Alter/native Heroes: Native Americans, Comic

Books, and the Struggle for Self-Definition

C. Richard King
Washington State University

This article offers a critical interpretation of Native Americans as objects

and authors of comic books, an often maligned and neglected domain
of kids’ popular culture. The discussion begins with a brief overview of
the misappropriation of Indianness in North America. Against this back-
ground, it elaborates a three-fold analysis. First, it details the prominence
of anti-Indianism in comic books, particularly as means through which
Euro-American authors and audiences have made claims on and through
Indianness. Second, it unpacks the use of comic books to challenge and
question dominant misappropriations and misunderstandings. Third, it
examines the recent emergence of indigenous comics intent to use the
medium to reclaim Indianness. In conclusion, it proposes that the alterna-
tive uses of comic books should be read as an excellent example of a
larger movement for visual sovereignty in native North America.

Keywords: American Indians in popular culture; comic books; racism in popular culture;
sovereignty

In “X-Bodies,” Scott Bukatman (1994) made a perceptive observation

about the archetypal superhero of the late modern comic book: “Mutant bod-
ies are explicitly analogized to Jewish bodies, gay bodies, adolescent bodies,
Japanese- or Native- or African-American bodies—they are first and foremost,
subjected and subjugated and colonized figures” (p. 121). His assertion is as
powerful for what it says as what it does not. In his otherwise impressive
analysis of identity, bodies, and boundaries, Bukatman failed to fully unpack
the intersections of race, representation, and power in the genre, which by any
measure can only be described as hypermasculine and White centered. In
short, he missed an opportunity to ask two key questions about the cultural
politics of comic books: What might it mean socially and semiotically for
racialized groups (specifically American Indians) to be something more than
implied and actually included as heroic actors? Moreover, how might identity,
history, and community be reformulated when those analogized through
mutant bodies begin producing comic books?

Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies, Volume 9 Number 2, April 2009 214-223

DOI: 10.1177/1532708608330259
© 2009 SAGE Publications

214
 King • Alter/native Heroes 215

In this article, I want to open a critical dialogue about the way one art form,
comic books, has taken up Native Americans and in turn how Native Americans
have taken up that art form. My analysis will concentrate on popular titles, comics
used in furtherance of missionary and other social projects, and titles concerned
with and/or produced by indigenous authors and artists. Cornell D. Pewewardy
(2002) has rightly argued that this popular genre has relied on stereotypes, which
perpetuate dehumanizing images as well as anti-Indian racism. Building on his
groundbreaking work, here, I approach comic books as an exemplary instance of
the American imperial imaginary and as an important illustration of indigenous
efforts to refuse it and reimagine themselves. That is, whereas conventionally
comic books confine Native Americans within ugly images and partial histories,
increasingly American Indian authors and artists struggle to free indigenous peo-
ples and issue declarations of independence and self-determination. Indeed, as I
argue in what follows, comic books, which have long furnished the scene for
dominant claims on and to Indianness, now also showcase the significance of
counterclaims and projects intent on reclamation, opening a major front in efforts
directed at self-definition and self-determination in Indian Country.
After a brief introduction, outlining the broader context of misappropriation, I
review the uses and understandings of Indianness in past and present comic books.
Against this backdrop, I offer a close reading of indigenous titles, arguing they both
refuse common sense—(that is hegemonic) renderings Indianness—and clear a
space for the affirmation of other identities, histories, and theories. In conclusion, I
underscore the significance of finding and fashioning alter/native comic books.

Appropriation and Inappropriate Images

Recently, my daughter received an assignment from her fourth-grade teacher,

meant to help her better understand the history of the Pacific Northwest and its
native nations. Specifically, she was instructed to draw two portraits of an
American Indian, one from her vantage point and the other from an indigenous
perspective. She sketched the former with great care, crafting an image of a girl
about her age, adorned in fashionable, contemporary attire. When it came time
to start the second, however, she appeared somewhat puzzled, unsure how to
proceed. On further reflection, she remarked that she had no idea how to draw
an American Indian as she would draw herself. This small, fleeting moment
betrays the conditions and conceptions that have made it possible to produce,
circulate, and consume images of American Indians. For amusement, education,
and profit, artists and others take Native Americans and remake them as they
please. Removing Indianness—or better fragments of it—from context, they
reimagine American Indians in alien forms, according to Eurocentric ideals, fears,
and preoccupations. In settler states like the United States and Canada, audiences
and artists alike have understood this process of appropriation to be appropriate;
rarely have they consider the impacts of such images or sought the input or inter-
pretations of indigenous peoples.
216 Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies • April 2009

