Northguard is a Canadian

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

 superhero

Superhero

A superhero is a type of stock character, possessing "extraordinary or superhuman powers", dedicated to protecting the public. Since the debut of the prototypical superhero Superman in 1938, stories of superheroes — ranging from brief episodic adventures to continuing years-long sagas —...

 created in 1984 by Mark Shainblum

Mark Shainblum

Mark Shainblum is a Canadian writer who lives in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Though he has worked as a journalist and editor, Shainblum is best known as a science fiction and comic book writer....

 and Gabriel Morrissette

Gabriel Morrissette

Gabriel Morrissette is an illustrator, animator and comic book artist from Montreal, Canada. Currently working for Jackfruit Press on their Prime Minister series and Chickadee on Daisy Dreamer, Gabriel co-created Northguard, Fleur de Lys and Angloman with Mark Shainblum.Gabriel has worked for...

.

Developed during the mid-1980s burst of small- and medium-press comics publishing by Canadians, Northguard was one of several serious efforts at developing a made-in-Canada superhero series for modern sensibilities. Themes addressed included the validity of the superhero genre itself in the form of writer Shainblum's stated intent of "deconstruction

Deconstruction

Deconstruction is a term introduced by French philosopher Jacques Derrida in his 1967 book Of Grammatology. Although he carefully avoided defining the term directly, he sought to apply Martin Heidegger's concept of Destruktion or Abbau, to textual reading...

", as well as Canadian identity

Canadian identity

Canadian identity refers to the set of characteristics and symbols that many Canadians regard as expressing their unique place and role in the world....

, corporate ethics and espionage, Canada-United States relations, and extreme religious organizations and their political effects on the world.

Series overview

Begun in the anthology series New Triumph, the Northguard series centred around the misadventures of Philip Wise, a young Montreal

Montreal

Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...

 resident of European Jewish ancestry, who had found himself caught up in the efforts of a private corporation's senior staff to defeat a conspiracy known collectively as "ManDes"(from the term "manifest destiny

Manifest Destiny

Manifest Destiny was the 19th century American belief that the United States was destined to expand across the continent. It was used by Democrat-Republicans in the 1840s to justify the war with Mexico; the concept was denounced by Whigs, and fell into disuse after the mid-19th century.Advocates of...

") to force Canada and the United States to merge under a quasi-Christian

Christian

A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...

 theocratic dictatorship with elements borrowed from white supremacist doctrine.

Wise was recruited as the corporation's field agent as a result of the murder of another operative, who was the only one neurologically equipped to use a unique energy weapon, called the "UniBand", built as an offshoot of applied physics experimentation. Wise's single condition for agreeing to do so was the creation of a "superhero" identity: Northguard while Wise later improvised the name Le Protecteur as a more suitable French language version.

Successfully defeating an assassination attempt on the premier of Quebec

Quebec

Quebec or is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....

 in his first mission, Wise subsequently found himself and his newfound colleagues stumbling through several misadventures, accidentally inspiring a martial arts/dance instructor whom Wise became acquainted with to create the identity of Fleur de Lys. These misadventures led ultimately to the defeat of the ManDes conspiracy and the destruction of the UniBand, effectively leaving Wise without any technological advantages. The whole ManDes affair was covered up at the insistence of the Canadian and American governments, allegedly for reasons of preserving cross-border trade.

Post-publication history

Since 1991, there have been no further published adventures of Northguard, although both he and Fleur de Lis achieved some further measure of cultural immortality via the 1995 release of a collection of postage stamp

Postage stamp

A postage stamp is a small piece of paper that is purchased and displayed on an item of mail as evidence of payment of postage. Typically, stamps are made from special paper, with a national designation and denomination on the face, and a gum adhesive on the reverse side...

s from the Canada Post Corporation celebrating "made-in-Canada" superheroes.

External links

• Northguard website
• Guardians of the North: a virtual museum tour through the history of Canadian superheroes, hosted by the Digital Library of Canada.