The Super Heroes Stamp Pack issued by Canada Post on October 2, 1995 sported the likeness of Superman, the quintessential American superhero. It may have seemed a prank to many Canadians but it was actually a quirk of fate: Superman’s co-creator Joseph Shuster (1914–92) was born in Toronto and moved with his family to Cleveland at age ten. Much later, in the 1960s, Mordecai Richler interpreted the “Man from Krypton” as a metaphor of the “Canadian psyche,” that is, a convenient self-image for individuals with great abilities yet content to live under the disguise of a self-effacing alter ego.

However debatable Richler’s tongue-in-cheek contention may be, it at least implies that comics are no different from any other narrative species: they simultaneously tell stories and impart collective representations. Today’s Canadians are often unaware of their country’s comic art heritage – they know at best that Lynn Johnston, the author of the long-running soap-opera-cum-sitcom newspaper comic-strip “For Better or For Worse” (since 1979) is one of them. And yet, from the political commentaries of editorial cartoons to the escapism of twentieth-century comic strips to the mature creativity of present-day graphic novels, English-language comics and French-language bande dessinée have been vivid elements in the landscape of Canadian news and entertainment media since the mid-nineteenth century.