Tell me you can see the future without telling me you can see the future, I say to Allan Stanleigh. From his table in Artist Alley at the Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo, he scoops up two comic books and hands them to me. USNA—The United States of North America—and its sequel, USNA II. Stanleigh tells me the comics are from 2012 and 2015, based on a screenplay from 1988. “The pitch is Canada and the U.S. have amalgamated into a new country called the United States of North America, and the Canadians are not happy with the way it turned out, and so there’s a rebellion led by a former prime minister,” he says. OK then, wizard. Let’s talk about this. He tells me a friend and writing partner said one day, “I was taking a shower, and I had this vision, and the vision was these farmers with these tricked-out tractors and harvesters, armoured up with weapons, converging on these soldiers in a prairie field, and I saw these letters, USNA.” It begged the question, “What can we do with this?” “That’s the seed of The United States of North America," Stanleigh says. Stanleigh wrote USNA and USNA II with David Longworth—the friend with the shower vision—and Harry Kalensky. Dave Casey illustrated the first. Francine Delgado illustrated the second. But Stanleigh never expected to see similar subject matter appearing on his TV in 2025, except it’s not their yarn—it’s the news. Or for real-time events to be talking points while tabling at conventions. And yet... “Now, because of what’s going on with the United States and the nonsense from Donald Trump ... people are going, ‘Wow, it sounds like you wrote this recently,’” Stanleigh says. “People get really interested. They go, ‘Well, you guys are really ahead of the curve with this story.’ “A lot of the things that we talk about in the book are fairly prescient.” More than a few who’ve given USNA and USNA II a fresh or first look recently ask, “What happens next?” Enough that there is talk of revisiting the screenplay and of another sequel or a spinoff comic book. “We’re thrilled with the kind of reception that we’ve had—that was unexpected,” Stanleigh says. “You just don’t know when you do it. ... We just said, ‘We’re creators, so we’re going to create and let the chips fall where they may, and we’re confident that the work is good enough that it will find an audience.’ “And it did.” Stanleigh can still be found at the Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo until end-of-show Sunday. Information about the show can be found at https://fanexpohq.com/calgaryexpo/. Information about USNA and USNA II can be found at https://usna.ca/.
