and where Riel is often considered a martyr. However Brown, who grew up speaking only English, said he was largely ignorant of Riel's story until he read Maggie Siggins' 1994 biography Louis Riel: A Life of Revolution. Many of Brown's favourite topics are entwined in Louis Riel: anti-authoritarianism, outsider religion, insanity, and accuracy and objectivity in nonfiction. A central incident in the book is an eight-panel sequence in which Riel has a revelatory experience on a hilltop in Washington, D.C. He experiences visions and talks to God, who declares him Prophet of the New World and instructs him to lead his people to freedom. On the cover of the book, however, we see Riel standing alone in the wilderness, staring into the sky, leaving open the question of whether what he witnessed was real. Background In 1995, Brown published the anti-psychiatry comics essay "My Mom was a Schizophrenic", in which he examines society's role in mental illness, and questions the medical profession's accepted beliefs about it. The six-page strip came with two pages of end notes gathered from his research. Brown enjoyed this project and thought he would like to take on another in which he could "cram a lot of research into a comic strip". When he came across Siggins' biography of Riel, he had been working on the experimental Underwater series, a project on which he felt he had lost his way. His father died in late 1997, and he decided he did not "want to waste time with projects that weren't working out". In 1998, he turned his attention to Riel, putting the unpopular Underwater series on hold. While researching, Brown came across two books by political scientist Tom Flanagan: Louis "David" Riel: "Prophet of the New World" (1996) and Louis Riel and the Rebellion: 1885 Reconsidered (2000). Brown found "Prophet of the New World" particularly intriguing as it dealt with Riel's religious ideas while reevaluating his alleged diagnosis of mental illness, two topics Brown had especial interest in, as he had previously made "eccentric" adaptations of the Gospel, and comics dealing with his mother's schizophrenia. He also came across books by researcher Don McLean and historian Douglas N. Sprague that advanced the conspiracy theory that the 1885 North-West Rebellion was deliberately provoked by Prime Minister John A. Macdonald to gain support for the building of the transcontinental railway. Brown had gained a reputation for improvised storytelling