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Norli Servin

Dr. Demson

ENGL 4399

31 October 2022

Indigenous Representation in Comic Books: Invisibility through Silence

The Batman comic “Born for Adventure!” was published in the collected edition

“BATMAN #44” in December 1847-January 1948. Found in the collection “BATMAN: The

Golden Age Omnibus Volume 5” which follows Batman and his sidekick Robin “The Boy

Wonder” fight iconic villains. The cover art of the comic was illustrated by Jim Mooney and

Charles Paris. In partnership, the issue was written by Bill Finger and illustrated by the artist Jim

Mooney. The graphic novel exhibits a negative depiction of Indigenous people to support a

variety of stereotypical misconceptions about this demographic. Their reliance on representing

Natives as the antagonists, violent, extinct, all without the ability to speak, demonstrate their

invisibility.

The comic begins with the introduction of a man named Bill Jordan who has ambitious

dreams of becoming an explorer. After he is rejected from pursuing a career as an explorer due to

his health conditions, he is offered a position as a museum employee. The story then follows

Batman and Robin as they try to find the fugitive felon, the Globetrotter. During their adventure,

they cross paths with the newly hired employee, Bill, where they find the tracks of the

Globetrotter outside the museum. As Batman and Robin storm into the prehistoric exhibition of

the museum, they find the Globetrotter and his goons hiding amongst the dinosaurs and

“cavemen.” Batman, Robin, and Bill, are shot with paralysis gas and are tied up against the

exhibition's pygmies and a thorn bush. After they escape the trap, they avenge the Globetrotter
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and his crew with the help of Bill Jordan’s knowledge. As a result, Bill Jordan proved himself to

be fit as an explorer and Bruce Wayne proves that the doctor was wrong on his health diagnosis.

A few days later, Batman and Robin accompany Bill Jordan to say goodbye as he departs for an

expedition.

On the cover of the graphic novel, demonstrated in Figure 1, the Indigenous characters

are seen in the bottom left corner of the page. Each individual is holding a weapon, such as a

machete and spears. The cover illustrates the Indigenous people as the

villains since they are pointing their weapons towards the White man

in the middle of the cover. As a result, this highlights Batman and

Robin as the heroes of the comic as they are flying into the scene as

demonstrated in the top right of the cover. According to Michael A.

Sheyahshe in Native Americans in Comic Books: A Critical Study,

states “With the Western came all the same stereotypes about Native

Americans…Indigenous people became plot devices to move the

story along and make the central character (most always a white man) more

heroic” (9). The cover of the comic introduces the Indigenous characters as the villains with their

“violent” body language compared to their White counterparts. The readers are unaware of what

the content of the story truly entails. However, context clues such as “Born for Adventure” and

the cheetah on the opposite side of the Indigenous characters suggest that they are combating the

villains (portrayed by the Indigenous characters) and Batman and Robin are the heroes.

According to Henry Louis Gates in ‘The Blackness of Blackness’: A Critique of the Sign and the

Signifying Monkey, “Signifying is a trope that subsumes other rhetorical tropes, including

metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and irony (the “master” tropes), and also hyperbole, litotes,
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and metalepsis…” (686). This trope is commonly used in the comic throughout the depictions of

Indigenous people. Particularly, the cover uses the signifying trope by using the illustration of the

cheetah as a symbol that reflected how people viewed the Indigenous community. Gates later

quotes Mitchell-Kernan by saying, “The key aspect of signifying for Mitchell-Kernan is “its

indirect intent or metaphorical reference,” a rhetorical indirection which she says is “almost

purely stylistic”” (693). As mentioned before, they are compared to the cheetah as wild,

untamed, and barbaric. All of which contributed to the negative stereotypes of Indigenous

people.

As the story progresses, the Indigenous characters are introduced halfway through the

comic when the Globetrotter walks into the museum’s “Hall of Prehistoric Life” exhibition. As

demonstrated on Figure 2, the Natives are displayed

amongst the figurines of dinosaurs and extinct animals.

