Nelvana of the Northern Lights is an Inuk hero who protects people of the North. She was the first female Canadian superhero, who can turn invisible, travel at light speed, has heat vision, and is telepathic. Adrian Dingle created Nelvana and introduced her in Triumph Comics #1 (August 1941).

Nelvana is the daughter of a human woman and Koliak the Mighty, King of the Northern Lights. The gods were angry that Koliak chose to marry a mortal woman and have a child with her, so they took his physical form. He was still able to manifest his spirit as the Northern Lights and Nelvana drew from his power to stop super-powered Nazis that had invaded the area. Nelvana used the Northern Lights as a giant magnet to destroy the villains’ bombs, then she and her brother, Tanero, destroyed their fleet.

She learned about Glacia, a lost world hidden under the Arctic ice, and went there to help protect them from the giant Mammoth Men. Once that threat was neutralized, Nelvana stopped an attack on the Alcan Highway by literally riding in to battle on a polar bear to stop vicious attacking wolves.

When Felix Langdon was kidnapped because he had created an ice beam weapon, Nelvana and Felix’s brother Silas went south to Ontario to find him. They learned that a Nazi named One-Ear Brunner was holding Felix hostage and demanding the plans for the weapon. Brunner captured them as well, but Nelvana quickly defeated him and saved the brothers, then the weapon was used in Britain to take out Nazi robot bombs.

In her next big adventure, Nelvana was working in Ottawa using the secret identity of secret agent Alana North. Mountie Corporal Keene warned her that an emissary from the world Etheria came to demand that Earth radio broadcasts cease because they were driving people their crazy. In response to the warning, Nelvana made the little green man disappear and she had a large radio speaker built so that she could created an entry into Etheria.

Once she and Keene entered Etheria, they discovered that an invasion was being planned. They were captured and Nelvana was taken to their leader who used a magic stone to hypnotize her while beginning an attack on Glacia. Keene got the stone away from Vultor, which freed Nelvana so that she could use her powers to stop the Etherians.

In other stories she stopped an imposter posing as her to exploit Inuit fur trappers, she defeated a criminal inventor who had covered himself in indestructible plastic by melting it off him, and then she saved reporter Jim Blair who was held hostage by a criminal armed with an atom ray.