Latinx Superheroes in Mainstream Comics

Latinx Pop Culture

by Frederick Luis Aldama, John Jennings (Foreword), Javier Hernandez (Afterword)

Winner of the 2018 Eisner Award Winner for Best Scholarly/Academic Work

Whether good or evil, beautiful or ugly, smart or downright silly, able-bodied or differently abled, gay or straight, male or female, young or old, Latinx superheroes in mainstream comic book stories are few and far between. It is as if finding the Latinx presence in the DC and Marvel worlds requires activation of superheroic powers.

Latinx Superheroes in Mainstream Comics blasts open barriers with a swift kick. It explores deeply and systematically the storyworld spaces inhabited by brown superheroes in mainstream comic book storyworlds: print comic books, animation, TV, and film. It makes visible and lets loose the otherwise occluded and shackled. Leaving nothing to chance, it sheds light on how creators (authors, artists, animators, and directors) make storyworlds that feature Latinos/as, distinguishing between those that we can and should evaluate as well done and those we can and should evaluate as not well done.

The foremost expert on Latinx comics, Frederick Luis Aldama guides us through the full archive of all the Latinx superheros in comics since the 1940s. Aldama takes us where the superheroes live—the barrios, the hospitals, the school rooms, the farm fields—and he not only shows us a view to the Latinx content, sometimes deeply embedded, but also provokes critical inquiry into the way storytelling formats distill and reconstruct real Latinos/as.

Thoroughly entertaining but seriously undertaken, Latinx Superheroes in Mainstream Comics allows us to truly see how superhero comic book storyworlds are willfully created in ways that make new our perception, thoughts, and feelings.

Genres: Comics, Nonfiction, Latinx, History

232 pages, Paperback

First published October 10, 2017

Reviews

[Cruz Castillo · Rating 5 out of 5]

18% of the U.S. population. Largest minority of the country. 63 million total and counting. Glad someone like El Profe is calling out all the white hegemonic led industries of comics, animation, TV, and film.

[Guilherme Smee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Saí da leitura deste livro um pouco decepcionado. Contudo, é interessante que haja um livro que liste e contextualize os super-heróis latinos criados pela Marvel e DC Comics desde a Era de Ouro até os dias de hoje e que mostre como essa representação mudou. Esse livro também arrola aparições dessa categoria étnica de super-heróis nas animações, nas séries de televisão e no cinema. Mas o trabalho do livro meio que para por aí. Ele não traz uma análise acadêmica própria das condições de existência dos super-heróis latinos em uma cultura tão imperialista e que destrói a alteridade como a dos Estados Unidos. Não assume uma perspectiva acadêmica e crítica, mas uma certa anuência com a indústria cultural estadunidense, um otimismo a respeito de tantas misinterpretações da cultura latina feitas naquele país, que persegue as minorias latinas como poucos países na América. Embora ricamente ilustrado, o livro pouco se dedica a pensar a representação icônica dos super-heróis latinos, suas tonalidades de pele e de explicar a diferença ems er latino em contextos diferentes como os Estados Unidos, a Europa, a Costa Rica, o Brasil ou o México, por exemplo. Tampouco pensa nas interseccionalidades ou as explica ao leitor. Como livro teórico essa publicação é uma boa lista de super-heróis latinos.

[Julio Bonilla · Rating 5 out of 5]

In 1996, several new Latinos were born—and reborn. DC's Chuck Dixon(writer) and Robert Campanella (artist) give the Green Lantern a Latino makeover with Kyle Rayner's backstory, which includes his estranges Mexican father Gabriel Vasquez; because of his work for the Mexican CIA and to save his family from imminent danger, he changes his name to Aaron Rayner and leaves three-year-old Kyle....

In the early 1970s, George Pérez introduced the comic book universe to the Nuyorican empowered White Tiger. And while late into the Latino superhero game Marvel quickly developed a more robust stable of complex Latino characters than did DC, it wasn’t until the 1990s, when Anglo-Mexican axle Alonzo took over as editor in chief of the city, that would be going to see more interesting Latino characterizations.

[W · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an encyclopedic overview of Latinx superheroes in comic books and in movies and television. In three fast chapters, the book covers a wide array of texts and characters, providing a highly readable overview for those who are new to the topic and providing a good bibliography and cognitive map of Latinx superheroes for those who want to do further research and writing on a particular hero.

[Paula ϟ · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good reference book, however, it could've been less wordy and probably cut in half.