Consequently, popular expressive forms have reflected and reinforced this rep-
resentational regime. An increasingly sophisticated set of intellectual and activists
projects have interrogated representations of Native Americans in film and televi-
sions, museums, literature, sport, youth culture, toys, and tourism (Bird, 1996;
Deloria, 1998; Huhndorf, 2001; Kilpatrick, 1999; King, 2005; King &
Springwood, 2001; Moses, 1996; Singer, 2001; Spindel, 2000; Steadman, 1982;
Yellow Bird, 2004). All agree that almost from the start Euro-American individuals
and institutions have laid claim to Indianness, creating identities, histories, and
communities through false, dehumanizing images and accounts of indigenous
Others. In a very real sense, through these fantasies of the master race (Churchill,
1998), White men (and women) have fashioned the White man’s Indian (Berkofer,
1978), even as they also have sought repeatedly to eradicate embodied American
Indians. As a result, popular culture has anchored anti-Indianism, which according
to Elizabeth Cook-Lynn (2001) has four key elements:

It is the sentiment that results in the unnatural death of Indians. Anti-Indianism

is that which treats Indians and their tribes as if they do not exist. . . . Second,
Anti-Indianism is that which denigrates, demonizes, and insults being Indian in
America. The third trait of Anti-Indianism is the use of historical event and expe-
rience to place the blame on Indians for an unfortunate and dissatisfying history.
And, finally, Anti-Indianism is that which exploits and distorts Indian beliefs and
cultures. All of these traits have conspired to isolate, to expunge or expel, to men-
ace, to defame. (p. xx)

Anti-Indianism nicely encapsulates the ways in which images and ideologies

have diminished the power and humanity of indigenous peoples, simultaneously
excluding and exploiting, appropriating and erasing, silencing native nations
while celebrating fictional versions of them. This complex transit around repre-
sentation should encourage us to find more nuanced languages and approaches
that direct attention beyond the limits of stereotypes as inert images to significa-
tion (the practices of making meaning), that push toward embodied individuals
in Indian country who actively engage with modernity, often resisting and
reworking its projects, and that demand recognizing the centrality of (cultural)
imperialism to popular culture and the need to decolonize it.
Within this broader context, I take up mainstream and alter/native comic books.
Specifically, I read the former as powerful iterations of anti-Indianism that make
claims on native cultures and histories and the latter as moments of resistance intent
to interrupt and interrogate it through the assertion of self-determination and
self-definition.

Claims

Cornell D. Pewewardy (2002) has cataloged the stereotypes of American

Indians in comic books, arguing that the prevailing imagery in this genre, whether
subhuman or superhuman, has dehumanized them. Figures familiar from dime
 King • Alter/native Heroes 217

novels, Wild West shows, and films populate the fantastic worlds rendered by
Euro-American authors and artists. In fact, the uses and understandings of indig-
enous people in comic books appear to have done little more than recycle well-
worn clichés from these other expressive forms without reflection and often in the
absence of creative inspiration.
Historically, savagery delimited the horizons of indigeneity, conjured in both
its ignoble and noble variations; more recently, in the wake of the civil rights and
red power movements, publishers have distanced themselves from explicitly nega-
tive or demeaning images, which is not to say their positive visions do not in fact
dismiss or belittle, for in fact, they frequently do. Although often members of real
tribes, such invocation appear more about endowing characters with a particular
mystique for the predominantly White audience and less about elaborating the
humanity of the hero. Equally troubling, comics have difficulty reconciling the
survivance and vitality of indigenous peoples with its narratives, opting instead to
freeze them in time, either trapping them in the past or in a floating ahistorical
present. Although the warrior has proven most popular in both Western comic
books of the 1940s and 1950s and more recent superhero dramas, the mystic or
shaman has become increasingly common, correlating with the rise of the New
Age Movement and reborn natural native over the past quarter century. Finally,
whereas American Indian characters overwhelmingly have been men, women
have become increasingly common, frequently noteworthy for their hypersexual-
ity as well as their superpowers.
A few specific characters nicely illustrate these themes, while capturing the
changing uses and understandings of American Indian in comic books. In the
Golden Era, Little Beaver, sidekick of Red Ryder, much like Tonto to the Lone
Ranger, was a Native American youth, who provided comic relief, spoke in broken
English, and supported the White hero (Breen, 2005). Later in his own title, the
young American Indian proved himself to be more resourceful and self-reliant in
Western-themed narratives (Breen, 2005). At about the same time, Red Hawk,
emerged as an allied hero, a flying ace, who undertook suicide missions. Typically
bare chested and dressed in buckskin and feathered headband, Major Red Hawk
displayed his patriotism, exclaiming without irony, “the only good Jap is a dead
Jap.” He comes off, according to Kevin Breen, as “a red man killing yellow men for
the white man” (Breen, 2005). Also, in the 1940s, White characters like
Tomahawk and Firehair (a curvaceous red head) replayed a foundational
American myth, the White hero raised by Indians who prove themselves superior
to their native kindred (Breen, 2005). Then came Apache Dick, Coyote, Golden
Arrow, Rainmaker, Longhunter, Turok, Dinosaur Hunter, Warpath, Redwolf,
Talisman, Thunderscream, and Pow Wow Smith, stressing nature, bellicosity, the
mystical, the ancient. More recently, Thunderbird, with superhuman strength,
briefly supported the X-Men, before sacrificing himself for the greater good;
Shaman, father of Talisman, appeared as a medicine man on the superhero
team Alpha Flight; Puma, a mercenary who has battled Spiderman, is from an
218 Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies • April 2009

