Origins # 3: Captain Canuck

Author's note: Captain Canuck is not mine. He belongs to Chapterhouse comics. The idea of this essay is hopefully get people interested enough to look up the comics.

The story of Canada’s first superhero starts with two brothers.

Tom and Michael Evans were very different people, but the bond between them was strong.

So when Tom was told his brother had been injured in a car accident, he got leave from the Canadian army (He’d been in Afghanistan working as a medic), and rushed home.

But by the time he’d made it home, Micheal was missing and enemies controlled the company he’d built.

With the help of the head of security for Michael’s company, he discovered that his brother had headed for the Arctic circle, a place called Aleph.

It was a place both brothers were familiar with, as their father always claimed he’d seen a spacecraft crash there.

It would be in that remote place that both Tom and Michael would be changed forever.

Aleph was surrounded by a “dead zone” where nothing electronic worked, so Tom was forced to travel to the site on foot. He discovered Michael’s team dead, and Michael himself taken to the spaceship their father had seen years earlier.

Tom went into the spaceship, and found Michael “plugged in”, connected to the ship.

Tom broke Michael free, and then began to try to get far enough away from the “dead zone” to call for help.

While attempting this, they were intercepted by a polar bear, and it was at that moment that Tom discovered the spaceship had altered him.
He found himself covered in a skin tight outfit, and he now had the strength to wrestle the polar bear - and win.

With the threat dealt with, Tom was able to drag Michael far enough out of the “dead zone” to be able to call for help. After returning home, the brothers separated, Tom returning to Afghanistan, while Michael began to try and sort out the knowledge the spaceship had shared with him.

He would eventually set up Equilibrium, as a disaster response unit, to protect his native Canada, and the world at large.

At this point, Canada had become the most powerful country in the world due to some technology and its large amount of resources, so no one could really object when Michael made sure that Equilibrium was Canadian through and through.

And as part of that identity, Michael decided what Equilibrium needed was something more than an ordinary person to be the public face of the organization.

He decided it needed a superhero.

So he persuaded his brother Tom to not only use his new strength, but to take on a new identity.

That of Captain Canuck.

Unfortunately it turned out that Michael and Tom weren’t only ones with extraordinary gifts.

A man calling himself Mr. Gold wanted the secrets of the alien craft, and had incredible power to help him in his quest.

He could generate a liquid substance that looked like gold, and any person who contacted it could be infected and controlled by him.

This process would eventually kill the person so infected, but even after death, he could manipulate their bodies to suit his purposes.

He was able to lure Michael back to Aleph, in hopes of discovering all the mysteries of the crashed ship.

He failed, but Michael learned one thing. The alien pilot had survived the crash and had sent a message to his people many light years away.

And Michael decided that he, and the men and women of Equilibrium would be ready, especially with Tom as their leader.

The hero, Captain Canuck.

End