Maple Leaf Comics

On one of my periodic eBay searches for Canadian wartime comics I hit pay-dirt. The earliest cover features Canada's first superhero The Iron Man created by Vernon Miller from Volume I no. 8, 1941. The undated Fishmen cover immediately below that is from the pen of lumberjack cartoonist Bert Bushell. Next a cover from Better, Volume VI No. 2, 1945. Last is what looks like a Jon St. Ables cover for Better Volume IV No. 3, 1945.

Note to eBay scanners please post larger scans and leave out the disfiguring marks in the corners for the archivists amongst us. A cover post listed on a blog in a timely manner may draw more buyers for your comics and gain a larger price. I would also like to invite any blog readers with Canadian comic cover art to send me scans. Simply scan at 150 dpi in color and post it to my email on the right.

Bert Bushell

Bert Bushell is another comic artist about who little is known. He worked for Maple Leaf Comics in Vancouver B.C. during the war years on Callahan the Detective, Adam & Eve, Dr. Evil and The Black Wing. Maple Leaf’s titles were Better Comics, Bing Bang Comics, Lucky Comics and Rocket Comics. Maple Leaf’s address was 849 Homer Street. Other artists employed by the company were Ernie Walker, Ley Fortune (probably Shirley Fortune, a student of West Coast artist Jack Shadbolt), Jon St. Ables, Bus Griffiths, V. Pearson, and Vernon Miller, artist on Iron Man, the first Canadian superhero.

Below are a series of illustrations drawn by Bert Bushell for Robert E. Swanson’s 1943 book Rhymes of a Lumberjack; a second book of verse concerning the trials and tribulations, lives and ways of the loggers living and working in the Great Northwest of America Toronto, T. Allen, 1943.














This Callahan the Detective story from Rocket Comics (1943) is available in pdf HERE. It's the first story in the comic book.