According to Sheyahshe, “two major supporting factors

to this are (1) the Indigenous people are trapped in the

past, and (2) the central character is white,” (16). The

Natives are depicted as a component from the past with its association to

the exhibition’s title. In addition, the scene introduces the Natives as mannequins or “stuffed

dummies”, highlighting the White characters that are alive. Sheyahshe also states, “While

readers may also conceive of the non-Native main character as a being found only in the past,

popular culture has long portrayed Indigenous people as a race of human beings that is entirely

extinct” (26). This statement is best supported with the use of extinct animals in the exhibition.

This signifies to readers that Indigenous people are also a part of the extinction, therefore they

should refer and portray to them as such. According to C. Richard King in Alter/Native Heroes:
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Native Americans, Comic Books, and the Struggle for Self-Definition, he states, “comics have

difficulty reconciling the survivance and vitality of indigenous peoples with its narratives, opting

instead to freeze them in time, either trapping them in the past or in a floating ahistorical

present,” (217). Suggesting that this community is a part of a “prehistoric life” implies that they

are no longer in existence and when they are it serves as a spectacle for the audience, particularly

the White gaze. Freezing Native characters in the past allowed non-Indigenous people to rip

away the stories and customs from this marginalized group. Sheyahshe later states, “Because

casting an Indigenous character in the past is the norm, characters placed in modern times

sometimes seem a rarity” (189). Subsequently, modern day Indigenous people are often

dismissed or their contribution is erased from the narrative due to people’s perception of the

population. Moreover, they are often only seen and treated as their depictions in the media.

After the Globetrotter shoots Batman and Robin with paralysis gas, the focus is shifted on

the Indigenous character that is holding a wooden club. Even though it had been stated that the

Native people are unable to move, they are still depicted

as violent. King states, “the uses and understandings of

indigenous people in comic books appear to have done

little more than recycle well-worn clichés from these other

expressive forms without reflections and often in the

absence of creative inspiration,” (217). It is evident that

the illustrator of the comic was basing his knowledge off

of what was commonly thought about Native people. However, this contributed to the harmful

stereotypes regarding the Indigenous community. In Comics and Critical Librarianship:

Reframing the Narrative in Academic Libraries, it states, “Comics reflect the attitudes of the
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larger society and how that role has changed over time…” (Piepmeier 51). As a result, this comic

reflects the negative portrayal that society had about this demographic. Not only was their

illustration a negative reflection of the group, but the disrespectful language towards them

displayed this as well. Gates paraphrases Kochman’s argument on signifying by stating,

“signifying depends upon the signifier repeating what someone else has said about a third person

in order to reverse the status of a relationship heretofore harmonious; signifying can also be

employed to reverse or undermine pretense or even one’s opinion about one’s own status,” (691).

This is also best supported by the amount of times that these characters are described as

“dummies,” as seen on Figures 2 and 3. The constant repetition of this word, tries to convince the

audience that people of that community are dumb. Given the fact that the majority of their

audience were primarily children and teens, this established harmful rhetoric within young

minds. David Hajdu notes in The Ten-Cent Plague: The great Comic-Book Scare and How it

Changed America that “Nearly all young people–boys, and girls, loners, athletes, scholars, and

debutantes–read comic books, and most of their parents did not,” (37). Therefore, if the adults of

that time were prejudiced towards this group, that would instill racist ideologies in the minds of

their children. In conjunction, if the adults were not prejudiced, children would still consume that

harmful information.

