Oh, the excitement of it all! Accomplishment!
Arigon Starr wrote, drew, inked, colored, lettered and designed this mini-comic book just in time for the annual WonderCon Comic Book Convention. WonderCon takes place on April 18-20 at the Anaheim Convention Center in California. You can get more information about WonderCon here: http://www.comic-con.org/wca
“Tales of the Mighty Code Talkers #1″ is the story of a group of Choctaw soldiers in World War I. “Many people have heard of the Navajo Code Talkers in World War II, but not a group of soldiers involved in the first organized code talking unit,” remarked Arigon. “I didn’t know much about it until seeing the PBS documentary on the group a few years back. What a compelling story and what an honor to bring this story to contemporary audiences.”
Last year at the Denver Comic Con, Lee Francis IV, the managing editor of INC Comics created some poster-sized graphics from the work done on “INC’s Universe #0,” which featured a grandfather reading with a grand-daughter about the Code Talkers. “I originally created the small cover of a comic book to fill the space within an image — and Lee blew that up and displayed the art at our booth in Denver,” Arigon recalled. “We were all surprised how positively the fans at Denver responded to the project and how many of them asked, ‘Where can I buy this?’”
The members of INC talked amongst themselves and Lee and Arigon decided to put “Tales of the Mighty Code Talkers” into production. “I like to think I’m pretty quick at getting a project started and finished, but doing the Choctaw story took months and months of effort. I did lots of research and then lots of drawing to decide on a design style of the artwork. This book looks different than ‘Super Indian,’ and was a lot more work for me than I had anticipated,” she remembered. “Denver Comic Con was in June of 2013 — and I finally put the finishing touches on the book just a few weeks ago.”
“Tales of the Mighty Code Talkers #1″ is a teaser comic for a much larger book that will be released by INC Comics in the fall. Other contributors are Roy Boney, Michael Sheyahshe, Theo Tso, Kristina BadHand and Jonathan Nelson. Each of the stories tell the tale of a different tribal group who served as Code Talkers in all of the major military conflicts.
The mini-comic will be on sale at WonderCon for $5.00. You can find Arigon, INC member Theo Tso and the Indigenous Narratives Collective at Small Press area in Hall C, Booth #SP-092.
More info to come on buying the comic online, plus the release date of the full “Tales of the Mighty Code Talkers” book. Stay tuned!
