Reviewed by Jean Sébastien, Collège de Maisonneuve
James J. Donahue. Indigenous Comics and Graphic Novels: Studies in Genre. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2024. 198 pp. US $25.00 (Paperback). ISBN: 978-1-4968-5050-8. https://www.upress.state.ms.us/Books/I/Indigenous-Comics-and-Graphic-Novels
There has been, especially in the last decade, an important growth in the number of Indigenous works in graphic storytelling. James J. Donahue’s book is a significative academic work on Indigenous storytelling in the comics medium.
The book is of interest to both Indigenous readers who will learn about stories from artists from a variety of nations and non-Indigenous readers opening up to a decolonial perspective. The book offers politically-charged readings of works by many Indigenous leading artists who have worked in the medium of comics: Lee Francis IV, Gord Hill, Weyoshot Alvitre, Michael Yahgulanaas, eelonqa K. harris, David A. Robertson, Katherena Vermette, Kyle Charles, Cole Pauls, and the late Jeffrey Veregge, who passed away in 2024.
Donahue delves into a variety of books and covers different genres: Indigenous futurism, biofictional and historical narratives, experimental works, and the genre native to the comics medium, superhero stories. There are moments in his book where the fan meets the academic. For instance, when he discusses the self-published first issue of S9: Sequoyah 9 (2019) by Richard Crowsong, Derrick B. Lee, and Tristen Oakenthorn, he quips: “I am sure I am not alone in hoping this series can continue, given its exciting intervention into the science fiction genre” (p. 73).
Donahue’s work aligns with Mark C. Jerng’s criticism of race in Racial-Worldmaking: The Power of Popular Fiction (2018) and with Gerald Vizenor’s now classic book, Indigenous Survivance (2009). Donahue situates Indigenous and African futurisms as counterpoints to much of classic science fiction where the fictional worlds that were imagined were often post-racial. In Donahue’s reading, “the graphic novelists producing science fiction narratives all confront--to varying degrees--the machinery of settler colonialism while rejecting the narrative that would suggest that Indigenous peoples are not part of our technologically advanced future” (p. 59). As a basis to his take on Indigenous futurism, Donahue offers readings of five short stories from the Moonshot anthologies (2008-2015), the self-published comic S9: Sequoyah 9 (2019), and Cole Pauls’ Dakwäkãda Warriors (2019). Indigenous survivance is a main thread. Cole Pauls makes survivance explicit as the characters in the book speak a mix of English and Southern Tutchone. Survivance also implies a different relation to the environment as these technologically advanced Indigenous peoples are shown to have developed a lifestyle respectful of the natural world. Donahue also stops at stories in which the presence of ancestors is said to be felt and discusses non-linear time.
The biofictional and historical narratives looked into by Donahue all work to connect the present to the past. Four bodies of work are taken into account here: Katherena Vermette and Scott B. Henderson’s Echo; David A. Robertson’s Tales from Big Spirit series of biofictions with various artists; Lee Francis IV and Weyoshot Alvitre’s Ghost River: The Fall & Rise of the Conestoga, and Chag Lowry’s Soldiers Unknown. In many of Robertson’s stories, as is the case in Vermette’s Echo, characters from the present day enter into contact with long deceased characters, either by appearing in that past or the character seemingly appearing to them in their environment or, more classically, in dream state. At times, a marker of the past is found in the present and links the two characters. Each of the Tales from Big Spirit book is a short 28-page story in which a youth learns about the past. Echo, originally published in four volumes and later in a trade paperback edition, offered the author more possibilities in the representation of continuities between past and present. In Vermette’s story, Echo, the main character (not to be confounded with Marvel Comics’ character of the same name), travels at different times in the past 250 years. She witnesses major events of Métis history, and all the characters that she interacts with are her ancestors, some of which she meets at different ages of their lives. The connection between past and present here also resonates for the characters from the past as they learn through Echo’s visits that the Métis nation will survive. Ghost River and Soldiers Unknown also connect different times through a recurring motive, that of a wampum belt in the former and a design found on a regalia in the latter. In Ghost River for instance, the wampum belt is presented early on in a two-page spread as it is being woven. It appears again in the story, ripped, with images of the massacre against the Conestoga. At the end, as the story is being told to a contemporary audience, the belt is mended.
Of great interest is Donahue’s criticism of there being only certain permissible narratives if an Indigenous author wants to be published. He borrows this notion from Christopher Gonzalez, who made the argument about the expectations of publishers and, to a certain extent, the public, about being Latinx. For decades, stories were expected to follow the road opened by N. Scott Momaday and other writers of the 1970s who are often referred to as the Native American Renaissance. If “permissible” books were all to be like this, they would all feature spiritual traditions and political reclamation. Donahue offers an in-depth look at two more experimental artists. In the case of Michael Yahgulanaas, he delves into similarities in the artist’s installation work and in his graphic narratives which Yahgulanaas refers to as “Haida manga.” In both, the artist calls upon the spectator or reader to interact with the materiality of the artwork or the book. Yahgulanaas’ Haida manga are also interesting in their design as the panels are neither the traditional rectangles of western comics and manga, nor the more irregular panels that artists have played with but are defined by a formline mural. Yahgulanaas’ design process for a story moves between this mural and cutouts from it, each one a page. The formlines can roughly be understood as the equivalent of the gutter. However, rather than being an empty space, they are sturdy material with which the characters in the panels can interact. In a very different manner, eelonqa K. harris employs a kind of formal experimentation meant to emphasize the art of a Sto:lo community. The panels in her graphic novels are photographs of scenes with small avatars of actual people created in 3-D printing and dressed in miniature clothes.
In addition to the 3D-printed avatars representing actual Indigenous individuals, harris also includes photographs of the artwork created by one of those individuals (whom she credits in a textbox on the bottom of the page), highlighting the artistic creations of her community members. In doing so, harris subtly suggests that these various community members are people with various skills and talents that also deserve recognition, another means of artistic cocreation (p. 140).
A chapter is devoted to superhero comics. If some superheroes more or less fall within the expectations of the genre, Super Indian and Kagagi, both created in 2011, or Captain Paiute, created in 2015, others transgress permissible narratives. Donahue devotes one of his readings to Stephen Jones’ My Hero (2017), a metafictional superhero story about a kid who can’t draw creating his own superhero. The youth is trying to come up with a full story of Staranger, a superhero of extraterrestrial origin. With the character only in outline, designed for transference, any reader can imagine oneself as this hero. Jones’ book serves as a good example that “no one racial population owns the right to create a superhero from outer space” (p. 48).
In the conclusion to his book, Donahue discusses other possible approaches to Indigenous comics, for instance, an in-depth look at publishers—Indigenous-owned or -managed versus large settler publishers. Another possibility that he doesn’t account for would be to read the works by taking into account the genres in which a specific nation classified their stories and recently published comics and graphic novels.
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