[Stuart Carlton]
Teach me about the Great Lakes, teach me about the Great Lakes, cha! Welcome back to Teach Me About the Great Lakes, a twice-monthly podcast in which I, a Great Lakes novice, ask people who are smarter and harder-working than I am to teach me all about the Great Lakes. My name is Stuart Carlton, and I am rolling solo today.

That's right, we have a mantle coming your way to talk about the most mantle of topics, which is a comic. Believe it or not, we're gonna be talking about a comic book, but you say to yourself, oh gosh, Stuart, a comic book, what does that have to do with the Great Lakes? And the answer is, well, you just wait and find out.

And so with that, I think we'll just jump right into it. Our guest today is Glenn Evans. He's a professor of graphic design at St. Clair College in Windsor, Ontario, where I get carded to go into the casino to cite being, I don't know, well over twice the age that I need to be. Glenn, how are things up in Windsor?

[Glenn Evans]
Honestly, today, they're great. It's nice and sunny out, and I'm stuck in an office, so, you know. There we go.

It could be better, but, you know.

[Stuart Carlton]
It could be better, but I think graphic design, you spend a lot of time hunched over, stuck in places. I don't know. Hey, I'm just happy that I've got a window in my office, because the most time we're in a basement.

Yep. That makes sense. Okay, so we're here to talk about, I don't even know how to describe this.

This is something, I don't even know how I found this. I was probably certain, but one day I was doing some Googling, as one does. I was Googling around, like DuckDuckGo, I guess.

I was DuckDuckGo-ing around, and I found this thing called the Great Lakes Avengers, and so I immediately texted it to our good friend, Carolyn, the full dog Foley, and I was like, we got to do an episode on this. This is the Great Lakes Avengers, and so you're a comic book guy. Maybe you can tell me, what is a Great Lakes, what is the Great Lakes Avengers?

Is this part of the regular Avengers?

[Glenn Evans]
No, no, not, not, not at all. You, if you've, if you went into the internets and started looking them up, you might have gone down a bit of a rabbit hole, to a degree. So, the Great Lakes Avengers as a whole is a weird concept, just in general, okay?

So, you are familiar with, obviously, the Avengers.

[Stuart Carlton]
I mean, in broadest terms, I'll be honest, I've not seen an Avenger or read one, but I'm aware they exist.

[Glenn Evans]
Yeah, I mean, like, you know, they're there, right?

[Stuart Carlton]
They assemble, right? That's what they do.

[Glenn Evans]
Yeah, 100%, yes, all the time. You've got, you've got the Avengers, who are, like, based in New York, right? So, they're the East Coast Avengers, okay?

And then, at some point in time, they kind of branched off, because, you know, as superheroes do, they need to cover more of the country, right? So, then you had the West Coast Avengers, okay? So, you had the two, you have the two sides, right?

So, the Great Lakes Avengers are kind of, kind of the joke, right? They're a comedic superhero team that was, like, you know, they don't really, they don't really protect the world. They just kind of protect the corner store, kind of thing, you know?

They're the lowest of the low tier. Their characters are silly. If anything, it's like, if you're familiar with Deadpool or like that, they kind of, like, have that, you know, break-the-fourth-wall kind of mentality.

So, it's a huge commentary on the comic industry, to a degree, and, you know, just silliness.

[Stuart Carlton]
So, it is like, it is like a winking thing. It's not just they're bad. Like, it's, yeah, okay.

[Glenn Evans]
Oh, it's winking, and they are, they're, yeah, they're just strange. They're weird. I mean, no, they're not bad, per se.

Okay. But they do have some very interesting abilities. They have some very interesting stories, and it's, there's a, there's a, there's a, you know, a lot of stuff that kind of goes with it.

They're primarily based in the American Midwest. So, around Milwaukee, okay? And then, later on in, later on in the story, like, further down, they actually shifted to being based out of Detroit.

[Stuart Carlton]
Okay. Detroit. Right across the river.

Yeah. Just north of you, for those of you who don't know. Just north.

In fact, that's going to be our Great Lakes Factoid of the day. I don't have the music handy, but Sandy, go ahead and put in the Great Lakes Factoid music here. It's a Great Lakes Factoid, a Great Lakes Factoid.

