Sheyahshe interviews Odjick

Jay Odjick is the indigenous creator of such comics as THE RAVEN and ON THE TURN. Here he's interviewed by Michael Sheyahshe, author of Native Americans in Comic Books.

IPI:  Indigenous Peeps in the Industry--06MS: Background info: what is your tribal affiliation and where are you from?

JO: I am a status Algonquin from the Kitigan Zibi community (band) in Quebec, Canada. I was born in the States, because my father was working there at the time, but he was born and raised in Kitigan Zibi (KZ).What Odjick is working on now:MS: Tell us more about the comic you've been working on; how did it all start/come about?

JO: Right now, I’m working on a comic for Bluewater Productions called The Odyssey Presents: Judo Girl/Venus. And I mean, not literally right now, but when I finish typing, I'm going right back to the drawing board; so it's pretty close.The latest on THE RAVEN:MS: Have you worked on any other comics?

JO: I've worked on my own self published series "The Raven"; I self published three issues and was working on the fourth when I met Arcana Studio honcho Sean O'Reilly at a convention; my company and Arcana had booths next to each other, the year Arcana won the Shuster for best Canadian publisher.

We talked about bringing the Raven to Arcana that weekend, and I mean...you've got to try to picture this: This was my FIRST ever con, my first booth at a con, and I had a chance to bring my own series to the company that won the award for best comic book publisher on the country.

I signed on; and from there we kicked around ideas for how to continue that series, and went kind of back and forth as to the nature of the Raven comic there; I changed the title to Kagagi, the Algonquin word for Raven, and decided to revamp the series in a double sized one shot.

So there’s that, which was one of my two babies; the other actually reached a much, much larger audience than the Raven did--and I actually sold over 2000 copies of the first issue of the Raven!Comment:  Renaming the comic KAGIGI is a good idea, since there are tons of characters and comics named for the raven.

For more on the subject, see Comic Books Featuring Indians.