Stockpiled Ammo

One of the fondest surprises is finding comic treasures in unlikely places in your own abode. I found a stash of Alan Moore’s Violator comics that I always thought had been recycled since my Mom took them away from me because they were “too violent”. I found an old newspaper Sunday comic in one of the most common places for losing things - under the couch. It was slightly folded, but I still remembered the “noise” made from the comics, even though I hadn’t read them in years.

In this case, I was given the task of cleaning out my sister’s old filling cabinet full of her old art and school stuff that she didn’t want to bother looking at again. Some people are a little sensitive about revisiting their early material, since they’re understandably wary of wanting to view their work again after a long time. (In my case, I worry that I won’t be able to do justice to my early writing, and my best stuff’s behind me) Here, I found an AngloMan comic that I’d long since forgotten that was used for a Media project. In view of the anniversary of the Montreal Massacre (one day late) that led to a severe creation of gun laws, it seems like an appropriate contribution. It seems really normal nowadays, but there was extreme pressure at the time, and it almost didn’t get passed in the first place.



















With Stephen Harper being rather lenient with the long-gun registry and undoing years of gun control, this becomes even more relevant. (Oh, BTW, that link up there no longer works, but you can see said relevant eagle here)

I thought a Conservative majority would be good for two reasons. One - it would be a refreshing change of pace, and end years of uncertainty living in a minority government. And if things turned out to be not as welcoming as promised, it would spur the opposing parties (i.e. the Liberals) to step up their games after years of confidence running the country on autopilot.

Secondly, if the Conservatives turned out to be just as corrupt and controlling as their opponents, we would be able to take charge ourselves and demand better from our government. Brian Mulroney’s stint wound up crippling and dividing the then-Conservative party, leading to a Liberal surge for the next 15 years.

Indeed, after years of being warned that the Conservatives “had an agenda” with nothing to show for it, hairline fractures are finally starting to appear on the surface of the unblemished Conservative base. Criticisms that had been silenced when Harper was a minority are beginning to show themselves, and complaints are finally rising to the surface.

However, things are no longer looking as rosy as they once appeared. With the NDP in disarray without Jack Layton’s influence, and the Liberals being reduced to a skeleton crew, this projected outcome appears to be less and less likely. Without a strong alternative to the current ruling power, let alone a strong personality that can bring politicians together, we’re in for a long declining slog.

I didn’t mean to be so depressing, since humour is more my kind of thing, but given the current state of affairs, I don’t know how long I can afford to stay silent. To make matters worse, I know that something is wrong, but I have no idea how to go about solving it. This isn’t like one of those heroic quests where you’ve got a clear-cut bad guy to go after, and have various weapons to pick up along the way. Here, there’s no guidebook, let alone a helpful roadmap to show you which path to take. It’s all open-ended, and it’s up to you to figure out how to solve things in the face of overwhelming opposition and convincing arguments that can be brought down by reasonable logic.

One of the best self-defenses the Government has is an unapproachable element that makes approaching said laws and regulations such a bureaucratic wall of red tape that it’s almost impossible to understand the underlying mechanisms without help.

All that's necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.- somebody, maybe Edmund Burke?

AngloMoon

With the recent sales success of the second volume of Sailor Moon back on the shelves, it seems that any fears that the 20-year old property might be unsuited for a resurrection were unfounded. Turns out that there's still a strong potential female market in an overwhelmingly male dominated territority. Strong sales of the first volume of Osamu Tezuka's Princess Knight also showed the same, despite the Manga company cutdown last year.

While growing up, I used to be on the lookout for any acknowledgement of mainstream entertainment slowly acknowledging Anime's influence. Star Trek used to be more subtle in their Easter-egg knowledge, but it wasn't until the mid-90s that it became more blatant. Tuvok's finger mediation ritual in a Voyager episode blatantly ripped off Rei's signature "Fire Soul" move. Deep Space Nine had one-eye headsets similar to the Saiyanjins. Now, I can see Ghost in the Shell allusions and Oh my Goddess! drawings in Flashpoint, and I don't get as much of a thrill as I once did, but the impetus is still there.