It's a great factoid about the Great Lakes. Detroit, Michigan is actually north of Windsor, Ontario. There we go.

Okay. So, they're based out of Detroit, and, and, and so, they have a lot of abilities, but let's, I want to get into who these Avengers are, and what precisely they're avenging, or what their powers are. But first, let's, at least to your, the extent you can, but let's, first, so, they're kind of winking.

Is it, is it campy? Kind of like, you know, Batman from the 1960s? Is it that kind of thing, or is it?

[Glenn Evans]
Well, yeah. There's, there's just some, there's just some silliness. Like, the, in terms of, like, that winking thing, so, in the later run, like, the more, more current ones, they, they basically, in every issue, they killed off one of the characters.

Because in comic books, no one stays dead, kind of thing. It was just every issue, someone got offed, and they just brought him back.

[Stuart Carlton]
They just brought him back, no problem. Got it.

[Glenn Evans]
Yeah. So, that was, again, part of the joke. You know, it's, like I said, it's, it's very much a, it's very much a joke to, to that sense, because they're, like, you know, trying to be something bigger, but they're not.

They've been sued numerous times, because they basically, actually, and this kind of comes down to their names, they, they're opportunistic to a degree. And they, they initially started off as the West Coast Avengers, and then they changed their names to the, the Lightning Bolts, because of the Thunderbolts. And then, another time, they changed themselves to the Great Lakes X-Men, and then the Great Lakes Champions, and then the Great Lakes Initiative.

So, several different Great Lakes, you know, focused.

[Stuart Carlton]
Right. Sounds like a real Great Lakes story. Okay, good.

Let's, so let's go in, let's go into some of the, the, the, some of your, are there, how many Avengers, how many regular Avengers are there? There's like, you've got your Iron Man.

[Glenn Evans]
Yeah.

[Stuart Carlton]
That's the Steel Man. Okay, so if we're talking about Lady of the Cloth, I don't know. Who are your regular Avengers?

[Glenn Evans]
So, your regular Avengers, if you want, like, the core kind of, yeah, yeah, yeah. MCU, you've got Iron Man, you've got Thor, Captain America, the Hulk, and Hawkeye.

[Stuart Carlton]
All right, so you've got about five core regular Avengers. I've actually heard of all of them. Hawkeye is the guy from Mission Impossible.

[Glenn Evans]
Jeremy Renner.

[Stuart Carlton]
There you go. Yeah. Okay.

All right. And Iron Man, as we know, is, that's Robert Downey Jr. Thor. Hemsworth.

That's a Hemsworth. Okay. Which one is, which one is the New Zealand dude?

Yeah, that's, oh wait, that's Loki.

[Glenn Evans]
No, wait, Tom Hiddleston. Is he English, or is he?

[Stuart Carlton]
No, no, I'm thinking of the direct, the Taika Waititi. There it is.

[Glenn Evans]
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Stuart Carlton]
Yeah. Is he an Avenger too? Or does he just direct some Avenging?

[Glenn Evans]
He just directs, he actually, he directed the second Thor, so that Loki, Thor, Love and Thunder, and Ragnarok.

[Stuart Carlton]
There we go. Perfect. All right. Listeners, as you can hear, I'm quite the, I'm just the person you want to tell me.

Okay. So, we got your regular Avengers, but that's not why we're here. How many, how many, what's the core Great Lakes Avengers crew?

[Glenn Evans]
So, there are five in the original lineup for the, for the Great Lakes Avenger. You have Mr. Immortal, and that one's pretty much on a nose. Right.

Okay. He is literally immortal. Nice.

Okay. And again, some of the names are a little, like again, very odd. You have Big Bertha.

I'll get into the, I'll get into what their powers are in a minute, but then you have Door Man, Flat Man.

[Stuart Carlton]
Flat Man.

[Glenn Evans]
Yeah.

And Dinosaur.

[Stuart Carlton]
Dinosaur. So, that's the, that's the female Avenger, Great Lakes Avenger.

