At the Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo, Allan Stanleigh’s table in Artist Alley feels less like a retro stop and more like a glimpse into a chilling present. His comics USNA—The United States of North America (2012) and its sequel USNA II (2015), originally based on a screenplay from 1988, are suddenly resonating in a way he never anticipated.
The story imagines Canada and the U.S. merging into a single nation, with Canadians rebelling against the outcome. “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,” Stanleigh explains.
The idea stemmed from a vivid “shower vision” his co-writer David Longworth had—of armed farmers clashing with soldiers in prairie fields, a powerful image that launched the entire USNA universe.
Fast forward to 2025, and real-world tensions in North America, fueled by political unrest and populist movements, are making Stanleigh’s decades-old fiction eerily relevant. “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,’” he says.
The sudden surge of interest has Stanleigh and his creative team contemplating a return to the world of USNA, with talks of revisiting the original screenplay and possibly creating another sequel or spinoff comic.
“We’re thrilled with the kind of reception that we’ve had—that was unexpected,” Stanleigh says. “We just said, ‘We’re creators, so we’re going to create and let the chips fall where they may.’ And it did.”
Stanleigh will continue meeting fans and talking about the prescient world of USNA at the Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo through Sunday.
