Your Brain on Latino Comics: From Gus Arriola to Los Bros Hernandez

Part I: An Overview of Latino Comics

An Overview of Latino Comics part i INTRODUCTION This book began the moment I decided as a kid to read and reread one comic book and not another. It began when I decided to cross-dress as a Mexican luchador (wrestler) and as some sort of Superman-Batman mix. It began the moment that comic book storyworlds allowed me to imagine myself battling foes, indulging in superhuman feats, surmounting gigantesque obstacles, and overcoming looming fears; it began the moment I could step into other worlds and feel another’s pain and pleasure; it began the moment I experienced a certain delight in putting together storylines, character attributes, and scenic detail. This book contains interviews with a number of comic book author-artists, and most of them are not garden-variety enthusiasts, ComiCon aficionados, suburban hipsters, or Marvel fetishist types; they are Latinos who in one way or another were exposed to and enthralled by comic books and comic strips at an early age; some, like Los Bros Hernandez, had ready access to their mother ’s stacks, and others, like Rafael Navarro, had tíos (uncles) with comic book treasure troves. Studies on comic books seem always to begin in the confessional mode.¹ As the author of a book on Latino comics, then, let me continue to indulge this impulse. Years before developing a hunger for novels and a taste in authors— as a teenager I would return again and again to García Márquez and Salman 1 Author cross-dressed as a luchador (wrestler)/superhero your brain on latino comics  Rushdie—I had already begun to develop a discerning taste for comics. I was not drawn to the daily or Sunday funny strips, nor to Archie, Casper, and Richie Rich—some favorites among my friends. No, I unabashedly liked the hypermasculine Anglo characters as well as the quick lines of movement and color splashes of the superhero comic. More specifically, I was into those superheroes whose muscles were self-sculpted, whose talents were self-engineered, and who kicked ass outside the law: Batman and the super-hunk Captain Marvel. I also preferred those that were set in a recognizable everyday earthscape —not in some never-never land. This is to say, at an early age I knew I was more a Marvel than a DC guy. At this point I have to confess that ethnic and gendered representational distortions—superhero as Anglo versus supervillain as dark, disfigured, effeminate, “alien” Other—hadn’t yet become part of my evaluative vocabulary. An attraction to those adventuring and self-chiseled superheroes makes up only part of my comic book confessional. Along with U.S. superheroes, I was drawn to Mexican luchadors, especially wrestlers like El Santo and Blue Demon. After various border crossings to visit relatives in Mexico, as well as weekend trips to the local flea market, I would transform into some type of hybrid superhero: blue tights, red shorts, cape, and luchador mask. Superpower battles, rescues, and romances were the order of the day. While the superhero-luchador sartorial wear was eventually socked away in a bottom drawer (my superpowers were deflated the day I was called a sissy) and the comic books were boxed, this world never fully disappeared. As an adult, I continue to reserve viewings of film adaptations of comic books (no matter how cheesy) as occasions to bond with my father. Generational divides fall by the wayside (he grew up in Mexico City in the ’50s) when we share stories of originals versus newly interpreted versions of Batman, The Phantom, Flash Gordon, The Hulk, and many others. In college, word-of-mouth enthusiasm sent me back to the comic books themselves. Three titles visually caught my eye and piqued my intellectual interest: Los Bros Hernandez’s Love and Rockets, Pat Mills and Carlos Ezquerra ’s Third World War, and Ivan Velez Jr.’s Blood Syndicate. One way or another, they were all visually dynamic and textually raw, presenting sophisticated narratives of everyday and epic-dimensioned struggles of characters of all colors, sexual orientations, and walks of life. I knew impressionistically then what I practice now: the study and teaching of comic books.² Even as preverbal children, we notice the interplay between vibrant visuals and word markings on a page. Whether or not we understand the words, we an overview of latino comics  infer and interpret, creating meaning. We have...