You Can't Keep Good Heroes Of The North Down!

Since the launch of the original version of this blog in January 2012, Canadian comics and/or comics by Canadians have seen a bit of a surge. There are now several Facebook groups dedicated to such, a creator alliance, a wiki (linked at top right of the page), a high profile publisher and probably several other promotional opportunities that I am forgetting or am simply not aware of.

There have been losses along the way. Many of the projects that motivated me to begin focusing on Canadian comics characters and up-and-coming creators in the first place no longer exist. First and foremost in that category is Heroes Of The North.

Man, I loved me some HOTN. They had the web series, comics, merchandise, novels, personal appearances...They were the total package, to my eye. I could have gone "all in" with those guys and dropped everyone else. I wondered how they could even pull it off!

Until they suddenly didn't. Looking back, their second season was ridiculously ambitious (for which I'm grateful, to be honest). They sent out a bunch of teaser material about incoming actors, new characters, etc, and then...Nothing. The whole thing went silent.

Then oddly enough, after two years of "radio silence", I came across two upcoming projects earlier today which have ties to the Heroes.

One is a book called The Cloak from LRVD Comics.

A short prequel to The Cloak is coming thanks to Yann Brouillette and Joe DeSantos. It will be available for free via digital download and also as a supplement to Issue #1 (print)!

Yann Brouillette wrote much of the Heroes Of The North material. Frankly, I assumed he'd just bailed on the comics industry altogether but evidently he saw something in this character worth investing into. And so he's back. If you want to know more about Brouillette, check out his website and keep track of updates of The Cloak project here.

Meanwhile, Alan Draven has a novella in the works (under a pseudonym, for some reason). Here's the elevator pitch by the man himself, lifted from Twitter.

VIGIL 5. New comic book type illustrated novella series by Neal Vandar about a group of vigilantes led by a black protagonist set in Montreal with elements of Afrofuturism. Coming late 2018/early 2019.

Draven wrote the HOTN novel October Dawn so writing Canadian superheroes is hardly beating a new path for him.  We can keep track of his progress on his own blog here.