Sailor Moon had a larger fanbase in Canada, since it showed at more respectable airtimes on YTV at 12:00 and 3:30 respectively. While the material tended to be childish, it was still enduringly appealing. The fact that they were long-legged wide-eyed babes in short skirts didn't hurt either. There was even a brief Air Farce skit that had two Navy men bending over the side of the boat to see something in the water, revealing their buttcracks. When they bent over for the third time, the title logo for the Anime popped up.

When the announcement for licensing Sailor Moon was first made, I thought that I would refresh some people's memories of a webcomic's forgotten side project where Sailor Moon & her friends held up a bank. At the time, the artist said it was an attempt to write a 4-page project for his school club. The old filler comic had the basic plot of "a villain and their henchmen rob a bank, a hero crashes through a skylight, then a huge Mech suddenly appears". The artist put it up, then said it would be deleted forever. However, it must've made quite an impression, since it's still available for online viewing, so that left showing that one out.

Instead, I thought that I might as well show a little-known (let alone seen) tribute from the pages of Angloman. Or more specifically, the second book. The actual setup isn't that important, since it involves West Island Lad taking some time off by going to the mall, and seeing an attractive girl arguing with her boyfriend. Of course, things never stay quiet for long, and the tedium is interrupted when a giant robot bursts onto the scene.


































There was a brief cameo of Matzoh Girl, (briefly mentioned in a post of Jewish Women in Comix), who had a transformation and powers very similar to the Sailor Senshi.  Unlike America, Sailor Moon was extremely popular among Canadians when it first aired, and had better televisable hours.  For the three of you who understand the references, and the large majority who are largely clueless over Matzoh Girl's theme, it's because there was some controversy over selling Jewish foodstuff on Passover.



































At the time, there was a big kerfluffle over Matzoh being sold in Montreal. Why? Because they were imported from America. This wasn't out of some displaced brand loyalty over the pride of their domestic market being overtaken by outside forces. Nor was it from some infested bugs or virus travelling via these boxes. No, what they objected to was that these Jewish products were being sold only in ENGLISH.


































To go into the bureaucratic nightmare that involves Bill 101 and the Francophone fear that they're being repressed by the English language would take up more time and space than I'm willing to devote my time to, and detract attention from enjoying the comic. Besides, I'm saving that for when Papercutz releases their version of "Smurf of One and Half a Smurf of the Other".


































For the unaware, Eaton is a Canadian department store. For the unilingual, Eat is "Manger", and On is "Sur".


































For the confused, West Island Lad spraypainted a flower in the upper row there. If you've ever tried to throw a rose, and was surprised when it limply fell three feet ahead of you, this is a pretty rational explanation. Also, there's a blink-and-you'll-miss moment in the 7th panel where the Gap gets renamed.


































A Sailor Mercury moment here. As much as I liked these references, I was also embarrassed and disgusted by how out of sync the proportions were compared to the traditional Anime models. This kind of influence has gotten better with the latest generation having grown up with actual Manga, and not shoddy knock-offs, but this kind of thing still bugs me.


































For all their efforts, they're rewarded by a bureaucratic lawyer who denies any involvement, and asks for compensation regarding a clerical error. He also showed up in the first Angloman book when the titular heroes defended a crumbling Olympic Stadium that suffered significant damage while trying to save it from a disgruntled fan riding a Mecha (yes, another robot) that looked like Bonhomme de Carnivale. Despite the premise of using iconic Canadian icons, this somehow manages to wind up less awesome than it sounds. Canadians are kinda weird that we have several iconic landscapes / mascots, but we don't really advertise the heck out of them like other countries we could name. (OK, the United States) We define ourselves as Canadians as "not being like Americans", which is strange considering how similar our culture / entertainment is.

AngloMan

Superheros (or as I like to call them, S-heroes, since they’ve been labeled with everything including Science heroes, Specials, and serious threats get S-ranks) have been a persistent staple of the comics world ever since Superman bashed a getaway car against a rock. The staunchest defenders of Superhero comics claim that there’s literally no genre that Superheros can’t be part of. A Sci-fi Western that’s reminiscent of Star Trek & Star Wars? Superheroes! A Medieval Fantasy with Steampunk overtones? Superheroes! A Sports Drama with a soap opera cocktail? Well, maybe not that last one. The inclusion of Superheroes in everything in the American comics market meant that for anything done in a comic that wasn't about S-heroes was basically an indy comic.