[Glenn Evans]
And then, and then later on, like in the later run, Squirrel Girl actually gets added in. And somehow that one has become the most more, a little more popular.

[Stuart Carlton]
A little more popular. Squirrel Girl. It's a nice rhyme.

Okay. Great. All right.

Well, let's go to some powers. So, Mr. Immortal. Immortal.

[Glenn Evans]
Yeah. Pretty much what it says, right? Big Bertha.

They're a supermodel who can increase their body mass. Oh.

[Stuart Carlton]
Okay.

[Glenn Evans]
Yeah.

[Stuart Carlton]
Yeah. Like with the style, with the, you know, styles change over time.

[Glenn Evans]
It's just like, they just get, you know, they go from a, they just, and that was, that's the character that's probably the most quote unquote, I would say problematic, but not the greatest.

[Stuart Carlton]
I could see how that would, when did this even start?

[Glenn Evans]
1989.

[Stuart Carlton]
Okay.

So, I could see Big Bertha. Yeah. I could see, I'm Googling it now, but I'm doing it from, oh, okay.

Yeah. So, it's not a body positivity story. Okay.

[Glenn Evans]
No. And, and if you look down a little bit, and again, you can look on that one at how she decreases body mass is even more problematic.

[Stuart Carlton]
Okay. Well, if it's not farting, then I'm not going to tell my kid about it.

[Glenn Evans]
Yeah, don't.

[Stuart Carlton]
Okay. Okay. We'll just, moving on.

Then we have door man. Is that right?

[Glenn Evans]
Yeah. Door man. And they're more of a, like an infrastructure kind of thing. They, they are a door, like a, they can, they are a door through things.

[Stuart Carlton]
Through things. So like, if you have a wall and the door man goes, okay.

[Glenn Evans]
You go through door.

[Stuart Carlton]
Right. Then what, how's door man get out of the, I don't know.

[Glenn Evans]
Like I said, there's, there's some holes.

[Stuart Carlton]
Yeah. No, that's, yeah. Door man is the hole.

[Glenn Evans]
So that's, again, like they're, they're weird.

[Stuart Carlton]
Yeah.

[Glenn Evans]
Yeah.

[Stuart Carlton]
This is good. I like it.

[Glenn Evans]
Then you got flat man.

[Stuart Carlton]
Yeah. Flat man. Okay.

No, no, that's it. Flat man is a whole apartment.

[Glenn Evans]
No, only in the UK.

[Stuart Carlton]
That'd be in the UK Avengers, the, the Mediterranean, the English Channel Avengers. Right.

[Glenn Evans]
Yeah. So he's, he's basically literally flat. He's a, two-dimensional flat land, kind of like he's a piece of paper.

[Stuart Carlton]
Yeah.

[Glenn Evans]
He's, he's stretchy, but he's flat.

[Stuart Carlton]
Okay. And then there's Dinah, Dinosaur.

[Glenn Evans]
Dinosaur. And they are just a pterodactyl looking thing. Sure.

Why not?

[Stuart Carlton]
That's not the one that, no, that's not the one from the famous panel where it's, with tech like that, you could cure cancer, but I don't want to cure cancer.

[Glenn Evans]
No, that's Sauron.

[Stuart Carlton]
That's Sauron.

Oh, that's a, that's a different deal.

[Glenn Evans]
That's Spider-Man and Sauron. I, okay. Yeah.

I've just nerded out there. Cause I know that panel.

[Stuart Carlton]
Yeah, sure. I found that panel through, I think through a podcast called the Flophouse, which I used to listen to a lot, a little bit less now, but I use that. Actually I use that panel.

We'll put a link to it in the show notes. I use that panel on a lot of my talks, believe it or not. Like my academic talks.

I put that up there. The thing is, is it's got some guy who's got some technology and he's using it to turn, modify people's DNA or RNA. Actually, I think it is.

And somebody says with tech like that, you could be curing cancer. And the guy says, well, I don't want to cure cancer. Well, he's using it to turn people into dinosaurs.

That was key information, right? I don't want to cure cancer. I want to turn people into dinosaurs.

And I'm like, yeah, solid point, man. Why not both?

[Glenn Evans]
Totally tracks.

