Framing Storytelling: Indigenous Graphic Narratives

W HEN TA-NEHISI COATES WROTE THE REBOOT OF MARVEL Comics’s Black Panther, literary and comics circles alike awarded it much acclaim; the incredibly popular first issue sold out of its first print run in April 2016. Black Panther was part of a much wider refreshing of the Marvel Comics universe that included another character with a color-plus-animal appellation, Red Wolf. Emerging in the 1970s, Red Wolf’s character appeared in multiple iterations and storylines, all featuring reductive, stereotypical depictions. When he was refreshed in 2015, the promotional material, even as it heralded an “All-New, All-Different” comics universe, unfortunately depicted Red Wolf with no appreciable differences from his 1971 debut. He was still a loincloth-wearing warrior, imagery critiqued by James Leask for inaccurately representing typical attire for the character’s nineteenth-century Cheyenne background. This revamped Red Wolf did not fare much better in the issues themselves. Commentators hoped having Port Gamble S’Klallam artist Jeff Veregge on the illustration team would help the comic better represent Native Americans. Veregge’s striking, Suquamishinspired cover art for the series could not rescue it from dismal sales in its early issues, however, which were low enough to suggest the refreshed Red Wolf would not last long. (The series comprised six issues published between December 2015 and November 2016.) The mediocrity of the reissued Red Wolf, especially in the face of Black Panther’s runaway success, should be instructive for comics creators. For instance, given that Veregge continues to find success both in mainstream comics and as part of the flourishing world of