At the end of October, I finished the artwork for the history comic project I’ve been working on for the past five years in partnership with Kumeyaay tribal historians. The Kumeyaay are the Native inhabitants of what we now call California and Baja California, Mexico, and are centered now on the city of San Diego. The Kumeyaay have successfully resisted genocidal policies of military conquest, dispossession, cultural destruction and assimilation. In 2019 I began working with a team of tribal historians to develop and produce a 44-page comic which not only told the history of the Kumeyaay, but did so from their perspective and in their way.
Last month I went out to San Diego to meet up with the rest of the team for the comic’s official Community Launch. This took the form of events at Barona Reservation, Sycuan Cultural Center and Kumeyaay Community College. We had over a hundred community attendees, including lots of curious teenagers and kids, and were honored to have Bird Singers perform at the start of each event. These events included an open panel with the tribal historians and myself so that community members had a chance to quiz us about the comic and give their reactions to it. We even had a deputation of reservation fire-fighters attend—though they had to rush out in mid-event (but they took their copies of the comic with them!).
Everyone at these launch events was extremely excited about the comic—but significantly, several young adults from the reservations said to the historians on our panel: reading this comic now makes me want to be a tribal historian too. That’s more than enthusiasm—that’s real engagement: a community using comics as a way to ensure that its voice is heard, that its story is told, and that the telling inspires future generations of storytellers.
A big takeaway from my first term as a Fellow at CCS has also been about community. I cannot tell you how extraordinary an experience it has been to work alongside other comics-makers after so many years of working by myself. Yes, CCS has an extensive library, a wonderful print lab, and great classes (all of which I have taken full advantage of!)—but it is the extended and lively network of students and alumni, staff and faculty, beginners and old hands that is by far its greatest asset. To be part of a community where Scott McCloud, Tillie Walden or Eddie Campbell drops by your classroom to chat and share their experiences (and be interrogated and argued with in turn!) is a rare privilege. To have a calendar of Thursday Visiting Artists that is so full, and a roster of thesis advisors that is so diverse is also testament to the breadth and depth of this community.
Over Thanksgiving I was talking with someone who had done a summer workshop at CCS and was curious about what it might be like to do the MFA. “Yeah,” he said, after I’d talked about this sense of community that surrounds the school, “I think I’d like to be part of that.” I heartily agree. For me, being part of creative communities—both here in White River Junction and out in San Diego and beyond—is what cartooning is all about.
There’s more on the Kumeyaay comic project at https://kumeyaayvsp.weebly.com/. The public launch of the comic will be in spring 2025.
—John Swogger, White River Junction, VT
