“Canadian Whites” are the name given to a type of comic book produced by Canadian publishers during World War II when there was an embargo on all external publications – including the popular American comic books. The covers of the Canadian Whites were mostly full colour, but unlike American comic books the interiors were printed black ink on white paper. While the time of the Canadian Whites was brief, it was the Canadian comic book industry’s equivalent of the Golden Age of American Comics, and saw the debut of numerous titles – mostly featuring stories about superheroes, fighter pilots, mounties, cowboys and adventurers.
A few of the creators of these Golden Age Canadian comics have already been inducted into the JSA Canadian Comic Book Creator Hall of Fame – Ed Furness, Ted McCall, Adrian Dingle, Gerald Lazare, Jon St. Ables and Les Barker.
There is a site online where you can read pdf scans of a dozen of these lost treasures: www.canadiancomics.ca
Site originator Scott Dutton writes:
CanadianComics.ca focuses on comics published in Canada during the period of the Second World War and the years that immediately followed. During that era, embargoes on American magazines coming into Canada allowed a Canadian comic book industry to flourish. As Canadians, we can be proud of the work, both in the quality of the packages and the diversity of subject matter.
Previously, the books were shown on CanadianComics.ca as slideshows of single-page images. Like my own comics site, TatHS.com, CanadianComics.ca now hosts PDF ebooks which work well on various devices and OSes.
We welcome additions to this archive. If you’re willing to scan books from your collection, we’ll do the image cleanup and packaging. You’ll receive credit for your work if you’d like it. Before you make scans, please contact us to go over our scanning requirements. We want you to do the work only once to make things as painless as possible for you, and to minimise the wear on what are increasingly rare books.
THE JOE SHUSTER AWARDS 