unnamed tribe in New Mexico and can transform into a humanoid–puma entity;
then, there is Ozark, a Lakota born in Arkansas, who obtains mystical powers
from a dying shaman; finally, Cheyenne Wylde, again from an unidentified tribe,
is the buxom embodiment of the warrior spirit, Wilde Knight, who regularly
appears partial or completely nude and battles the ills of contemporary America,
including corporate polluters and skinheads. In 2007, Vertigo Comics launched
Scalped, a series that reads like the Sopranos set on an archetypal reservation, beset
by social problems exacerbated by the violence and corruption imagined to be
associated with tribal gaming. Clearly, the more things change, the more they stay
the same.
Significantly, in light of the colonial context shaping popular culture in the
United States, representations of Indians and Indianness in comic books have
fostered the construction of identity, history, and community through the asser-
tion of claims by Euro-Americans. Artists and authors commonly lay claim to
Indianness. Elements of indigeneity become props in colonial discourse. For
instance, a recent five-part story in Daredevil centered around a deaf woman who
embarks on a vision quest to find herself and her destiny. Similarly, the ascription
of unspecified Indianness functions to claim indigeneity without the burdens of
tribal affiliation, cultural tradition, and historical struggles. Comic book images and
stories, moreover, make claims about Native Americans: more natural, bellicose,
spiritual, amodern, ahistorical, less than human, supplemental, inferior. Comics
make claims on Indians and Indianness. In many mainstream comics, this means
that indigeneity becomes an alternative to modern life, a difference in family orga-
nization, social history, and spiritual belief; in comics that proselytize to indigenous
peoples, like Dan Red Eagle Series, the narrative seeks to claim the souls of lost
American Indians. Perhaps, most importantly, comic books make claims through
American Indians, specifically to history and territory. The many historical narra-
tives offered in this genre work to explain (away) the conquest of Native America,
frequently celebrating the subjugation of indigenous peoples. Artist Jack Jackson,
who has “some Choctaw [blood] remotely,” for example, describes his calling in
terms of reverent connection:

I’ve often wondered why I have such a strong tie with the American Indians . . .
I think it all started when I was a kid, growing up in the country, being fascinated
with the land and finding in my childhood explorations reminders that people had
been there before. (Rosebud, n.d.)

Similarly, the author of the recent graphic novel, Screaming Eagle, stresses the
effort to “capture the vast beauty of a land never tamed by settlers,” yet forever
changed by “the conflicts between settlers and Native Americans” (“Screaming
Eagle,” 2003). In and through comic books, the imperial idioms anchoring
American understandings of indigenous peoples take material form, at once,
dismissing native nations while allowing appropriations of culture, practice, land,
and power.
 King • Alter/native Heroes 219

