Grenfell Comic Book

Ever wonder how Sir Wilfred Grenfell’s harrowing tale of survival in northern Newfoundland would translate into comic book form?

Wonder no longer – the good doctor already made his debut in Issue #10 of True Comics (1941).

True Comics was begun in 1941 to ‘counteract the wild, rowdy superhero comics’ according to comics historian Ron Goulart (The Comic Book Reader’s Companion, HarperPerennial, 1993). The editors were David Marke, a historian, and later Elliot Caplin, a prolific comics writer.

True Comics, it could be said, sparked a small genre of non-fiction newsstand comics.

The original book “Adrift on an Ice Pan” by Wilfred Thomason Grenfell, was first published in 1909 by Houghton Mifflin Company.