Nelvana of the Northern Lights by Adrian Dingle

He (Adrian Dingle) says he was inspired to create Nelvana by stories that Franz Johnston, the Group of Seven painter, had brought back with him from the Arctic. In the first interview, conducted with Michael Hirsh and Patrick Loubert who went on to found the animation company Nelvana, they wrote: The first I heard about Nelvana’s true origins was taken from two interviews that her creator Adrian Dingle did in the 1970s. No mention is made of Nelvana and Tanero’s mother at any point in the 313 pages published of her adventures.įinding her historical origin set me on a quest that took me to the northern reaches of Canada’s Arctic communities (at least via the internet!) She has a brother named Tanero, a demigod who bears a curse of needing to hide his true human form from white men (indicated as ‘kablunets’ in the story). In her stories, Nelvana is the daughter of Koliak, King of the Northern Lights, and an unnamed mortal woman. Like all superheroes, Nelvana has two origins, one her canon origin, and the other her historical origin. Then frustrated, as her adventures have been out of print since her last appearance in 1947. I’m a nerd, a feminist, and an avid fan of Arctic literature so I was incredibly shocked that I never heard of her before, and I became completely captivated. Besides that, she was also one of the earliest comic-book SuperWomen, predating Wonder Woman by several months. She was a fierce protector of the North who used her superpowers to fight exploiters of the Arctic, from Nazis to interdimensional space invaders.

Six years ago, I first heard of Nelvana of the Northern Lights, an Inuit demigoddess printed in comic books across Canada during WWII.

Nelvana of the Northern Lights by Adrian Dingle