Indigenous Comics and Graphic Novels: Studies in Genre

Donahue (Contemporary Native Fiction), an English professor at SUNY Potsdam, makes an impassioned case that Indigenous comics creators deserve more scholarly and commercial attention than they currently receive. The author highlights titles in the superhero, sci-fi, history, and experimental fiction genres that exemplify the concerns and talent of Indigenous authors, contending, for example, that Cole Pauls’s Dakwäkãda Warriors, in which Native American fighters defend Earth from extraterrestrial colonizers, pushes back against sci-fi depictions of Indigenous characters as “relics of pretechnological history” by instead imagining them as leaders of a technologically advanced future. Indigenous comics tackle political concerns rarely addressed by mainstream comics, Donahue argues, suggesting that the plan of supervillain Derek Thunder, created by writer Arigon Starr in her Super Indian series, “to turn the population of Leaning Oak into zombies by stripping them of their reservation accoutrements” dramatizes historical episodes of forced Indigenous assimilation. Elsewhere, Donahue examines how Katherena Vermette’s Girl Called Echo series, in which a teenage girl is “transported back into select moments of historical importance that... are explicitly connected” to her present, highlights “the continued importance of the past in the lives of contemporary Indigenous peoples.” Donahue’s astute analysis spotlights the creative ways Indigenous comics expand Native American representation while critiquing settler colonialism, and the many books discussed add up to a syllabus of sorts for the uninitiated. Comics enthusiasts should take note. (Apr.)