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Move over Superman. Step aside Spiderman and Batman. There's a new trio of heroes ready to take the comic book world by storm, and their names are Jesse, Tyra and Chad.
The three are the unlikely heroes of Sacred Circles, a comic book launched by a new comic book company, Birch Bark Comics.
Both the company and the comic book are the brainchild of Brandon Mitchell, a 23-year-old artist and entrepreneur from Listuguj, a Mi'kmaq community located in southeastern Quebec, along the border between Quebec and New Brunswick.
The idea of creating a comic book came to Mitchell a few years back, in November of 2001, when, after studying animation for two-and-a-half years in Miramichi, N.B., he returned home to Listuguj and was teaching art at Alaqsite'w Gitpu school.
The students were being taught about their culture, and Mitchell wondered if there wasn't a better way to teach them than through textbooks.
"So I asked them. I said, 'What would you guys think if I developed a story, like a modern retelling of certain stories?'" And they just kind of jumped all over it. And it was kind of like with their approval, so I developed it more. And it kind of took shape from there."
The main characters in the Sacred Circles books are 14-year-old Jesse Mitchell, his 12-year-old sister Tyra and his best friend Chad, who all go along on a camping trip with Jesse and Tyra's parents.
Jesse Mitchell's dad Eric is an archeologist specializing in Aboriginal artifacts, and Jennifer Mitchell, Eric's mom is a research analyst and high school teacher. As the story unfolds, Eric accidentally unleashes an ancient evil that entraps him and his wife, and it is up to the children to try to rescue them.
The idea for the story came to Mitchell when, after deciding to do the comic book, he began reading Aboriginal legends and stories for inspiration. He came across the Mi'kmaq legend of the Jenu in one of the books he read, and it gave him the jumping off point he needed to begin developing the story line for the comic book. At first he had planned to tell the story in three issues, but he wanted to make sure everyone reading, whether they were Native or non-Native, would understand what's going on in the story, so he expanded it to cover five issues.
While there's plenty of action and adventure in Sacred Circles and the requisite number of heroes and villains, you won't find any super heroes within the pages of the book, explained Mitchell, who said he was looking to create an alternative to the superhero comics in his books.
"You're not going to see capes and spandex in my book. I didn't create like a little Indian kid getting bit by a radioactive frog and calling him Frogboy or something. I wanted to stay away from that."
Over the summer, Mitchell finalized a deal to have the comic book distributed by Diamond Comic Distributors Inc.
"I shipped the books out in September and they were going to be released in November. So it's since November that I've had, like an across U.S., Canada and Europe audience."
While having a distributor will lessen the load for Mitchell when it comes to reaching a non-Aboriginal audience, it doesn't do much in his efforts to reach Aboriginal readers, he explained.
"I still have to go out there and make people aware that, 'Hey, I'm around.' Because I'm pretty sure there's not a lot of comic book stores on reservations. So with the distributor, what I'm trying to do is just get non-Aboriginal readers to take notice of me. So I have yet to find a Native distributor. Once I find that, then all should be well."
Sacred Circles can be purchased through the Birch Bark Comics Web site at www.birchbarkcomics.com. Anyone interested in distributing the comic can also get in touch with Mitchell through the Web site.
"I'm just trying to make people aware that, 'Hey we're around."
Although the current story line will play out after five issues, that in no way means the end of Sacred Circles, Mitchell explained.
"Th story is so open. Basically this five issues is just an introduction to the world I created," he said.
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