Past superhero depictions of Native American or Native American comics followed the same list of marks: mystical powers, the ability to communicate with animals, and the headdress or loincloth suit.
“Bad studies have been done. They had just come out of television and movies,” said artist Jeffrey Veregge of the Port Gamble S’Klallam tribe in Washington state. One of his most important court cases is that “traditional heroes everywhere had genuine costumes,” while Aboriginal characters were not well represented.
Growing up reading comedians in the land of his Seattle outdoor tribe, Veregge has become more associated with non-native heroes like Iron Man and Spider-Man. Now ‘Live a Dream’, overseeing an e-book by Marvel comedians about Aboriginal stories told through Natives.
Marvel Comics announced this month that it has brought a combination of Aboriginal artists and writers to “Marvel Voices: Indigenous Voices 1”, an anthology that will review some of its local characters. It is scheduled for release on Native American History Month in November.
Aboriginal comic book fans hope it will be a new beginning for the original performance in the value of conventional superheroes. Marvel says the assignment was planned long before the country recounted racial injustice, leading to change, adding that the Washington NFL team abandoned their Redskins mascot decades ago.
“This corrects a long-standing challenge,” Veregge said of the e-book project for comedians.
Veregge, who designed more than a hundred covers for Marvel and other e-book publishers by leading comedians, a selection of herbs to lead the project. In February, he finished an exhibition at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian in New York. “Of Gods and Heroes” his portrayal of Marvel protagonists such as Black Panther and Thor, incorporating encouraged shapes and lines through tribal art styles.
“You need to make sure other people recognize the characters, but I also need them to see that it’s an Aboriginal voice,” Veregge said.
Lee Francis IV, owner of Red Planet Books and Comics in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and independent editor of Aboriginal comics, helped locate promising Aboriginal artists to enroll in the Marvel anthology. Francis, organizer of an annual Comic Con descending from Laguna Pueblo, said the comics are not far from the narrative traditions of some tribes.
“I don’t need to speak on behalf of all Aboriginal people, but I think the visual acuity and sense of storytelling fit perfectly into the comic environment,” Francis said. “Not only words and writing, but this visual narrative that refers to our own stories and petroglyphs, rock art, connects it with our ancestors.
Racist stereotypes discovered their position in the middle because comic artists trusted what they saw in films and TV westerns, Francis said. And before the West, the political cartoons of the 1700s demonized or ridiculed the natives.
For so long in the comics, Native Americans were the villain or stoic sidekick. It’s frustrating when a genuine “Indigenerd” sees that “everyone gets spandex and you comb your hair,” Francis said.
Dezbah Evans, meanwhile, has met with Marvel’s “X-Men”. The series about young mutants suffering hard as they are persecuted through society turns out to fit into the way the United States treats indigenous communities, said Evans, a 24-year-old e-book comedian and cosplayer from Tulsa, Oklahoma, which is Navajo, Chippewa and Yuchi. .
She is eagerly awaiting Marvel’s e-book, as she will introduce one of her favorite mutants: Danielle Moonstar, a Cheyenne heroine who evokes illusions about people’s fears.
“It’s very rewarding that they’re my peers, they’re other people I see at conventions and have had sex with,” Evans said of the writers and artists who created the book. “I’m proud that they’ve succeeded at that level.”
She hopes this will be the beginning of an expansion of the comic book world, just the Marvel universe. Traditional pop culture still has many more Aboriginal than female male superheroes.
“Every time I think of super aboriginal women, they’re all moms, my mom, my grandmother. They are the first heroes of our lives,” Evans said. “It would be attractive to have a fashionable Aboriginal mother alive and to be a superhero.”
Verland Coker, 27, a fan of Muscogee Nation (Creek) e-books in Oklahoma, says Marvel’s effort is a step in the right direction, but says comedians can go further.
It’s rare, for example, to see Aboriginal superheroes speaking in their own language. Incorporating a language would be an opportunity to teach other non-Indigenous people and announce tribes, many of whom struggle to maintain their language for younger generations, said Coker, who lives in Albuquerque.
“My fear is that infrequently we can take a look at the monolith myth, and while any representation is excellent, we can only decide on some tribes,” Coker said via a text message. “I’d like to see more Aboriginal artists in conventional products.”
This would probably not be far away, according to Veregge’s reception. When he meets young people in the reserve where he grew up or at the conventions of comedian e-books, his parents like to highlight his paintings for Marvel. It’s an interaction you take seriously.
“I can tell the children, “I grew up on this reservation. You can do it too, ” said Veregge.” I know who I represent. Array… I use them wherever I go.
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Tang reported from Phoenix and is a member of the Breed and Ethnicity team at the Associated Press. Follow her on Twitter at https://twitter.com/ttangAP.
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