was completely comprehensive. There was some sort of ban on imports from the U.S. starting when Canada was involved in the war in Europe and the U.S. wasn't. That's when Better Comics began in Vancouver early in 1941 and ran for many years. A copy had been listed at $100,000. There was also a character named Iron Man in this title, more of a strong man type though, nothing like an armored tech suit.



In the east from publishers Hillborough and later Bell there was one of the first superheroines in comics, Nelvana Of The Northern Lights (premiering in 1941) drawn by Adrian Dingle. I believe some of these artists also worked as illustrators for Ontario newspapers and mainsteam magazines like MacLean's doing ink wash work.



There's a great site on the earliest Canadian color and b&w comics here...

canadasowncomics.com/home/

I remember having various late '40s-early '50s Canadian editions of U.S. titles with different ads and paper quality, and sometimes they would have a different number on an issue than was used in the U.S. original. Many Dell and Standard titles and few Fawcetts. I also remember seeing a very few originals (I think) but didn't buy them putting the bigger name and known artist U.S. comics ahead. The Canadian title I remember clearest was a Robin Hood comic. I must've passed by a half dozen of them in favor of Donald Duck, Johnny Hazard and Captain Marvel Jr. that were part of a large collection that a local shop had come into.



I'm curious to know about any original comics published in Australia (which I do remember seeing included in a Denis Gifford book of some kind), as well as New Zealand and South Africa. I know there were all kinds of comics published in Hong Kong (usually on very cheap paper) as you could see them in the Chinese shops here often, some were Japanese translated into Mandarin or Cantonese (and totally unreadable to me) but they also had originals it seemed, a lot of period historical drama with some kung-fu, sadly unlike the British shop selection with mystery, animals, space and girls' soap type titles those genres were not in the stacks of Hong Kong papers I rummaged through a couple of times. If such genres existed they didn't carry them at the one shop with a newsstand I visited.

There were also little French cowboy and jungle character comics I used to run across. I don't know if any were ever printed, drawn or published in Quebec... but they were sold in Canada. Titles like Akim, Wampus and Zembla added an exotic feel. They were b&w inside (I still have two of these though I really can't read French beyond individual words here and there and the two I have were printed in France in the '70s).

 

So here is a shelf on which to pile any tidbits run across about Commonwealth comics, excluding British papers but maybe including U.S. reprints.