Tribal Force, a new comic book created by two
28-year-old artists from Arizona, begins in the year 2006 with the
usual mega-battle: Native superheroes must stop the U.S. government
from bombing the Indians and confiscating their resource-rich
reservation land. But the story quickly becomes both more human and
contemporary. Basho Yazza, one of the comic book’s main characters,
is a Navajo law student, incest survivor and only a reluctant
superhero. Sure, she can create warriors from rocks but she’d
rather be studying in her dorm room. Little Big Horn, “a
trouble-making, bar-brawling, beer-drinking racist dude” feels the
same way. As “Gabriel Medicine God,” he is no longer mute – a
condition due to fetal alcohol syndrome – but the trade-offs
include sprouting a cumbersome pair of buffalo horns and having to
endure lectures from other superheroes.
Native
Force is the brainchild of Jon Proudstar, a screenwriter who says
his forebears are a mix of Yaqui, Mayan, Jewish and Latino, and
artist Ryan Huna Smith, who grew up on the Chemehuevi reservation
outside of Tucson. The two men say their comic, although full of
blood, guts and green ooze like most, tries to offer positive role
models for Native American youths who must learn to survive in two
cultures. They sold 12,000 copies of the first issue last summer
before their California-based publisher, Mystic Comics, went
bankrupt. The second issue is finished but waiting for another
publisher.
For more information, contact Jon
Proudstar, War Drum Studios, P.O. Box 5562, Tucson, AZ 85703-5562
(520/770-1344).
* Elizabeth
Manning
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Tribal force.
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