The Unlikely Adventures of the Grand Canyon's Own Superheroes (1995)

The Unlikely Adventures of the Grand Canyon’s Own
Superheroes
Bizarro Back Issues

223,217,31
Grand Canyon National Geographic Visitor Center
450 State Route 64 Grand Canyon, AZ, 86023
Phone: 928-638-2468
explorethecanyon.com
Comic Books Galore!
The ’90s were a
magical time for
the world of comic
books.
It became a
golden age of
PSAs and promo
comics, with
everything from
Christian
weightlifters to
national parks
being cast in super
heroic adventures.

223,217,31
Phone: 928-638-2468
That’s right, everybody: National Parks. It seems that
sometime in the mid-90s, someone decided that the
natural grandeur of the Grand Canyon was having a
rough time appealing to kids in an age of rap music
and Super Nintendos, and that’s what America’s
greatest landmark needed was a team of vaguely
heroic characters to explain why littering is bad:
Chasm and the Eco Squad!
Remember the Nintendo games?

223,217,31
Phone: 928-638-2468
Grand Canyon Comic Characters…
Created in 1995 by writer Mark Iacampo and
artist Doug Smedley, Jr., Chasm and the Eco-
Squad — which included Chasm’s psychic pet
falcon, Phantom — appeared in at least four
issues of Canyon Comics Presents. The short-
lived series was published by the Grand
Canyon Association, the nonprofit that runs all
the non-essential parts of the park’s tourist
industry, and as you might expect, it’s mostly
about all the cool stuff you can see if you visit,
and how you shouldn’t just throw your damn
soda can everywhere or toss rocks off the side
of the trail, you jerks.

223,217,31
Phone: 928-638-2468
The first issue is focused
almost exclusively on
Chasm alone — with a guest
appearance from Wolf and
his magic katana, which is
every bit as amazing as it
sounds — but the rest of the
crew doesn’t show up until
the second issue. It also tells
their origin story, and
considering that it’s
referenced in the first issue, I
got the idea that it might’ve
been meant to be put out
first, but that the Grand
Canyon wanted to do some
Avengers-style world
building with solo heroes
before they really expanded
into the National Park
Service Shared Universe.

223,217,31
Phone: 928-638-2468
Wouldn’t it be amazing if the Grand Canyon
had super-powers?
Either way, here’s the short
version: A bunch of people got
powers from Mother Nature,
represented here as an actual
ethereal woman who hangs out
at the Grand Canyon handing
out super-powers and magic
swords to local college students
and sketchy bounty hunters.

223,217,31
Phone: 928-638-2468
The powers themselves range from the
very specific to an arsenal of bizarrely
vague abilities that seem like they
might’ve been drawn out of a hat.
Rex, an amateur paleontologist, can
turn into any dinosaur, something that
helps out a lot in #4 when he gets sent
back to the Mesozoic to see the
Grand Canyon when it was just a
shallow river, but Chasm gets super-
strength, the ability to speak to
animals, a psychically linked bird pal,
and a crossbow that shoots “no
ordinary bolts,” which seem to be able
to do pretty much anything.
The World of Comic Books and Talking Animals

223,217,31
Phone: 928-638-2468
As for why, well, there
are bad guys out there
who are, for some
reason, just hell-bent
on destroying national
parks. There’s
Roughcutt, who has
chainsaws for arms,
Ardent, an arsonist who
“blazes with EVIL and
would see the whole
WORLD afire with the
hate that burns through
her own veins,” a yeti-
lookin’ dude named
Wylde Beest who is “a
creature of DEATH, the
embodiment of MAN’s
desire to KILL.”

223,217,31
Phone: 928-638-2468
The leader of the bad guys is a revenge-crazed maniac named Dr. Arachnid, and after
the Litterbug’s plan to turn the Grand Canyon into the Grand Landfill is dealt with in a
shockingly violent fashion, he takes over for the second half of the first issue.

223,217,31
Phone: 928-638-2468
Fun Stories of the Canyon…..
At its heart, this story is just a big PSA comic about some standard Dos and Don’ts of hiking at
the Grand Canyon: A couple of kids get understandably excited about seeing all the
glorious majesty that the park has to offer and run down the trail ahead of their parents with
no water on a very hot day, making sure to not talk to strangers and stay the hell away from
rattlesnakes.

223,217,31
Phone: 928-638-2468
I think we all learn a good lesson
about what we should do if we ever
visit one of our country’s most
beautiful wonders: Drink plenty of
water, stay with your parents, and
stick to the established trails.
If you don’t, you might end up
meeting a couple of actual
superheroes and watching them
fight a mountain lion with a magic
katana, and I’m sure nobody would
want that!

223,217,31
Phone: 928-638-2468
450 State Route 64 Grand Canyon, AZ 86023
Phone: (928) 638-2468
Group Reservations and Special Events
Phones: (877) 239-3235
Fax: (928) 638-2807
Email: group2@ngvccanyon.com
Visitor Center Hours of Operation
March – October Open 8 AM – 10 PM
November – February Open 10 AM – 8 PM

The Unlikely Adventures of the Grand Canyon's Own Superheroes (1995)

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

Viewers also liked

Viewers also liked (13)

Similar to The Unlikely Adventures of the Grand Canyon's Own Superheroes (1995)

Similar to The Unlikely Adventures of the Grand Canyon's Own Superheroes (1995) (20)

More from Grand Canyon Visitor Center

More from Grand Canyon Visitor Center (12)

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (20)

The Unlikely Adventures of the Grand Canyon's Own Superheroes (1995)