214 Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies, Volume 9 Number 2, April 2009 214-223 DOI: 10.1177/1532708608330259 © 2009 SAGE Publications Alter/native Heroes: Native Americans, Comic Books, and the Struggle for Self-Definition C. Richard King Washington State University This article offers a critical interpretation of Native Americans as objects and authors of comic books, an often maligned and neglected domain of kids’ popular culture. The discussion begins with a brief overview of the misappropriation of Indianness in North America. Against this back- ground, it elaborates a three-fold analysis. First, it details the prominence of anti-Indianism in comic books, particularly as means through which Euro-American authors and audiences have made claims on and through Indianness. Second, it unpacks the use of comic books to challenge and question dominant misappropriations and misunderstandings. Third, it examines the recent emergence of indigenous comics intent to use the medium to reclaim Indianness. In conclusion, it proposes that the alterna- tive uses of comic books should be read as an excellent example of a larger movement for visual sovereignty in native North America. Keywords: American Indians in popular culture; comic books; racism in popular culture; sovereignty In “X-Bodies,” Scott Bukatman (1994) made a perceptive observation about the archetypal superhero of the late modern comic book: “Mutant bod- ies are explicitly analogized to Jewish bodies, gay bodies, adolescent bodies, Japanese- or Native- or African-American bodies—they are first and foremost, subjected and subjugated and colonized figures” (p. 121). His assertion is as powerful for what it says as what it does not. In his otherwise impressive analysis of identity, bodies, and boundaries, Bukatman failed to fully unpack the intersections of race, representation, and power in the genre, which by any measure can only be described as hypermasculine and White centered. In short, he missed an opportunity to ask two key questions about the cultural politics of comic books: What might it mean socially and semiotically for racialized groups (specifically American Indians) to be something more than implied and actually included as heroic actors? Moreover, how might identity, history, and community be reformulated when those analogized through mutant bodies begin producing comic books?