We were lucky to host Archaeologist-Comics Creator John Swogger last week at CBR Lab. John is spending a year as an Applied Comics Fellow at the Center for Cartoon Studies down the road in White River, Junction. With a professional background as an archaeological illustrator, John’s work combines precision about historical artifacts and processes with a visual panache reminiscent of Tin-Tin. His work not only teaches matters about archaeological findings in an incredibly accessible way, but also tells the stories of archaeologists themselves and how they come to know what they know.
John is one of the creators of the NAGPRA comics series, which is how he first got our attention here at UVM. That series is deeply collaborative with Indigenous communities and has spun off other collaborative comics creation with American Indian tribes, including most recently the Kumeyaay. Along with academy-based collaborators like Jen Shannon and Sonia Atalay, John has been developing interesting and important new approaches to community-engaged comics. It was very inspirational for us here at UVM to learn about this work.