Julio Bonilla’s Reviews > Latinx Superheroes in Mainstream Comics > Status Update

March 1, 2017 saw the arrival of the LGBTQ-celebrated America Chavez (her lesbian mamas and her sexually nuanced witty banter and desire for Kate Bishop) as the eponymous hero of her own series, America.

There have been some televisual versions of Latina superheroes from DC’s in-print protoworlds, but they are usually hypersexualized.

In-print superhero comics tend to provide the origin stories or protoworlds for re-creations in the animation, film, and TV formats. However, given that these are all narrative media that have come into their on during the twentieth century, we also see a cross-pollination of shaping devices between them. 🖼

Artists like Guara and Quesada want to breathe life into the geometric shapes—they want their visuals to fill the stories with the action and movement of life. Because comic books operate so foundationally on their visual shaping devices, we don’t want to read a superhero comic book where there is no movement, action; even if a dialogue is dynamic, if we only see panel after panel of heads ….🦸🏽‍♀️

Jack Kirby’s great contribution to comics was his geometrizing of story.

While these are not A-listers like apocalypse, Osborn/Green Goblin, Doctor Octopus, Magneto, Lex Luther, The Joker, and Bizarro, DC and Marvel do create a handful of interesting antagonists.

In October 2006, Orson Scott Card created in
Marvel’s Ultimate line of comics the Latino Iron Man as Antonio Stark. To throw the net wide to attract new generations of young readers to comics…

As one might expect in terms of sociohistorical circumstances, it is not until
the last decade of the twentieth century that we begin to see the kind of rich and complex Latinx superhero of an Echo or an O’Hara, for instance.

Both Latinas choose to hang up the garbs of the civilian life long – Lopez was an extraordinary concert concert pianist and Reyes was a trauma surgeon. Both use their smarts and strengths to subdue bad guys. Reyes uses her mutant powers, which allow her to project a force field around her body, and Echo her uncanny knack at mimicry, a photographic reflex that, when she studies VHS tapes of martial arts fights….

His outfit and slang locate him racially and as urban: he sports hybrid football gear and baggy overalls with hip-hop-style sneakers, as well as a six-o’-clock shadow and a gold earring—not the usual leotard getup of the superhero. 👨🏾‍🦲