Working with writers who weren’t necessarily accustomed to the comics medium and being culturally sensitive without patronizing added another layer of difficulty. Putting together a typical anthology is tough enough because of the various personalities and organizing involved. WCP: Was putting together an anthology harder than doing your own comic book? For the artists, I tapped mostly folks I knew or who I’ve wanted to work with. It took about two years to find a group of storytellers from across the country who were interested in participating. I called museums, colleges and universities, storytelling groups, visited various Native American events and activities and worked off of referrals. MD: Finding the Native American storytellers was the toughest part. The storytellers selected who they wanted to work with. I included a range of styles, from cartoony to realistic. They then submitted the stories and, after reading them, I recommended three or four artist who I felt would do a good job rendering the story. In the initial stages, I talked with each writer about one or two trickster stories based on their tribe that would work best. MD: All the stories were written by Native American storytellers specifically for the anthology. WCP: Did you write all the stories? If not, did you assign ideas to people or did they propose them to you? But I’ve always had an affinity for myths, fairy tales, origin stories and the like, from all cultures-and every culture has them. WCP: With a name like Dembicki, you’re not a Native American are you? I wanted to build a community around the project. But if I was going to do it, I wanted to include Native American storytellers and other artists. As I began to doodle, it occurred to me that it could make a good project to work on. I thought it would be a great personal exercise to draw the various stories in different styles. MD: I was reading a prose book of Native American trickster stories.

Trickster by matt dembicki