3 out of 5

From the Canadian-centric Chapterhouse comics comes this uneven but most charming collection of Canadian creators and their Canadian creations and if you were so American-headed as to not realize the dearth of Canadian heroes, well…  Yeah, I mean, I don’t know if this anthology is going to change much for you.  It sort of hovers halfway between serious and silly – insert some joke about Canadian culture here – and doesn’t have much framework to explain what you’re reading beyond Canada!, so I’m not sure what it’s trying to accomplish or if its accomplished it.  Apparently some of the books being put out by Chapterhouse are reboots of “classic” Canadian titles, but would you be reading those without any existing context?  I glanced at them in the shop and gave them a general “meh” pass, but I was wooed into this collection because A. I like anthologies and B. Jay Stephens.

So as a sales pitch for Canada, True Patriot maybe fails.  Especially those moments that treat Canadian culture as something common but is a complete mystery to midwest me (Ogopogo?).  But as an anthology series that just so happens to have a whole bunch of Canadians in it, it’s enjoyable.  There are really only a couple of stinkers in here, and mainly because the way they’re paneled / paced is either confusing (Andy Belanger’s Thunderbirch, Agnes Garbowska’s Justice Jenny) or a big bundle of incomprehensible WTF (Howard Wong and Adrian Alphona’s ‘Uh Oh Ogopogo!’); otherwise we get some pretty fun / funny superhero riffs from Scott Chantler, Stephens, Faith Erin Hicks and more, plus a three part wordless tale from J. Torres and Tom Fowler that does a better job of highlighting what True Patriot might mean to Canadians than Mike Valiquette’s foreword.

If Chapterhouse folds tomorrow and Volume One is all we get of True Patriot, it’s a footnote.  But hopefully the publication will stick around long enough to at least give us a few more volumes, as it’s a quirky spin on the DHP format that deserves a few issues to find its way.