Indigenous people were also often represented as background characters that did not

contribute to the plot, but their barbaric imagery spoke louder than words. Figure 4 best depicts

this as they illustrate the exhibition on a wider scale, yet

their presence does not add to the storyline. Piepmeier

states, “Over the past century, Indigenous people have

been a popular subject for comics artists acting as foils,

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heroes and sidekicks for their western counterparts,” (55). In this case, the Natives are acting as

foils to emphasize all the qualities that differentiate them from the White characters. Specifically,

their lack of dialogue. Gates articulates, “voicelessness and powerlessness to act (as opposed to

react) signify an absence…the absence implied by invisibility is undermined by the presence of

the narrator as the narrator of his own text,” (696). In this case, the Natives are invisible in the

comic because of the White characters' abuse of power. Although, it is not clear if the author or

illustrators meant to do this, it is arguable that the image represents the real-life abuse of power

over this demographic. Gates introduces the concept of “double-voicing” by stating, “formal

signification is related to what Mikhail Baktin labels “double-voiced” discourse, which he

subdivides into parodic narration and the hidden or internal polemic,” (697). Even though the

Native characters do not speak, their presence signifies a double-voiced meaning. Gates best

explains, “In this double-voiced relationship, one speech act determines the internal structure of

another, the second effecting the “voice” of the first by absence…” (698). The absence in speech

from the Indigenous’ throughout the comic shows how they were powerless compared to their

White counterparts. This is not in terms of submission, but of the constant non-consensual

dominance on behalf of White people.

Another misconception about Natives was that they were seen as violent savages. As

mentioned prior, it was clearly noted that their characters were mannequins. Regardless of that

fact, Figures 5, 6, and 7 show how they were illustrated as

the attackers disregarding their lack of movement.

Sheyahshe states, “Comics have a tendency to portray

Native American characters as either noble or savage, with

little room in between,” (17). Figures 5, 6, and 7 show

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different angles all of which look like the figurines are about to attack Bill Jordan. Even though

readers recognize that they are not the villains of the story, the

images subconsciously teach them that they are, ultimately

villainizing them. Piepmeier expresses that, “Comics provide a

virtual encyclopedia of western impressions, experiences, and vision,

and have embodied many of the fears, desire, and contradictions…”

(55).Therefore, it was highly possible that the western society had a

collective fear of Indigenous people. However, they used

media, like comic books, to guide young readers to

internalize those fears. Piepmeier also says, “these

representations provide a fascinating–and, at times

violent–examination of how non-Indigenous artists and

storytellers engage with Indigenous communities and the world around

them,” (55). Correspondingly, the illustrations shown on all Figures demonstrate how the

creators, illustrators, and authors of stories like these are also a product of obtaining

misrepresented knowledge. Their harmless stories serve damaging depictions of real people.

Graphic novels give consumers a lens into the pressing issues of the published time.

However, Golden Age comics pushed an unfavorable narrative when representing other

communities. Indigenous people have endured a lot of pain inflicted by White people. Therefore,

the Indigenous representation in the Batman comic “Born for Adventure!” reinforces harmful

rhetoric against the demographic. All of which, their silence fortifies their lives.
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Work Cited

Finger, Bill, et al. “‘BORN FOR ADVENTURE!".” Batman, the Golden Age Omnibus, DC

Comics, Burbank, CA, 2018, pp. 679–691.

Gates, Henry Louis. “The ‘Blackness of Blackness’: A Critique of the Sign and the Signifying

Monkey.” Critical Inquiry, vol. 9, no. 4, 1983, pp. 685–723. JSTOR,

http://www.jstor.org/stable/1343378. Accessed 16 Oct. 2022.

Hajdu, David. The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed

America. Picador, 2009.

King, C.Richard. “Alter/Native Heroes: Native Americans, Comic Books, and the Struggle for

Self-Definition.” Cultural Studies/Critical Methodologies, vol. 9, no. 2, Apr. 2009, pp.

214–23. EBSCOhost, https://doi-org.ezproxy.shsu.edu/10.1177/1532708608330259.

Piepmeier, Olivia, and Stephanie, ed Grimm. Comics and Critical Librarianship: Reframing the

Narrative in Academic Libraries. Library Juice Press, 2019. EBSCOhost,

https://search-ebscohost-com.ezproxy.shsu.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=e000xna&AN

=2265810&site=eds-live&scope=site.

Sheyahshe, Michael A. Native Americans in Comic Books: A Critical Study. McFarland &

Company, 2016.