While I’m focusing on American superheroes, even in the Golden Age a few appeared in comics from other countries.
Canada in particular created its first superhero with Iron Man (no relation) in March 1941, with Freelance arriving in July.
These two are barely a footnote, but the third ever Canadian superhero is notable in her own right; among other reasons, she’s one of the VERY earliest female superheroes.
Triumph-Adventure Comics #1 (1941)
by Adrian Dingle
It’s a modest introduction (how Canadian), because our protagonist isn’t on the cover…
…but Nelvana Of The Northern Lights makes a grand entrance with a splash page!
You can immediately tell this is a Canadian comic, both because it begins with some Inuit people… and because despite this being the 40s it’s remarkably NOT racist.
After some GORGEOUS scenes about their struggles…
…the Inuit summon an apparition of their demigoddess.
I must stress just how awesome the artwork is. It REALLY sells you Nelvana’s otherworldliness.
At this point the American superheroes mostly have to deal with racketeers and saboteurs. What’s the main issue for the Canadian ones?
That’s such a small thing that Nelvana pawns this off her brother.
If you missed it from the infodump in the initial splash page, her brother has been cursed to never show his real form to white people.
That’s not a joke, that’s how they say it.
So Nelvana uses her cloak to turn him into a dog.
A flying dog!
The menace comes from someone messing around in Canadian waters.
It’s hard for me to avoid posting the entire thing. This is from a 2014 reprint that REALLY allows you to take in all the details in the original artwork.
Nelvana and her dog-brother discover that the ship has been dropping bombs.
To deal with this, Nelvana summons the help of her father Koliak…
…who, if you remember the splash page, IS the Northern Lights.
And this MAGNETIZES ALL THE BOMBS OUT OF THE SEA.
Which means Nelvana and her dog-brother have saved Canada…
…from her nemesis Toroff, who I think is a Nazi. The story even ends in a cliffhanger!
Historical significance: 1 / 
The Nelvana Limited animation studio takes its name from the heroine. Shockingly she is NOT in the public domain, as the publishing rights were sold in 1971. Today the rights are jointly held by the aforementioned animation studio and Library and Archives Canada.
She also definitely inspired a Marvel hero, as we’ll see later.
Silver Age-ness: 0 /
The brother turning into a dog IS weird, but it has enough mythological explanation.
Does it stand the test of time? 10 /
It’s an extremely simple story when you get down to it, but it manages to be incredibly timeless. Characterization might be non-existent, but there’s an appreciable charm to it that still works perfectly.
Before moving on to the origins and legacy of the character, let’s explore a little the other adventures of Nelvana.
These spanned 6 issues of Triumph Adventure Comics, published by Hillborough Studios.
Nelvana is only on the cover of issues 2. Like the first issue, these are in in black & white.
She fights Nazis and whale-hunters…
…and even Canadians can’t escape the Golden Age trope of the hero being captured and tied up.
Her brother turns human every once in a while, and notably this is all one continuing story across multiple issues. This is the ONLY serialized series I’ve come across in the Golden Age during the retrospective!!!
Because her father is a god, Nelvana can pretty much do whatever the plot needs.
That includes becoming invisible…
…which she uses in one of the most clever uses of the power I’ve ever seen: mess with the blueprints of the bad guys!!!
Most of the plots have Nelvana rely on the Northern Lights in some way…
…but she’s badass on her own to destroy a small fleet of Nazi planes.
Given the genre you might expect Nelvana to stay hidden from the modern world, but nope!
At least in one story, Nelvana has one of the dumbest superhero weaknesses ever… regular light.
And an underwhelming counter for said weakness: ask her father for help.
The character was then sold to Bell Features, who published Triumph Comics (great imagination with series titles, Canada) where Nelvana appears in 8 issues.
These are still in black & white, but the covers give us an idea of her costume. Which doesn’t seem to be a constant color.
Here she can also be rendered powerless by “de-magnetising bracelets”, whatever those are.
It’s in this series that we finally get to see her father for the first time. She also stops bringing her dog-brother into her stories.
This is ALSO serialized, and Nelvana’s most used powers are generating light and turning invisible.
This is more like a straight fantasy, as Nelvana deals with an underground ice kingdom.
She even gets a love interest in the prince of said kingdom.
It’s a perfectly fine adventure serial, but it’s somewhat lacking the mystical awe of the original run. But I do like how Nelvana can now use her powers on her own and doesn’t constantly have to pray to her father.
By this time it’s 1942, so naturally we also get regular war stories sprinkled with casual racism.
Also Nelvana has ditched her dog brother for a more thematically appropriate bear.
Nelvana eventually has to create a civilian identity for herself, as secret agent Alana North.
So to recap: we went from a mystic adventure, to a war adventure, to a fantasy adventure, and this is now a spy adventure.
Also aliens, because why not.
We’re in 1945 by now, so Nelvana also meets the queen of another dimension that has the corpse of Hitler.
She can suddenly turn intangible too.
Her last appearance was in 1947, on the weirdly titled Super-Duper Comics #3.
It’s finally in color.
Although it doesn’t seem to decide whether Nelvana is wearing tights or not.
How close is this to the modern character? What modern character?
Nelvana owes her existence to the War Exchange Conservation Act, which restricted the imports of non-essential goods… and as much as you and I would probably disagree with it, comic books were not considered essential.
This REALLY pushed Canadian comics, but Nelvana’s origin is even cooler than that.
I’ll let the aforementioned reprint tell the story about painter Franz Johnston (who actually worked with Adrian Dingle on the first story, before leaving the project).
Two women have been identified as the possible inspirations for the character.
These are Cecile Nelvana and Connie Nelvana; they might have been cousins.
The reprint includes a 1946 picture of Connie.
We have to thank comic book historians Rachel Richey and Hope Nicholson for bringing Nelvana back into the spotlight, as the IDW reprint happened thanks to their Kickstarter campaign.
Outside of that, Nelvana is also a very clear inspiration for a Marvel character, thanks to John Byrne creating Snowbird for the Canadian superhero team Alpha Flight.
While Snowbird herself is quite different from Nelvana…
…she is the daughter of a goddess named “Nelvanna of the Northern Lights,” who is the daughter of Inuit god Hodiak.
Possibly changing Nelvana into Nelvanna and Koliak into Hodiak to avoid copyright issues (remember Nelvana is NOT in the public domain).
I really hope someone does something new with the original Nelvana.
She has A LOT of potential.