Louis Riel (comics) - Overview

Overview

Subtitled "A Comic-Strip Biography", Louis Riel looks at Métis rebel leader Louis Riel, detailing his leadership in the Red River and North-West rebellions. It does not attempt a complete retelling of Riel's life, omitting long periods and ignoring many aspects of his personality. Instead the focus is on his "antagonistic relationship with the Canadian government" from 1869 to 1885. The story comprises 241 pages of the 271-page book, and is supplemented with a complete scholarly apparatus: a foreword, bibliography, index, map section and extensive end notes. It has strong historiographical elements, detailing in the appendix the research done and choices made by the author in developing a story.

Brown grew up in Quebec, where the majority speaks French, and where Riel is often considered a martyr. However Brown, who grew up speaking only English, said he was largely ignorant of Riel's story until he read Maggie Siggins' 1994 biography Louis Riel: A Life of Revolution. Many of Brown's favourite topics are entwined in Louis Riel: anti-authoritarianism, outsider religion, insanity, and accuracy and objectivity in nonfiction. A central incident in the book is an eight-panel sequence in which Riel has a revelatory experience on a hilltop in Washington, D.C. He experiences visions and talks to God, who declares him Prophet of the New World and instructs him to lead his people to freedom. On the cover of the book, however, we see Riel standing alone in the wilderness, staring into the sky, leaving open the question of whether what he witnessed was real.