How a Marvel Comics artist helped give Newfoundland its personal psychedelic superhero

When Marvel Comics artist Danny Bulanadi died final month, followers around the globe took to social media to share his illustrations of well-known and well-muscled characters together with Captain America, the Unbelievable 4 and the Transformers.

However in Canada’s easternmost province, the Bulanadi drawings shared by followers have been of a mysterious cloaked determine who sought oneness with the universe as a substitute of fist-slinging battles.

Captain Newfoundland was the province’s very personal superhero, first dropped at life by Bulanadi greater than 40 years in the past. When Bulanadi died in San Francisco on Nov. 3 on the age of 76, he was engaged on new Captain Newfoundland materials for the primary time in a long time, mentioned Jesse Stirling, whose father and grandfather got here up with the concept for Captain Newfoundland.

“So we have now all these half-finished panels and paintings of Captain Newfoundland, which we would launch at some point,” Stirling mentioned in a current interview. “The Captain lives on, however it can by no means be the identical with out Danny Bulanadi.”

Captain Newfoundland made his debut on the duvet of the Newfoundland Herald journal on Jan. 5, 1980. He was drawn towering in entrance of a sprawling purple galaxy, with planets and asteroids floating beneath his billowing blue cape. A glowing define of the island of Newfoundland lit up his masked face.

“Captain Newfoundland: our very personal superhero,” the headline pronounced.

Stirling mentioned his father, Scott Stirling, and his grandfather, the late media mogul and mystic Geoff Stirling, dreamt up Captain Newfoundland in 1979 after coming back from a meditation journey to an ashram in India.

“(They) have been in all probability ingesting some orange juice, they could have been fasting for some time, performing some yoga, meditating, and so they determined to give you a superhero that was not your typical superhero,” Jesse Stirling mentioned. “It was extra to show classes of peace and cosmic oneness.”

Geoff Stirling based the Newfoundland Herald — then the Sunday Herald — in 1946, three years earlier than Newfoundland joined Canada. He additionally launched a number of radio stations in addition to the province’s first tv station, now known as NTV.

4:55
CUFF.Docs publicizes lineup for the 2022 in-person occasion

Viewers grew to become acquainted with Stirling’s religious leanings within the Nineteen Seventies when NTV started broadcasting 24 hours a day. He crammed the in a single day hours with spiralling discussions about politics, crop circles and consciousness, typically interspersed with pulsating animations. Shortly after Captain Newfoundland first appeared within the Herald, an actor enjoying the superhero confirmed up on NTV’s in a single day panorama.

“I’m positive many individuals will bear in mind the trippy Captain Newfoundland specials, the place that they had segments on UFOs and ESP and Atlantis, combined in with music movies from Paul McCartney and Queen,” Stirling mentioned. “Again then it was actually somebody in a cape and a fencing masks.”

Captain Newfoundland was an historical, intergalactic shape-shifter who might teleport by way of time and house to develop into one with the universe. He took on a number of types, amongst them Captain Atlantis. Within the comics, Newfoundland is the tip of the legendary kingdom of Atlantis.

Jesse Stirling mentioned his father interviewed dozens of illustrators earlier than selecting Bulanadi to deliver the captain to life. Bulanadi had labored on DC Comics’ Conan and Batman collection, and his artistry stood out.

“He was so happy with his Filipino tradition,” Stirling mentioned of Bulanadi, who grew to become a detailed household good friend. “He was a religious man, a very open man.” In a tribute to Bulanadi on its web site, Marvel mentioned he additionally beloved performing Filipino love songs. The artist died of congestive coronary heart failure, Marvel mentioned, extending condolences to his “followers everywhere in the world.”

Reprints of the Captain Newfoundland comics ran at the back of the Herald till the journal ceased publication in September. By the top of its run of greater than 75 years, the journal was out there in a few of the province’s most far-flung communities, making certain the captain’s mantra — “to thine personal self be true” — echoed far and large.

The Captain Newfoundland ethos was pretty radical in a province that, on the time, was nonetheless largely underneath the management of Christian church buildings, says St. John’s journalist Rhea Rollmann.

“It was this breath of contemporary air in opposition to all the things that was coming down within the denominational training system,” she mentioned. “It injected these totally different cultural, religious concepts that we weren’t getting wherever else.”

Rollmann, who’s transgender, mentioned she will nonetheless bear in mind studying the comics in her household kitchen whereas in elementary faculty within the Eighties.

“I bear in mind a panel the place Captain Newfoundland was displaying all of the totally different types by way of which he existed, female and male incarnations,” she mentioned. “That concept of gender fluidity which was represented, it actually resonated for somebody who was rising up trans and didn’t have the phrases or framework — there was no training about it on the time.”

Jesse Stirling admits he was teased at college when Captain Newfoundland first emerged. His classmates thought superheroes ought to have spectacular combating strikes, somewhat than a penchant for discussing metaphysics, he mentioned.

However these days, there’s a renewed curiosity within the captain. Copies are promoting shortly of Captain Atlantis, a brand new assortment of all of the Captain Newfoundland comedian strips printed on shiny paper in full color. Stirling and his father are hoping to lastly make a Captain Newfoundland film, and presumably a online game, he mentioned.

And naturally, they hope to launch new Captain Newfoundland comics, despite the fact that the superhero’s unique illustrator is gone.

“It’s an actual tragedy,” Stirling mentioned of Bulanadi’s dying, including: “He had loads of nice work left in him.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first printed Dec. 17, 2022.