“You gotta give the people what they want. The more they get, the more they need, and every time they get harder and harder to please.” From Give The People What They Want, written by Ray Davies.

They say timing is everything, and to my experience that concept is as reliable as gravity and every bit as explainable. In the comic book world, it was announced a bit ago that our friends Ty Templeton and Dan Parent are doing an “Archie Meets Captain Canuck” crossover.

That’s cool. I’ve always liked Archie; well, the super-teen stuff not as much because “America’s typical teen-ager” isn’t a “typical” superhero. I’ve also always liked Captain Canuck. It’s fair play: the star-spangled Nazi-puncher Captain America has been successful. Captain Britain, the other flag-draped patriotic powerhouse, was first published after Captain Canuck debuted.

Captain Canuck was created in 1975 — that’s fifty-one years ago, for those of us who are digitally challenged. It was created by British-born Canadian artist Richard Comely and his friend Ron Leishman. As the first Canadian superhero since World War II, it was, arguably, the first “independent” comic book published in color. According to Wikipedia, that first issue had a print run of 170,000 copies.

Back in 1975, there weren’t a whole lotta North American comic books with that kind of print run. Five years later, the Canadian post office printed six million Captain Canuck stamps. That was a full three years before the United States postal service issued their first Superman stamp.

Amusingly, the United States superhero Superman was co-created by a Canadian national. Its co-star, Lois Lane, was modeled after that Canadian artist’s wife. The Daily Planet building was based on a Toronto building. Of course, that was back when the governments of Canada and the United States were friendly.

Today, our more northernly Captain is being published by Charterhouse Books, now part of Lev Gleason Publications. They announced the Templeton/Parent project and Dan provided the world with some enticing cover art. And this brings us to my “timing is everything” thing.

Let us imagine we’re at Charterhouse brainstorming a promotional campaign for “Archie Meets Captain Canuck.” One person, let’s call them the marketing director, asks “What can we do to make this book fly off the shelves?” Another person, say, the editorial director (of course) says “Hey, here’s what we should do. Let’s have Canada get real uppity with President Shonda and he’ll react by doing someone mammothly stupid, like, say, rename Lake Ontario to… I dunno, I guess maybe… Lake America?”

I do not believe it actually happened that way, and my scenario is much more logical than what really happened. President Shonda changed the name from Lake Ontario to Lake America. Of course, this now provides a sort of symmetry to his newly-renamed “Gulf of America.”

(For the record: both Canada and Mexico are in America. So is the United States — of America.)

Let us make no mistake about it: the Lake America “renaming” is complete bullshit. The President’s latest grossly expensive action carries no weight in law, no impact on Canadian habits or signage, and makes the Great Orange Fool look all the more oafish. That is quite an achievement. As of this writing, I have seen and heard only two affirmations of this non-existent change: the mindless yet diminishing horde of MAGAts… and Google’s Google Maps. They could not make that “correction” fast enough.

For those who came in late, Lake Ontario was named sometime before 1639. That name was derived from the Iroquoian word for “lake of shining waters.” By contrast, Canada was founded in 1867 — yup, two years after the United States / Confederate States war between the states was temporarily resolved. Indeed, the name Lake Ontario preceded the founding of the United States of America by 137 years, and 228 years before Canada was even a thing.

…but it’s not as though President Shonda’s bigotry-fueled stupidity needs unveiling. Little boys tend to play with their dicks; sadly, our President’s still digging around in there.

For the record: It’s called Lake Ontario. It’s called the Gulf of Mexico. And it’s still called the Sears Tower. Grow the fuck up!