Burning Cold: An Inuit and Dene Comics Collection

by Rachel Qitsualik-Tinsley, Sean Qitsualik-Tinsley, Richard Van Camp

Journey to the depths of the Arctic and beyond in this unique collection of stories from the award-winning volumes of The Indigenous Comics Collection .

Burning Cold is a captivating volume of Indigenous graphic stories written by acclaimed authors Sean and Rachel Qitsualik-Tinsley and Richard Van Camp. Time travel on the back of a wolverine, swim with shapeshifters beneath the ice, and travel through the skies with aliens. From traditional stories to reimagined futures, this collection showcases some of the finest comic book and graphic novel work from the North.

Genres: Horror, Fantasy, Graphic Novels, Indigenous, Canada

100 pages, Paperback

Published March 5, 2024

About the author

Of Inuit-Cree ancestry, Rachel Qitsualik-Tinsley was born in a tent on northernmost Baffin Island. She learned Inuit survival lore from her father, surviving residential school and attending university. In 2012, she was awarded a Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal for numerous cultural writings.

Reviews

[Dr. Devine · Rating 3 out of 5]

The art is beautiful. They did a good job at getting unique artists to match the stories.

The last story "Sky People," to me, was the best one.

There is a big whiplash between the simple, lesson-driven stories by Van Camp and the long, dense stories by the Qitsualik-Tinsleys. The prose stories also seem out of place in a comic collection (though the stories themselves were good)

[Theediscerning · Rating 2 out of 5]

A dark-looking comic book from Inhabit Media, the people to publish for Canadian Arctic peoples, this proved to start very poorly. The first story suggests the clash between traditional ceremonies and ways to get in touch with the past, and Hallow-e'en, the much more modern ritualised begging 'ceremony'. The second work was prose, moodily illustrated, but prose all the same. The third piece is polemically-written, as students visit a poisoned gold mine site, with a concluding beat that ought to have been a beginning. The next piece shows how this book might appeal to the target community, but it really doesn't travel to other cultures – unlike many Inhabit books it's a privilege to experience – and the next, short look at wolverines is only the same. Yes, the second prose piece is pretty interesting, swathing a slice of lore in feminism, but it doesn't really live in what is billed as a graphic collection. If this was the best of two or three books of earlier material it doesn't show the rest in incredible light – two stars from me, with perhaps a third for an actual Inuit audience.

[Keisha Adams · Rating 3 out of 5]

Collection of speculative fiction comics by dene/inuit authors. Interesting preface explaining that the stories are not folk tales but somewhat based on traditional teachings- like Dracula vs vampire legends.

Liked waterward. Felt more folktale than the others. More writing, with only enough illustrations to engage imagination. Other comics in this collection are more traditional graphic novels with minimal writing outside of speech.

Final one was interesting sky people- about community and forgiveness. Values in the far north. Also aliens.

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

There were three stories in this that really stood out to me - one about community and kindness at the end, and two that were basically prose. The prose stories were excellent, but I really would have loved it more if they were fully illustrated and took advantage of the medium.

I loved the insight this collection shared with me, and I think it's an important comic anthology. I wish I enjoyed it more.

[Anne-Marie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn’t realize at first that this anthology contained comics also found in Moonshot Vol 1-3, just specifically Dene and Inuit. So for me, I’ve already read them all.
But they’re still excellent stories and art and I appreciated the revisit.