[Stuart Carlton]
But, but yeah. All right. Anyway, great.

All right. So we have these great late defenders and so they go around solving kind of piddling level crimes and getting sued. How did this, so, and there's two runs or more than two runs of this.

Do you like, well, some of the background here, were they just trying to expand out what Marvel did in the 1980s or?

[Glenn Evans]
Well, I mean, like I said, it started off as it started off kind of like as that joke where they were just, you know, kind of there, you know, and the, as, as things happen in comic books, sometimes a writer will take on a new story, it'll take on an older book just to try and breathe some life into it, to give it a little bit of a different, a different edge or whatever. And Dan Slott was the writer. So they basically started in 1989.

It was created by John Byrne. It was probably about, you know, a few different issues in their first appearances in the West Coast Avengers, from issue 46 to 48. And then they kind of just quietly went away, and then came back in 2005.

And like I said, Dan Slott wrote that one. And then, you know, basically, the joke there is that, you know, a team member died almost in every issue, and then it's undone. And it was just played off for comedy, you know, so it's literally there every once in a while, Marvel just kind of put in one of those books, that's just not so serious.

Yeah, sure. You know, because, because, you know, why not, you know, and that again, it's making it was honestly, a lot of it was making fun of the comic book industry, because they'd always kill somebody off, they'd always bring someone back. And then a lot of the whole suing thing comes came down to like, that whole idea, like, you know, brand, brand identity.

And like, you know, you can't do that, because you're not, you know, right, encroaching on my brand kind of thing.

[Stuart Carlton]
Sure. Also, I bet I bet some English professor somewhere is writing some some has written an interesting paper on the meta textual, blah, blah, related to this. But I'm not that person.

Okay, so this is kind of cool. So they did that. And, and sorry for not, well, maybe it's good for our listeners.

It's pretty common for comics. I know one guy who writes in comics, one guy I went to high school with a little bit, and he and he seems to like jump around from property to property, or he'll take over something for like, he did a run of Batgirl, I think.

[Glenn Evans]
Oh, cool.

[Stuart Carlton]
And then like, stopped. I can't remember it. Because again, I don't do but does that come in for like, they have runs with specific artists or writers?

[Glenn Evans]
Yeah.

[Stuart Carlton]
Okay.

[Glenn Evans]
I mean, I don't know all the business ends of the contracts and stuff.

But I mean, I've, I've seen writers, they'll write, you know, a couple issues with one publisher and one title, then they'll jump over another one just kind of ebbs and flows. And honestly, it makes better stories.

[Stuart Carlton]
Yeah. Just to get a little something fresh in here. All right.

[Glenn Evans]
Yeah.

[Stuart Carlton]
And so is this popular at all? Like the people like the Great Lakes Avengers?

[Glenn Evans]
Or is it just, it's kind of honestly, it's it's kind of like one of those, in my opinion, it's just kind of one of those underground kind of, they're there kind of jokes. They're not really popular, in the sense that like, oh, everyone's going out to rep their t shirt or anything, you know? Yet, but yet, well, I mean, but I mean, it's one of those things that, you know, people like oddball characters, and people like strange things.

And obviously, I mean, because of Deadpool, like people like being winked at in the story. And, you know, they kind of almost did it a little bit first sort of. But it's basically, you know, they're a parody team.

And honestly, they have shown up or started to show up a little bit more in more current culture in the sense that two of the characters have shown up in more modern, like MCU style, like television shows. So for instance, Mr. Immortal showed up for an episode in the She-Hulk TV show. Okay, that just that came out, what, two years ago, three years ago, I think.

Yeah. And again, it was just one of those ridiculous stories where he would constantly get married to someone and then jump out a window, and then marry someone else and then jump out of it. Like that was the kind of the gag and he was ended up being married to like nine different women.

So there you go.

[Stuart Carlton]
Right.

[Glenn Evans]
Right.

And then, and then, again, most recently, Wonder Man just just released on Disney Plus, I think a month ago. Oh, yeah. And Doorman is actually in Wonder Man.

[Stuart Carlton]
And that's on Disney Plus.

