Graphic Borders: Latino Comic Books Past, Present, and Future

World Comics and Graphic Nonfiction Series

by Frederick Luis Aldama (Editor), Christopher González (Editor)

From the influential work of Los Bros Hernandez in Love & Rockets, to comic strips and political cartoons, to traditional superheroes made nontraditional by means of racial and sexual identity (e.g., Miles Morales/Spider-Man), comics have become a vibrant medium to express Latino identity and culture. Indeed, Latino fiction and nonfiction narratives are rapidly proliferating in graphic media as diverse and varied in form and content as is the whole of Latino culture today.

Graphic Borders presents the most thorough exploration of comics by and about Latinos currently available. Thirteen essays and one interview by eminent and rising scholars of comics bring to life this exciting graphic genre that conveys the distinctive and wide-ranging experiences of Latinos in the United States. The contributors’ exhilarating excavations delve into the following comics created by Latinos that push the boundaries of generic conventions; Latino comic book author-artists who complicate issues of race and gender through their careful reconfigurations of the body; comic strips; Latino superheroes in mainstream comics; and the complex ways that Latino superheroes are created and consumed within larger popular cultural trends. Taken as a whole, the book unveils the resplendent riches of comics by and about Latinos and proves that there are no limits to the ways in which Latinos can be represented and imagined in the world of comics.

Genres: Art, History, Graphic Novels, Comics

318 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 12, 2016

Reviews

[Shane Maher · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is the second time I've tried reading this book, but I finally finished it. This was a topic I was very curious about, but I must say I found myself disappointed when reading this collection. There are a couple essays that stand out and I felt I learned valuable information, but too many were unfocused, self-contradictory, or merely uninformative. Too often authors key points would go without elaboration or discussion would devolve into overexamination of minutia. For the first half of the book I felt I didn't really learn that much, and in the second half I felt the essays lacked structure and message. Outside a few exeptions this book was a let down.