Alter Ego # 71 August 2007 (magazine review)
Despite having Captain Canuck, Vindicator and Wolverine on this 2007 edition of ‘Alter Ego’, the cover design is a reinvention of a Kirby picture for ‘What If…’. The characters below them are from a compilation book ‘The Great Canadian Comic Books’ by Michael Hirst and Patrick Loubert from 1971. Editor Roy Thomas got permission to reprint sections of it here.
With World War Two and paper shortages, American comicbooks were no longer exported to Canada. As there was a market for super-heroes, a couple publishers evolved to fill the gap. It wasn’t for long because after the war, American comicbooks returned and they vanished. Toronto publisher Cyril Vaughn Bell bought an off-set printing press but no experience how to use it or get the right register to print colour correctly. Looking at what was said here, its amazing he sold anything. He did encourage a few new Canadian artists but when the opportunity to move stateside after the war, didn’t hang around because the rates were better. All this from writer Alan Walker’s introduction.
With the main section, Hirst and Loubert’s text covers a lot of ground but much of it covers the art itself. A lot of it, especially the horses, focuses on the action. Although not said, I do get the impression it wasn’t sized up too much from the printed page, which would explain some of the close-ups. Artist Ed Alton went on to work for EC Comics and Mad magazine. There was even a super-hero called the Penguin, not only because of his evening suit but also the mask with the extended beak. He’s on the right side of the cover above. You do wonder how he didn’t clip anyone close-up to him. The best wry smile comes from a detective named Hugh Dunnit.
If you thought publishers concealing creators names in case they demanded more money, identifying let alone interviewing comicbook writers from the 1950s even more so. However, Jim Amash interviewed Al Schutzer became quite an eyeopener. He clearly saw it as a business and lost count of the number of stories he wrote but just saw it as a stepping stone into articles and finally novel-writing. I could see Amash’s eyebrows rise when Schutzer said who were his classmates at school, including Bill Gaines. Although Schutzer later did approach him for work at EC Comics, was rejecting because they knew each other at school.
Writer Michael Finn had an unusual subject matter for comicbook artists he bought artwork for. He picked a cover from ‘The Avengers’ or ‘The Invaders’ and got different artists to speculate a picture of what happened a minute later with some interesting results.
Have I said enough to entice you to keep a look out for early ‘Alter Ego’ magazines?
GF Willmetts
July 2026
(pub: TwoMorrows Publishing. 82 page illustrated magazine. Price: varies. ISSN: 1932-6890. Direct from them, you can get it digitally for $ 4.99 (US))
check out websites: www.TwoMorrows.com and https://twomorrows.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=98_55&products_id=579&zenid=vi5rjd8dc0lllbm3vlehk5u5a2
