A Graphic Novel Mythologizes Mesoamerican Legend

Two Texans, writer Kevin Garcia and artist Emmanuel Valtierra are collaborating on “Teoatl.” It tells of the birth of the Aztec Empire. Garcia told Texas Standard he was ready to tell an original story.

“I’ve always been fascinated by mythology. But, one thing that’s always kind of bothered me, even when I was a kid reading stories of Thor and Zeus and that is that there was never a problem finding a book on Greek or Norse mythology. I could find books on Chinese mythology. There were other areas where I could find books with that. But when it came to Mesoamerica, when it came to the ancestral culture of Mexico, I did not find as many sources in English.”

“What little has seeped into the general pop culture doesn’t reflect a lot of those ancient stories, and our goal was to just bring that to the forefront, but treat it with the same level of respect that somebody would retelling a story of Rome or retelling a story of the ancient Greeks or retelling a story of the Vikings and just be like, you know, this is not some strange foreign culture. This is literally a civilization at its height.”

“Our goal was to publish this first chapter, see what the reaction is, what the public thinks, and then come back maybe sometime next year and say, all right, we want to finish this whole story, finish the epic of the founding, the birth of the Aztec empire and see where it goes from there.”

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