Carpe fin : a Haida manga

Haida artist Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas has created a hybrid artform he refers to as "Haida Manga," which combines traditional Haida motifs and stories with Japanese manga-style comic book illustration. Carpe Fin is the hand-painted prequel to his first graphic novel, Red (2009). It recounts the Haida tale of Carpe, a man who has been abandoned at sea during a hunt and left to face the Lord of the Rock. As Carpe proceeds through his trek, he confronts an environment whose land and resources have been overexploited. Perhaps a precautionary environmental warning, Yahgulanaas prefaces the tale with "Once upon a time this could be a true story…". Carpe Fin is also a 6' x 19' monumental watercolor mural, commissioned by the Seattle Art Museum in 2018.