Declamation

Although corporate and independent publishers alike reiterate claims on

American Indians, their cultures, and their histories, the comic book has the
capacity to unsettle the images and ideologies that energize anti-Indian racism in
North American settler states. Peace Party offers the fullest expression of efforts to
question and declaim.
Launched in 1999 by Blue Corn Comics, Peace Party was the brainchild of
Rob Schmidt, a freelance business and technical writer in California, and has
featured the talents of a number of professional artists, including Ron Fattoruso
and Mike Kelleher. The title, published intermittently since its inception, swerves
away from many of the hallmarks of more corporate and commercial ventures.
Drawn in black and white, it endeavors to educate as it entertains, offering char-
acters and stories that stress cross-cultural understanding, common humanity,
nonviolence, and justice. It rejects hypermasculine heroes and plots, while refus-
ing the ethos and ideals of more Eurocentric comic books. Schmidt focuses his
series on a pair of cousins, Billy Honanie and Drew Quyatt, members of an
American Indian tribe modeled after the Pueblo Peoples. He uses the heroes to
capture the diversity of Native American life today: Whereas Honanie is a lawyer
who grew up away from the reservation in the city, Quyatt was raised on the
reservation and works as an artist. The two obtained their superpowers from a
mystical being following an automobile accident. Honanie becomes Rain Falling,
and as his name suggests can control the rain, whereas Quyatt becomes Snake
Standing and can call on animals for assistance. Unlike mainstream heroes, the
pair does not battle mutants, fantastic villains, or superhuman nemeses intent on
world domination; instead, they fight developers, polluters, and racist who seek
to exploit American Indians, their communities, and the natural world.
Throughout the series, Schmidt and his collaborators present Native American
life without the stereotypes and anti-Indianism so central to mainstream titles. In
fact, from their jobs and daily lives to their connection to their communities and
their fidelity to their heritage, the heroes centering the stories offer human por-
traits, which counter prevailing understandings. Consequently, at the very least,
Peace Party forces nonnative readers to rethink their assumptions, while offering
American Indian audiences, especially youth, powerful and positive alternatives
to dominant media images.
In Peace Party, Schmidt has not simply redrawn the Native American hero or
rewritten comic book narratives; he has taken a novel approach to the production
and circulation of a comic book devoted to American Indians. He has a Native
American advisory board, which reviews the content of each story and offers
feedback prior to execution. Blue Corn Comics devotes 10% of its profits to
charitable organizations in Indian Country. Moreover, in place of the standard
marketing tie-ins and glossy advertising, each issue features an extensive letters
section along with commentary on current events meant to critique anti-Indianism
and its pernicious affects. Beyond the comic itself, the publisher’s Web site
220 Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies • April 2009

(http://www.bluecorn.com) contains critical commentaries and running dia-

logues on anti-Indianism in the media, movie, and comic book reviews; discus-
sions of issues impacting Native Americans, including the struggle against
mascots, misappropriation of native culture, and Indian gaming; and analyses of
the history of indigenous peoples in the genre. In a very real sense, this virtual
supplement very effectively challenges popular claims on Indians and Indianness,
countering the racism and colonialism so central to them.
In content and form, then, Peace Party marks an important turning point in
the production of Indianness in comic books. It disputes prevailing uses and
understandings as it establishes new creative practices and cross-cultural process.
Together, all of these initiatives stress the humanity and equality of Native
Americans, highlighting pathways toward deeper understanding, while clearing
spaces that respect the dignity of indigenous peoples, advance dialogues, and
arguably nurture self-definition.

Reclamation

Over the past decade, Native American artists have seized on the comic book
not simply as a means to interrupt imperial idioms but also as a space in which
to reimagine themselves and reclaim their cultures. To date, at least two distinct
models of reclamation have emerged in Indian Country. On the one hand, indig-
enous authors and artists have turned to the genre as a means to tell stories, offer
commentaries, and provide new visions of Indianness. On the other hand,
American Indian tribes have found comic books to be a powerful way to recount
the past, celebrate culture, and invigorate the future.
In 2002, screenwriter Jon Proudstar (Yaqui/Mayan) and Ryan Huna Smith
(Chemehuevi) sold more than 10,000 copies of the inaugural—and sadly only
issue—of Tribal Force (Mystic Comics). Reminiscent of superhero groups like
the X-Men or the Avengers, Tribal Force brings together four Native Americans
to battle the federal government and protect tribal land: Earth (Basho Yazza), a
Navajo law student and incest survivor, who has the power to create warriors out
of rocks, Little Big Horn (Gabriel Medicine God), a mute unemployed Lakota
man suffering from fetal alcohol syndrome, who transforms into a magical war-
rior having superhuman strength with four arms and horns atop his head, an
Apache hero, Gan, who remains undeveloped in the first issue, and Thunder
Eagle, a mysterious Lakota, who calls the others together and possesses the abil-
ity to fly and command thunderbirds. Although drawn in style reminiscent of
mainstream comics, the alter/native heroes comprising Tribal Force are at once
more complex and real, facing many of the difficulties endured by American
Indians (sexual abuse, alcoholism, racism) and charged with a more meaningful
mission, one that resists the very acts of appropriation so central to the rendering
of indigenous peoples in this genre and the history of native nations in the
United States. Proudstar and Smith hoped the comic book would offer Native
American youth positive role models, allowing them to better negotiate living in
 King • Alter/native Heroes 221

