TRIBAL FORCE #1
Publisher: Machine Comix
Creators: Jon Proudstar, Chris Williams, Jake Isenberg, Gene Jimenez
Price: $10.00 (first available on Kickstarter)
Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
Website: MachineComix.com
From the Kickstarter campaign:
“America’s First all Native superhero comic has returned!
TRIBAL FORCE follows the god THUNDER EAGLE as he builds a native team of heroes from various tribes of North America. A Yoeme Diné (NITA), a mute Hunkpapa Sioux (LITTLE BIGHORN), and a Jaguar-Mezo-Azteca warrior (JAGUAR-KNIGHT) make up the initial group as they confront some of today’s real native issues, from an indigenous peoples perspective, fighting off attacks of genocide and broken treaties from high-tech government entities and a host of supervillains. Their powers are mystical, otherworldly, and at times, uncontrollable, but their hearts, minds, and commitment to protecting and serving their ancestors and tribes are very real and true.
The comic book industry’s first all Native American hero team and Smithsonian Institute (2014) treasure TRIBAL FORCE, a creation by Jon Proudstar (Reservation Dogs – Hulu), is reuniting with part of its original production team, independent digital coloring pioneer, creative producer and MACHINE Comix founder, GENE (Gene Jimenez), who was the original production designer and shared color duties on the 1996 original Tribal Force #1.”
Jon Proudstar returns his all-native superhero team to comics, and I am absolutely there for it. I remember buying the first issue way back in 1996, and I loved it then so you know I backed this immediately once the campaign went live. I had always wished more came from that first series, so I’m hoping this run lasts significantly longer. Plus, the fact that I’m friends with the creative team helps as well. 😉
The book starts off by following a young girl named Nita Natal Nakia as she navigates her world. She’s angry, and as we find out later in the issue, with good reason, to put it mildly. But Nita’s revealed to have a much larger destiny as several Native American deities are shown to be watching her, and in the vein of the best mythological tales, one of these beings in disguise even encounters and councils the young girl.
We follow Nita to school, and her troubles there, learn much more about her past and personal life, and finally the main antagonist of her life, her own abusive father Gray. But we also learn that Nita has the power to see into other worlds, other realities, while she sleeps, and in this world, we encounter the hero Thunder Eagle as the world around him burns in apocalyptic destruction.
It’s this scene with Thunder Eagle that fascinated me the most and truthfully left me with the most questions of the issue. We see Little Big Horn, another member of Tribal Force here, as well as Earth Woman, apparently another version of Nita, as she tells Thunder Eagle that this world is lost and he needs to journey to the next to try to save it.
My main question in that aside was whether or not the world we see ending was, in fact, the world of the first Tribal Force issue from 1996. I had thought maybe that the Earth Woman who dies was, in reality, Basho Yazza (the Earth Woman from the ’96 series), and that we were seeing a passing of the torch and a resetting of continuity in a sense, but that doesn’t appear to be the case. I’m also presuming that new incarnations of the Tribal Force characters will be in this new “Fifth World” (a hallmark of Native American mythology, denoting the “next” world after the current one) to which Thunder Eagle has traveled. So the Little Big Horn we saw might be the 1996 Gabriel Medicine God, and the one who will show up in this series may be a new version. All speculation on my part to be sure.
Going back to the book’s creators, Jon does a wonderful job establishing the characters’ personalities and giving them all unique “voices”. His humor comes through in the dialogue, and the story is definitely enthralling, though I will admit that for myself part of that may just be due to me attempting to somehow connect it to the original run.
Chris Williams’ art is, as always stunning. Chris has always had a unique and dynamic style, and after years of seeing pin-ups, I’m thrilled to see some sequential pages from him. Jake Isenberg provides his usual top-note inks and full disclosure Jake and I have been friends for decades, so I freely admit my opinion of his work is biased. But Jake has always provided some of the cleanest and most crisp ink work in the Indie community, and joined with Chris’ pencil work, the two make a truly formidable team. Add to that the beautiful color work of Gene Jimenez, who also acts as a letter for this issue as well as publisher, and the book is without question a wonderful package.
In conclusion, this book is a great start to the new series. It poses questions, sets up pieces for future stories, and pulls your attention right in. There are a few things here that make me wonder, but that may just be my own brain attempting to establish a connection that doesn’t exist rather than any fault of the issue itself. Highly recommended. Go seek it out and pick it up once it’s available on the MachineComix website in the near(?) future.
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