Troubling Canadian community in Brian K. Vaughn’s 'We Stand on Guard'

Conference paper presented at the <a href="http://www.caclals.ca/doku.php?id=caclals_conferences">CACLALS (Canadian Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies)</a>, 2016. Last year, I presented some preliminary thoughts on how Canadianness is coded on the page in mainstream — meaning not indie; think Marvel, not D&Q — comics designed primarily for the American market, and in particular how Indigenous bodies are used as a short-hand for Canadianness, tracing this heritage from Nelvana of the North from the WWII-era Canadian Whites comics all the way to 2014’s Justice League Unlimited run by Canadian indie-artist-turned-big-2-superstar Jeff Lemire. Today’s paper builds on that work as I continue to interrogate how Canadian identity is constructed and exploited in mainstream American media for thematic ends, and what identities are appropriated and issues elided in the process.