two cultures. Unfortunately, when Mystic Comics went bankrupt, the two were
unable to place the title elsewhere (Manning, 1997).
More recently, Mark L. Mindt (Spirit Lake Sioux) has introduced Koda, The
Warrior (Pony Gulch Publishing). To date, he has published three issues, follow-
ing the young warrior and his companion Benny the Rez Dog, who can morph
into his alter ego Coyote when needed, on journeys and adventures throughout
Native America. Koda, which means friend in Dakota, does not battle villains
familiar from corporate comics but combats forces such as negativity and racism
and deals with real life issues, like domestic abuse, imparting life lessons to
readers. Mindt takes his inspiration and characters from tribal culture, believing
in the importance of “modeling positive American Indian values” (“Companion
Characters,” 2005). Such modeling includes reconnecting with culture and tradi-
tion at an early age: “Everyone has a right to know their heritage. Sometimes
adults begin later in life to their ancestors. I think young people should have the
same experience” (“Dakota Comic Book,” 2004).
American Indian tribes have also seized on the genre as part of broader
reclamation projects. The Chicakasaw nation commissioned Lane Morgan
Media to produce a four-part series entitled Chickasaw Adventures. The beauti-
fully illustrated series follows Johnny, a contemporary Chickasaw youth, back
in time, where he relives many of the key vents, such as Removal and the Battle
of Akia in Chickasaw history. The title strive to education Chickasaw youth
and Americans more generally about the native nations’ “invaluable history,
tradition, and culture” (http://www.chickasawadventures.com). Along with
the historical narratives, each issue also contains a brief synopsis of Chickasaw
heritage as well as a language game to teach Chickasaw language and a word
search related to the story. The Mille Laccs Band of Ojibwe undertook a
similar project, resulting in Dreams of Looking up. The opening preface lays out
the objective:

With Dreams of Looking up, we pay tribute to the generations that have gone before
us for the courage they have shown in maintaining our traditions and our culture,
and we are dedicated to showing the generations yet to come the same courage in
defending their traditions, their culture, and their rights.

Through a young Ojibwe girl, Mary, the comic book seeks to define and
defend the tribe. Mary and her uncle retell traditional stories and remember tribal
history as they construct a diaroma and recollect about the wise matriarch of the
family. The Ojibwe language is used throughout the text, which contains a glos-
sary at the end. Both of these projects hint at the power of this genre to allow tribes
to speak for themselves about themselves in their own words, encouraging creative
education as well as the reclamation of language, history, and tradition.
These comics represent an important initial effort to use popular art media to
reclaim Indianness from culture industries and imperial idioms content with, if
not intent on, circulating false, hurtful, and dehumanizing representations of
American Indians. They affirm indigenous identities and tribal traditions as they
222 Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies • April 2009

put into circulation new representations and alter/native heroes. The combina-
tion of word and image afford artists and tribes to define Indianness, taking it
back from those who profit on remaking it.

Conclusions

In this essay, I have sought to detail the emergence of alter/native heroes in

Native America. Although the vast majority of comic books produced in the United
States continue to make claims on, to, and through Indianness, perpetuating anti-
Indianism as they foster misappropriations and misunderstandings, hopeful inter-
ventions have taken shape within and beyond Indian Country. The comic book can,
as evidenced by the creative and critical work of Peace Party, open a space to question
dominant uses and understandings of Indianness. More importantly, comic books
increasingly provide American Indian artists and tribes a powerful vehicle through
which to reclaim heritage, identity, and language. Significantly, as the comic book
allows Native Americans reimagine themselves, defining themselves in their own
terms, while determining acceptable modes of address and the means of circulation,
they afford them important occasions to assert representational or visual sovereignty
(Weaver, 1997). Indeed, what is happening through comic books across Native
America can be read as a specific instance of what Scott Richard Lyons (2000) has
termed rhetorical sovereignty, which “aim[s] [to] recover the losses from the ravages of
colonization,” pursuing “the inherent right and ability of peoples to determine their
own communicative needs and desires . . . to decide for themselves the goals, modes,
styles, and languages of public discourse” (pp. 449-450). To be sure, audience size
and the childishness often associated with the genre may curtail its import; how-
ever, the genre holds great promise for efforts to declaim anti-Indian expectation,
while reclaiming the right to imagine alter/native selves and societies as well as
the languages, histories, and cultures that animate them.

References

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C. Richard King, associate professor of comparative ethnic studies at Washington

State University, has written extensively on the changing contours of race in post-
Civil Rights America, the colonial legacies and postcolonial predicaments of
American culture, and struggles over Indianness in public culture. He has recently
completed Native American Athletes in Sport and Society and special issue of
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture on Racialized Narratives for
Children (http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol10/iss2/).