Comic-book figures like Superman, Captain America, and Spider-Man are a big part of the American mythology. Blessed with special powers, they defend the weak in the name of justice. But these characters are far from the first superheroes in North America. If you stray from the world of contemporary pop culture and drift into the world of Native American creation stories, you'll find superheroes of a different — but not entirely different — nature. One Pueblo creation story involves a pair of twin warrior gods (born on the Sandia Mountains, in some tellings) who guarded over ancestral peoples. A Spider Woman even plays a part in Pueblo legend.

While one shouldn't get too carried away with comparing the Spider-Man seen on Pizza Hut cups to the sacred figures in Native creation stories, parallels can be drawn between ancient and modern stories: what excited the imagination then is not so different from what excites the imagination now. Comic Art Indigène, which opens at the Museum of Indian Arts & Culture on Sunday, May 11, identifies common threads in these stories and the way they've been told. Ancient artifacts offer evidence of art with a sequential theme, and certain Native American archetypes recur in modern comic books.

A pictograph of a shield-wielding, red, white, and blue warrior from the Pueblo II period (carbon-dated to circa 1290) is paired with a Jack Kirby drawing of that other shield-wielding, red, white, and blue warrior, Captain America.

"The title of the show is basically 'indigenous comic art' because even if you look up one of the definitions for indigenous, it's seen as primitive or crude," curator Antonio R. Chavarria explained. "Comic art has always had that perception as well; it's seen as a juvenile medium for adolescent-male power fantasies. And it's seen as disposable. It's not even art; it's just this disposable media."

The exhibit features contemporary artists whose work either uses comic-book forms or is inspired by such forms. Diego Romero's work consists of black-and-white comic-book panels depicting historical events. Martha Arquero sculpted a Spider-Man figurine using forms inspired by traditional storyteller figures. Other elements of youth culture seep into the show: Jolene Yazzie's and Rose Simpson Freedom's artworks incorporate graffiti influences, while Douglas Miles paints on skateboards.

Jason Garcia had no difficulty finding pieces for this show. The Santa Clara Pueblo artist, a big fan of comic books such as Jaime Hernandez and Gilbert Hernandez's seminal Love and Rockets, was already hard at work on a series of pulpy comic-book covers called "Tewa, Tales of Suspense."

"This isn't something that I've found in the past month or two," Garcia told Pasatiempo. "This is something that I've been working on since I was a small kid — just being influenced by popular culture, growing up with Star Wars and comic books and G.I. Joe and MTV and everything like that. It's constantly fed to you, so you're immersed in popular culture, and you're immersed in this traditional contemporary Pueblo lifestyle as well. The two kind of flow together."

Garcia said he was attracted to pulp and comic-book media in part because he liked the larger-than-life scale and related to the good-versus-evil themes. "If you think about what our ancestors were able to achieve in the late 1600s, as far as chasing the Spanish out for a number of years," Garcia continued, "it was such an amazing accomplishment that Pueblos were able to assert their authority and show they weren't going to be pushed around."

The exhibit also shows some Native American cartoon work that preceded the explosion of popular and teen culture in the last 40 years. One of the most interesting and delightful pieces is a 1944 G.I. Gertie comic strip by Taos Pueblo artist Eva Mirabal, who studied with Dorothy Dunn at the Santa Fe Indian School. This piece was created for army newspapers while Mirabel served in the Women's Army Corps. Comic Art Indigène hangs the only known original strip of G.I. Gertie next to one of Mirabal's paintings.

The language of the comic-art medium can also be traced through Native American traditions. Comic-book art relies on specific visual signs to communicate a narrative to readers. Many ancient cultures have their own pictographs, and the ancient culture of Native Americans can be seen in petroglyphs and pictographs throughout the Southwest.

Chavarria gathered a couple of Zuni pots that display evidence of direct correspondence between the visual language of traditional Native culture and current comic strips. "One shows the influence of the unique language that both Indian art and comic art have, because both of them developed their own indigenous languages. Comic art developed all these visual shorthands for action, like motion lines, sound effects, sweat drops, and the 'X's in the eyes to suggest an altered state of consciousness, like you're knocked out or something." The show displays this pot next to a Krazy Kat strip that also uses the "X" effect.

Another major similarity between comic-book art and Native art is that both are confined by long-standing tradition and fixed audience expectations. Chavarria hopes Comic Art Indigène alters those expectations. "Native American art and comic art are sometimes placed in these boundaries and categories, and they're still breaking through and expanding what you can do in each medium."

details

Comic Art Indigène

Opening reception 2 p.m. Sunday, May 11 (Bare Nation: Sculptors

From IAIA opens concurrently); exhibit through Jan. 4, 2009

1 p.m. blessing & performance by IAIA drum group; 1:15 p.m. artist

roundtable & lecture "What Is Comic Art" by curator Antonio R. Chavarria

Museum of Indian Arts & Culture, 710 Camino Lejo, Museum Hill

All events by museum admission; call 476-1250