elizabeth lapensee

Following the huge success of Moonshot, the indigenous comics anthology, editor Hope Nicholson and publisher AH Comics announced a few weeks ago that they'd be bringing a sequel book to Kickstarter. Featuring stories by and about indigenous comics creators, the anthology collects comics from both new and established writers and artists, spreading their voice and stories around the world. With the campaign for the second Moonshot anthology now running on Kickstarter, Back Pages got in touch with Nicholson and contributors David Robertson, Elizabeth LaPensée and Richard Van Camp to find out what makes Moonshot such an important project, and what kind of stories they bring to the second volume.

In 2014, Toronto publisher Alternate History Comics launched a Kickstarter for an anthology of indigenous comics, with the goal of “showcasing the rich heritage and identity of indigenous storytelling.” The resulting anthology, Moonshot: The Indigenous Comics Collection, Volume 1, is now available, and it presents a unique and much needed look into aboriginal storytelling in multiple aspects. It’s easy, as an indigenous person, to slip into what sounds like hyperbole when discussing a project like this. This is one of the most important comics of the year! But it’s easy for the same reasons that make it hard for any statement to actually be that hyperbolic; the blunt reality of comics as a business and popular medium is that there really aren’t that many aboriginal stories being told, and what few aboriginal characters there are usually employ crude stereotypes. These stereotypes aren’t continued out of any real sense of hatred, but out of the almost complete lack of aboriginal people involved in the telling of these stories.