Ok, so you're probably wondering: "Who the fuck is Johnny Canuck?" Well, he's the personification of Canada, like Uncle Sam is the personification of the United States. Back in the late 1800s, he was used in political cartoons and shown as honest and stalwart but naive.

By the time World War 2 came around, Johnny Canuck sprung into action as one of the first Canadian superheroes. He was an adventurer extraordinaire: a spy, a pilot and a foot soldier during the war, he managed to beat the crap out of Hitler on three non-consecutive occasions. Sure, most heroes of the time took a swing at Hitler, but Johnny Canuck had Nazi-punching fever and like potato chips, he soon learned that once is not enough.

Flying Fox is Canada's answer to Batman, or Zatara depending on how you look at it. In 1942, his tribe, the fictional Quintonta people, was attacked by Nazis while close to the Alaskan border. After his father Red Deer fought back and was killed, young Flying Fox decided to attempt to beat the goose-stepping sons of bitches to death with his bare hands, but was no match for the handgun and he too was killed.

Death was no match for Flying Fox, who took the opportunity to speak with his ancestors, who instructed him to help defeat the Nazis once and for all. Before he could say "that's great, but I'm already dead" the hero was resurrected by his grandfather. Aided by a mystical pouch that provided him with spell components and a cape that let him fly, Flying Fox defeated the local Nazi menace before joining the Young All-Stars and winning the award for most time spent topless by a superhero.

Victor Stone is the kid who should have been taken away from his parents at a young age. Both were scientists at S.T.A.R. Labs who used Victor as a guinea pig in intelligence-boosting experiments. Unfortunately that wasn't enough and during 'take your kid to work day', a dimensional transporter malfunction allowed a monster to break into their dimension, killing his mother and nearly killing him. In order to save his life (read: keep him alive for the purpose of a scientific paper), Victor's father not only got rid of the monster but outfitted Victor with a series of cybernetic prosthetics that forever changed his appearance and made him an outcast (we can assume at this point that he was also the subject of a psychological experiment to determine the effects of isolation and persecution on a young man).

Later Victor gave himself the moniker of Cyborg and joined the Teen Titans, a post that he continues to hold up to the present and approaching middle-age.

If you don't know who Wolverine is, go down to the store and pick up a random comic from Marvel. Chances are, he's in it. Wolverine is an anti-hero who wins the award for most prolific memberships in superhero organizations. In the 1980s, he emerged as the alpha-brooding hero who set the standard for superhero characterizations for nearly a decade.

There's not too much else I can really say about Wolverine except that he's consistently one of the most popular heroes in the Marvel line-up and he's also regularly featured in the upper echelons of 'Top comic book character' lists (like this one).

Deadpool is the Merc with a Mouth. Originally a mercenary working for the Canadian government, Wade Wilson discovered that he had cancer. The cure? An implantation of Wolverine's healing factor. The healing cured his cancer, but left Wade permanently scarred. More seriously, it destroyed his mind and left him with a form of super-insanity so powerful that he's effectively immune to telepathy.

Deadpool wins our hearts because he's not only a competent superhero (when he wants to be), but also because a world-class jackass, resorts to violence on the thinnest of pretexts and he has the ability to breach the fourth-wall at whim.