[Glenn Evans]
Yeah, it's on Disney Plus. And he's, he's a bot.

I haven't actually watched all of it yet. But I know he's a he's a bot, not a bodyguard. He's a literal.

It's it's funny because he is a literal doorman at a nightclub. So again, there it's tongue firmly planted in sheep.

[Stuart Carlton]
Oh, 91% on Rotten Tomatoes. There we go. But I'm a Metacritic guy, but it's 74 on Metacritic.

Not bad at all.

[Glenn Evans]
Yeah, it's in my list of things. As soon as I'm done my grading, it's like I think that's my that's my next one.

[Stuart Carlton]
Well, I can't wait to hear about it. So so listeners, if you want to go see some Great Lakes Avenging, you can start with Doorman, no Wonder Man, which contains Doorman, who is a doorman. Gotcha.

You can also go to Etsy right now, I think, and pick up a Squirrel Girl plushie. But there's only one left from Myth-Fit Creations. Anyway, that's very cool.

All right. We're going to take a quick break. When we come back, we're going to talk about other places you might be able to find these Great Lakes Avengers.

And then we have two critical questions with our guest, Glenn Evans. Welcome back to Teach Me About the Great Lakes, America's number one Great Lakes podcast. And right now we're talking about America's number one Great Lakes.

You know what? The world's number one Great Lake podcast. We're talking about the world's number one Great Lakes team of Avengers, the Great Lakes Avengers with Glenn Evans, a professor at St. Clair in Windsor, Ontario. So Glenn, so we know about this Wonder Man, but what are some other Great Lakes? Are there other must-see Great Lakes Avengers properties that we have to think about? I mean, check out.

[Glenn Evans]
Honestly, they've kind of just been peppered throughout the MCU or like even the comic books as a whole. They're not really out there right now. You're not going to find them as an active team in anything current, unfortunately.

You're going to probably see more Squirrel Girl than anything else. They have definitely made a huge, they've been the fan favorite in my mind. I know a lot of people, it's like that character just literally exploded and everyone, it's just a very fun character.

That character is probably the only one to have ever beaten Thanos. Oh yeah. Like there's a whole, there's a whole cosmic power thing going on with Squirrel Girl.

Like, you know, again, just kind of a funny little joke, but in terms of things that you can, let me see if I, I'm going to go back to my notes too, because I had to dig up a couple of things here, but there are, in terms of like, if you're looking for anything, Great Lakes Avengers related in terms of story arcs, I mean, you can find them in issues 46 to 48 in their first appearances from West Coast Avengers. Yeah.

So that's going to be a little bit easier to, you know what? No one's, no one's again, because there's the joke, no one's really actively hunting these down. They're very niche.

[Stuart Carlton]
Yeah. I'm at eBay now. It's fairly affordable.

[Glenn Evans]
Yeah. Yeah. So it's like, it's, it's very much a, okay, if you want it, you could probably find it in a really good quality and then just enjoy the insanity that it is.

So that's like the 89 run. Like I said, they appeared in about four issues and they don't kind of really reappear at least anything worthwhile until about 2005. And that was GLA misassembled.

[Stuart Carlton]
Misassembled. I gotcha.

[Glenn Evans]
Misassembled.

Yeah. So again, really leveraging up. Cause at that time there was the Avengers assemble, like whole story arc kind of thing.

And then they, it's basically the defining Great Lakes Avengers story. Okay. That's the one that a lot of people like really, really love.

It's, it's, it's a little more, again, more tongue in cheek than when they were first appearances. I was just kind of like, okay, they're like, you know, they're the little brother who follows you around and like the West Coast Avenger kind of thing. But this is, that's, that's the arc where a team member dies every issue and then it's brought back and it's brought back for comedic purposes, you know?

So it's all about satire. It's, it's very, like I said, tongue in cheek. And then again, in 2007, you got a Deadpool, a Great Lakes initiative, summer fun, spectacular.

They team up with Deadpool, constantly breaking the fourth wall. Again, just fun. If you like that stuff.

And then they actually had a series in 2016 and that was the modern revival of the Great Lakes Avengers. That one is where it's actually set in Detroit and they introduced the concepts of being, you know, sponsored by corporations and they deal with local hero problems. So we're not looking at, we're not looking at grandiose, like, you know, earth shattering things.

