Northguard

Northguard is a fictional superhero, created by Mark Shainblum and Gabriel Morrissette, who originally appeared in Canadian comic books published by Matrix Graphics Series.

Northguard is the costumed identity of Phillip "Phil" Wise, a video-store manager and comic-book enthusiast who was enlisted by Progressive Allied Canadian Technologies (PACT) Corporation to help them combat an extreme right-wing terrorist organization known as ManDes (an abbreviation for manifest destiny).

Wise was contacted when Karl Manning, the original wielder of the Uniband, was killed in a terrorist attack.

These stories were collected and republished by Caliber Comics in 1989 as the trade paperback Northguard, Book One: Manifest Destiny.

The "Manifest Destiny" and "ManDes Conclusion" arcs were collected and republished by Chapterhouse Comics in 2015 as the Northguard Compendium.

Begun in the anthology series New Triumph, the Northguard series centred on the misadventures of Philip Wise, a young Montreal resident of European Jewish ancestry, who had found himself caught up in the efforts of a private corporation's senior staff to defeat a conspiracy known collectively as "ManDes" (from the term "manifest destiny") to force Canada and the United States to merge under a quasi-Christian theocratic dictatorship with elements borrowed from white supremacist doctrine.

Wise was recruited as the corporation's field agent as a result of the murder of another operative, who was the only one neurologically equipped to use a unique energy weapon, called the "Uniband", built as an offshoot of applied physics experimentation.

Successfully defeating an assassination attempt on the Premier of Quebec in his first mission, Wise subsequently found himself and his newfound colleagues stumbling through several misadventures, accidentally inspiring a martial arts/dance instructor whom Wise became acquainted with to create the identity of Fleur de Lys.

These misadventures led ultimately to the defeat of the ManDes conspiracy and the destruction of the Uniband, effectively leaving Wise without any technological advantages.

The whole ManDes affair was covered up at the insistence of the Canadian and American governments, allegedly for reasons of preserving cross-border trade.

Dr. Ron Cape theorized that the Uniband warps the fabric of spacetime and is therefore not bound by the laws of physics as we understand them.

Once plugged in, the ends of the device iris open allowing Wise to slip the Uniband onto his upper arm.

This manifests itself in a series of ascending arrhythmic pulses in the device's power curve, all congruent to his mental state.

PACT outfitted Phillip Wise with a wireless two-way communications device resembling a hearing aid and worn behind his ear.

The device was powerful enough to establish a clear link between the PACT headquarters in Vaudreuil and Wise's home in Montreal, 44 kilometers away.

In 1995, Canada Post Corporation released a collection of postage stamps celebrating "made-in-Canada" superheroes including Fleur de Lys.