Indigenous Comics & Graphic Novels

June 16, 2017 – Lee Francis started Native Realities Press to support the work of other Indigenous authors of comics and graphic novels. Francis is from Laguna Pueblo and says he was a comics nerd growing up but never saw himself, as a Native American, in comics. Native Realities Press is the only exclusively Indigenous press for Native comics artists, some of whom found him when other publishers were not interested in letting them showcase serious issues in Indian Country, like sexual abuse, in their comics.

This month, Francis also opened a comic store in downtown Albuquerque called Red Planet Books and Comics.

This week on New Mexico in Focus, we re-broadcast Megan Kamerick’s interview earlier this year with Lee Francis and Dale DeForest, creator of the Hero Twins comic, which is based on Diné folklore.