This is like, you know, hats out of trees kind of thing. And, you know.

[Stuart Carlton]
Encyclopedia Brown level mysteries.

[Glenn Evans]
Oh, one. Yeah. Very, very easy stuff.

And just kind of very, you know, if you were to put it at anything you, I would say that this version of the Great Lakes Avengers is the most likely office.

[Stuart Carlton]
Yep.

[Glenn Evans]
Okay.

So, you know, they're, they're looking at the camera, there's those jokes and it's just kind of, you know, mundane that way.

[Stuart Carlton]
Got it.

[Glenn Evans]
So.

[Stuart Carlton]
All right. I just realized, so we're 20 whatever minutes in and I didn't actually ask, is there any actual Great Lakes connection other than they're geographically here?

[Glenn Evans]
No.

[Stuart Carlton]
No. Okay.

[Glenn Evans]
No. So basically like the only, the only connection they really, again, have to the Great Lakes is that like you have your, and cause that's the, that's the joke, right? Cause the, the, the regular Avengers are in New York.

They're, they're high level stuff. They take care of the East coast, the West coast Avengers take care of, literally take care of the West coast. And then you got like, it's the Midwest.

[Stuart Carlton]
The Forgotten Coast Avengers. Yeah.

[Glenn Evans]
Well, exactly. It's like, well, yeah, you know, nothing happens.

[Stuart Carlton]
It's just vaguely affordable and pleasant enough.

[Glenn Evans]
Yeah. So, you know, it's, it's kind of, you know, low level stuff. Just, just fun.

[Stuart Carlton]
Well, Glenn, this is, this is amazing. Actually, this is everything I could hope for. And then maybe a little bit more, it's almost enough to get me.

I'm on eBay now. I'm probably going to just

[Glenn Evans]
I started hunting some down myself. Like when I got the, got the call, I had, I had one or two issues and like, I've got some parody stuff in my collection because I've been collecting for ever. So I've, it's prompted me to kind of dig up some stuff.

[Stuart Carlton]
This is good. I'll dig into it. And I'll keep my eyes peeled for like during, at some point, maybe during some of this Marvel stuff, they'll have a little, even just a sneaking reference at some point.

[Glenn Evans]
Oh yeah. They, they, they, they are definitely going to most likely come in. I would even argue or speculate that if you're going to watch Avengers Doomsday that comes out, you might even see them in there just as a background character. I don't know. I'm not, I'm not dropping anything. That's like, you know, I'm just totally speculating because, but if they're going to throw in a whole multiversal, you know, smattering of characters, why not?

[Stuart Carlton]
Yeah, sure. Yep. Excellent.

We'll keep our eyes peeled for that. But in the meantime, that's actually not why we invited you here on Teach Me About the Great Lakes. The reason we invite you on Teach Me About the Great Lakes is to ask you two questions.

The first one of this, if you could choose to have a great donut for breakfast or a great sandwich for lunch, which one would you choose?

[Glenn Evans]
Well, I mean, by default, it's going to be a maple.

[Stuart Carlton]
A maple? Is that a donut?

[Glenn Evans]
It's a, it will be, hey, it's like, you know, for down here, it's a maple glaze. Just that's the, you know, it's the Canadian thing.

[Stuart Carlton]
Okay. No, that's, that's great. And so I'm going to go back to Windsor.

I'm going to get carded to go into the casino, even though I think you can go in at age 17. And I am alarmingly close to three times that. I'm not.

[Glenn Evans]
Oh dear.

[Stuart Carlton]
Alarmingly close. But anyway, so I'm going to go.

I'm going to, of course, go to the casino. I will engage in gambling. I won't actually engage in gambling, but maybe there'll be a conference there.

Maybe I will engage. The point is this, when I'm done with all that, I'm going to go get a donut. I'm going to, that's it.

I'm going to be in the casino all night. I'm going to be winning money left and right. I'm going to go to the baccarat table and do that against like spies and international, whatever.