So it was a surprise when at the height of the Quebec Referendum (or as Josh Freed put it, the Neverendum) that an attempt was made to satirize the political events by caricaturizing politicians as muscular men willing to slug out for their issues.




















Written by Mark Shainblum and illustrated by Gabriel Morrissette, AngloMan was done on the presumption that the political going-ons would be considered too unbelievable if they were being written down as fiction. An excerpt from a foreword reads;

“We couldn’t make this place up! DC Comics would reject it in a second! Universal Press Syndicate would laugh at us! Hell, even MAD Magazine would probably slam the door in our faces!”

Even so, there are allusions to S-hero archetypes so as not to completely alienate readers. For instance, AngloMan’s costume is modelled after Captain America’s, with a bilingual Stop sign for a shield, and lives in The Fortress of Two Solitudes. His rebelious sidekick, West Island Lad insists on calling it the AngloCave, much to AngloMan’s annoyance. The female partner Poutinette sometimes shows up to help, with a gun that shoots greasy french fries, though she usually works on her own.

Capitaine Souche (based on former PQ leader Jacques Parizeau) gets his power by calling out a secret number, 101, at which a bolt of lightning falls from the heavens and transforms him, and he has an origin reminiscent of Batman where he was traumatized by his parents not getting any customer service in French.

I guess you had to be there.

There’s a LOT of inside jokes that’d be completely alien to any outsiders or people ignorant of the Canadian political system. One of the recurring characters in the first book, The Northern Magus is based on Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, who was best known for saying “Fuddle-Duddle!”



















However, the webpage description of NM is slightly incorrect. It should read:

Height: He knows.

Weight: And he ain’t telling.

Group Affiliations: Himself

Powers and Abilities: There is literally nothing the Northern Magus can't do. He’s a Secret Master of the World, and virtually everybody has done his bidding at one time or another. Angloman may or may not have been set upon his mission and granted his abilities by the Northern Magus. Whether for ultimate good or ultimate evil, we can only guess.

Although AngloMan made his debut in the Montreal Mirror and had two stand-alone books telling longer stories, his exploits have never been fully collected. Part of the reason for the lack of popularity might be the obscureness of the subject material. It could be the scratchy artwork where it was difficult to decipher what was going on, let alone who was being caricatured. Without reference notes explaining the historical themes happening at the time, a lot of the humour is lost.

Another major reason this didn’t catch on is because the face of politics keep changing every year or so. Today’s leaders may not be the same respectable people tomorrow. Not to mention a constantly rotating cast means that chances of seeing any old favorites would only happen if they were caught up in a recent scandal. As such, the odds are not good.

Or maybe it’s because the jokes simply weren’t that good.

Quality satire is difficult to get right, especially if it doesn’t resonate with the public. It didn’t help matters much that people who might’ve been interested in S-heroes wouldn’t enjoy Angloman’s foray in Quebec politics. As much as they enjoy convoluted storytelling, they’d be totally lost without understanding all the references. Not to mention everything was in black & white.

And political cartoonists wouldn’t enjoy S-heroes peanut butter getting their chocolate suits all dirty. At least in the first story of the second book, it showed the fallacy of a Superhero registry system better than Marvel’s Civil War.


































Naturally, Angloman being a Captain America archetype (and rational Superhero) is reluctant to give away his real name. However, he’s assured that he’s protected by the “Loi sur la confidentialé des secrets imbeciles en ridicules”. After being reassured by the confidentiality agreement, he starts filing out the rest of the overly complex form requirements.


































Having failed to meet the requirements, Angloman's forced to wait for his turn and wait for his number to come up:


































I didn’t bother to save too many of the comics that appeared in the newspaper, since the majority of them went over my head. I only kept the ones that had personal significance or relevance to me.




















The ironic thing about the comic below is, of the select Angloman comics that’re available for online viewing, they’re all abysmally small, with some random lines of text or art being whited out. This doesn't make a very compelling argument for preserving the comics if we can't read them properly.



















For those of you wondering who the old bald guy with glasses that Dilbert’s shooting at among his victims in his postal rage, he’s Ben of the Canadian comic strip created by Daniel Shelton. He’s a family strip about an elderly couple, their children, and their grandchildren, and is based on what the author feels like he’ll (hopefully) grow up to be when he’s within retirement age.