Brok Windsor is not a name Canadians today will recognize, but to Canadian children in the war years, he was a hero involved in fantastic adventures on a mysterious island deep in the Canadian north woods.
With war declared, the Canadian government decided in 1940 to ban imports of comic books, almost exclusively from the US, as they were “non-essential imports”.
This left a Canadian market hungry for comic books, and a domestic comic industry was born to fill the gap.
One of the many heroes created was “Brok Windsor”, which appeared under the banner of Better Comics produced by Vancouver-based, Maple Leaf Publishing from 1944 to 1946.
Brok was the brainchild of illustrator Jon Stables who had immigrated to Canada as a child, and grew up in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
He based his character on a friend who had a cottage in Manitoba’s, Lake of the Woods region.
Now, Hope Nicholson, a Toronto vintage comic book historian and publisher, wants to resurrect the forgotten Canadian character.
She is raising funds through a Kickstarter campaign to reprint the Brok Windsor series
She originally discovered Brok Windsor and Jon Stables work while researching other comic book projects. Falling in love with the work she felt that if Canadians were ever going to see the work, she would be the one to revive the works.
Nicholson, along with Rachel Richey, was also behind the successful resurrection of another forgotten comic legend, “Nelvana of the Northern Lights”, an Inuit superheroine who debuted during the Second World War several months before Wonder Woman in the US.
She hopes to have the Brok Windsor project ready for release in mid-2015
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