Canadian cartoonists have been active since the earliest days of cartooning, in both English and French, the two official languages of Canada.

Canadian cartoonists are prominently active in every area of comics and cartooning, from editorial and gag cartoons, to comic strips, comic books, graphic novels and webcomics.

While earlier examples of Canadian comics tend to imitate American and British examples, over the course of the 20th Century, Canadian cartoonists have cut out niches of their own, as in Hal Foster's pioneering adventure comic strip work on Tarzan and Prince Valiant;^[1] in Lynn Johnston's For Better or For Worse, readers follow the characters as they grow older and deal with a variety of issues, unusual for the gag-a-day comic strip world of the latter 20th Century; Dave Sim's Cerebus tackles epic-sized themes over the course of a 6000-page, self-contained story, while providing new publishing models in the forms of self-publishing and graphic novel collections.

John Wilson Bengough and his Puck-inspired humour magazine Grip (1873–1892) was a popular forum for political cartoons in the earliest decades following Canadian Confederation in 1867.^[2] At the start of the 20th century, Albéric Bourgeois brought what may have been the first continuing comic strip to use word balloons to Canadian newspapers when he created Les Aventures de Timothée in 1903.

In 1938, Toronto-born artist Joe Shuster, along with American writer Jerry Siegel, released Superman to the world, kickstarting the fledgling comic book industry while popularizing the superhero genre. During World War II, Canadian superhero comic books got their start when Adrian Dingle debuted Nelvana of the Northern Lights in Triumph Adventure Comics, one of the "Canadian whites", comic books with colour covers and black-and-white interiors that were common in Canada during the war years.^[3]

Canadians made a bigger impact on alternative comics later in the century. Dave Sim's 6000-page epic Cerebus pushed creative boundaries with Sim pushing a model of self-publishing as an ideal. Chester Brown had a broad influence breaking taboos in his Yummy Fur series, and was part of an autobiographical comics trend in the 1990s that included Seth and Julie Doucet. Graphic novels have since become more prominent, and webcomics have also become a popular outlet for Canadian cartoonists.

The Joe Shuster Awards considers eligible anyone who has Canadian citizenship (regardless of residence) or permanent residence.^[4] The following list reflects that inclusive philosophy in choosing whom to consider "Canadian".

JS HoF = year of induction into the Joe Shuster Hall of Fame

CC HoF = year of induction into the Canadian Cartoonist Hall of Fame

• Canadian comics
• The Great Canadian Comic Books
• Québec comics

• Hirsh, Michael; and Loubert, Patrick. The Great Canadian Comic Books. Peter Martin Associates, 1971. ISBN 0-88778-065-2
• Bell, John. Invaders from the North: How Canada Conquered the Comic Book Universe. Toronto: Dundurn Press, 2006. ISBN 978-1-55002-659-7
• Bell, John. Guardians of the North: The National Superhero in Canadian Comic-Book Art. National Archives of Canada, 1992. ISBN 0-662-19347-4
• Bell, John. Canuck Comics: A Guide to Comic Books Published in Canada. Matrix Books, 1986. ISBN 0-921101-00-7