And then they're all going to say, shoot, you won, take our money. And I'm going to go out. I'm going to be fat stacks of Canadian cash.

And then I have a lot of loonies to blow on a maple. Where should I go to get one?

[Glenn Evans]
Well, there's really only one place around in Canada to get a good donut. Then that's Tim Hortons.

[Stuart Carlton]
Oh no, that's fine. I just won't get any coffee.

[Glenn Evans]
Oh no, no, no. I won't drink the coffee. Donuts.

I'll go with the donuts. I won't drink the coffee.

[Stuart Carlton]
Excellent. Well, we wouldn't be a Canadian guest without a Tim Hortons.

[Glenn Evans]
I kind of had to.

[Stuart Carlton]
No, it's no problem. Carolyn is out there right now. She's smiling and nodding and saying, I told you so.

Excellent. The other question we'd like to ask is this. What is a special place in the Great Lakes that you'd like to share with our audience and what makes it special?

[Glenn Evans]
For me, it's always been Point Pelee.

[Stuart Carlton]
Point Pelee. Tell me about Point Pelee.

[Glenn Evans]
So Point Pelee National Park, it is the southernmost tip of Canada and it is a great wilderness place that has some nice trails to walk. It's really nice to just kind of go enjoy the afternoon. There's some little beaches that are down there.

There's some great nature centers so you can learn about all the wildlife that is indigenous to the area and you get to just enjoy being outdoors.

[Stuart Carlton]
That is cool. I've actually never heard of it before. I'm looking at it now.

Look at it right there. Very cool. That is the southernmost point in Canada.

Oh yeah, that's south of Detroit, south of Ann Arbor.

[Glenn Evans]
South of everything.

[Stuart Carlton]
South of everything. It's kind of near Pudding Bay, home of our friends at Ohio Sea Grant, but not that close to that. Excellent.

Well, I hope you get some time out there during the beautiful season and if there's more Great Lakes Avengers news, you better believe that we will have you back on to come talk about it.

[Glenn Evans]
I'll email you.

[Stuart Carlton]
There it is, yes. Good, because you probably have to. I'm unlikely to see Doomsday, but maybe I will.

Maybe I will. One never knows. It seems like a lot to get started at this point if I've missed the first 115 of these, but you never know.

You never know. Life is long. Well, Glenn Evans, professor of graphic design at St. Clair College in Windsor, Ontario. Thank you for coming on and teaching us all about the Great Lakes.

[Glenn Evans]
It's Great Lakes adjacent.

[Stuart Carlton]
Yeah, vaguely. Only for marketing.

[Glenn Evans]
I'm glad to have been here. Thank you for having me.

[Stuart Carlton]
Well, there you go, listeners. I don't know what to make of that. You know, the only comic I think I've ever read was one called Bayou Billy.

No, I've read two comics. Bayou Billy, it's just not my deal. Whatever.

Comics, I don't have a problem with them. Comics are great. I just, I don't find myself appreciating the artwork and so I just churn through them for the plot and that's not really the purpose of the medium or the art form.

So it's not something I appreciate. But that said, I enjoyed reading about them and discussing about them. So this was cool.

The one that I have read is Bayou Billy was a comic that came out in, I don't know, the late 80s, early 90s. I, of course, grew up in the 1980s and 90s in New Orleans and so Bayou Billy was a big deal for all like three or four issues that it lasted. So I've got those.

They're bagged and boarded, ready to roll. And there was also an NES game, Bayou Billy. I don't fully remember it, to tell you the truth, but I know that I rented that for a major video on Pretend Street.

I definitely remember that. Teach Me About the Great Lakes is brought to you by the fine people at Illinois Indiana Sea Grant. We encourage you to check out the cool stuff we do at iiseagrant.org and at iliseagrant on Facebook, Blue Sky, YouTube and other social medias. Our senior producer is Carolyn Foley and Teach Me About the Great Lakes is produced by Megan the Lake Lover Gun, Greenie Miles and Natty the Hose Morrison. I don't even remember what that nickname means. Sorry, Natty.

What is the hose? I'll have to go back to the baguette horn. Ethan Chitty is our associate producer and fixer and our coordinating producer is Ava Hale.

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