Setting the Standard in Comics!! :: Setting the Standard in Comics! - Covers

Standard Comics Team-Up #180 - Cyborilla, Captain Canuck, Commander Steel

Artists: Geof Isherwood (Penciller) , Geof Isherwood (Inker)

4 Comments - 1,994 Views - 0 Like

Standard Comics Team-Up #180 - Cyborilla, Captain Canuck, Commander Steel Comic Art

Additional Images:

Captain Canuck "Gallery" Drawing by Geof

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Artwork Details

Title:	Standard Comics Team-Up #180 - Cyborilla, Captain Canuck, Commander Steel
Artist:	Geof Isherwood (Penciller)
Artist:	Geof Isherwood (Inker)
Media Type:	Pen and Ink
Art Type:	Commission
For Sale Status:	NFS
Views:	1,994
Likes on CAF:	0 1
Comments:	4
Added to Site:	1/6/2012
Comic Art Archive:

Description

Standard Comics Team-Up #180 (April, 1978)
"Terror Over Toronto!"

Semi-retired "International Police Service" Commander Jack Steel teams up with CISO-agent Captain Canuck to fight the Mighty Cyborilla over the skies of Toronto. Can they succeed against the simian-savant, who has given the entire Sentinels super team a run for their money over the years!? There's only one way to find out - buy this issue!!

Special 180th issue of the Standard Comics Team-Up series that started back in 1963! Still being published to this day!

Setting the Standard in Comic (Team-Ups)!

~~~~~~~~~

Watch the skies for those evil cybernetic genius gorillas you hear so much about these days. They're an epidemic up here in Canada, honest.

Geof Isherwood does pencilling and inking duties on this one. Why Geof specifically? Because back in the day, the original Captain Canuck series' Gallery featured a pin-up from (then) unknown artist Geof Isherwood!! Having recently re-read those issues, and having Geof on my list of wanted artists, made this a no-brainer.

It's a pretty simple team-up to fight the villain, but as a nerd I agonized (well, waffled at least) over when to set this damn thing to remain true to my "theme".

See, Commander Steel is another public domain superhero from the 1940s. With the "Elixir of Power" flowing in his veins, I imagine that he's pretty well preserved with slowed aging and what-not. Fine, he can show up in the late 70s not too worse for wear. Then it gets "complicated".

Captain Canuck (Tom Evans) was first published by Comely Comix here in Canada in 1975. The series only ran for three issues, then went on hiatus until 1979, then was published pretty regularly until 1981, where it ended with #14. Highly recommended as an alternative to American comics of the time (not that there's anything wrong with them, just sayin'). It did have American distribution by ... #8 I think. And there was a letter from England in the letter column at one point (remember those?).

Everyone raves about the coloring, which, personally, I never got. They put colour (animator's vinyl copolymer paint) on an acetate overlay over the blackline art. Maybe it was the printing. Currently, there are two hardcover reprints of most of the series, with a single softcover collection.

Trouble is, although those original stories were published in the 1970s, they were set in the crazy future world of -- the 1990s where Canada was a major world power! By 1981, the stories were set in 1995. In one of the final issues, Captain Canuck finds himself stranded in his past - 1980.

So, in my alternative publishing history, after issue 3, Standard Comics (quite experienced by this point in buying up properties) must have offered Comely a deal to publish the Captain in the USA. So, maybe it would have been about 4 years ahead of the real world, and he went back in time to 1976 or so, then the Standard Comics Captain Canuck series would be contemporary. (Stupid lousy diverging fictional and real (fictional) world timelines!!)

Hopefully, the good Captain would have been popular enough to keep being published in the big ol' US of A so that he became as well known to you Yanks as he deserves to be. Captain Canuck rules!

Although this creates the problem of there being two Tom Evans ... hmm ... two Captain Canucks?

Cyborilla, of course, is mine and updated from his initial Sentinels #1 appearance.

Cyborilla (C) Roy Johnson 2012

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About the Owner

	Roy Johnson
Joined:	December 2010
Last Login:	July 2023
Country:	CANADA
On CAF:	Artworks Commented On Liked Art Site Activity on CAF

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Marvel Two-in-One Guy
Member Since 2003

Posted on 1/6/2012

Oh, Canada!

Kevin Moorhead
Member Since 2008

Posted on 1/6/2012

Commander Steel just looks awesome here.

Alex B
Member Since 2008

Posted on 1/20/2012

I must confess I did not know those characters but Isherwood's pencils and inks are amazing ! Congrats for this stunning cover !

Roy Johnson
Member Since 2010

Posted on 1/21/2012

Alex B wrote:

I must confess I did not know those characters but Isherwood's pencils and inks are amazing ! Congrats for this stunning cover !

You're not familiar with a 1970s Canadian superhero, a self-created cybernetic gorilla, and another Canadian superhero who last appeared more than 60 years ago? For shame ;-)

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