Overview

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 areas: 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.

Full Product Details

Author:   Frederick Luis Aldama ,  Christopher González
Publisher:   University of Texas Press
Imprint:   University of Texas Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 3.30cm , Length: 22.90cm
Weight:   0.454kg
ISBN:  

9781477309155

ISBN 10:   1477309152
Pages:   316
Publication Date:   12 April 2016
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Table of Contents

Taking Back Control of Our Story Space: A Foreword (Frank Espinosa) Latino Comic Books Past, Present, and Future—A Primer (Frederick Luis Aldama and Christopher González) Part I. Alternativas One. Out of Sequence: Time and Meaning in Los Bros Hernandez (Patrick L. Hamilton) Two. Recreative Graphic Novel Acts in Gilbert Hernandez’s Twenty-First-Century Neo-Noirs (Frederick Luis Aldama) Three. Three Decades with Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez: An Odyssey by Interview (Christopher González) Part II. Cuerpo Comics Four. Biographic Challenges: Wilfred Santiago’s 21: The Story of Roberto Clemente (Christopher González) Five. Wrestling with Comic Genres and Genders: Luchadores as Signifiers in Sonambulo and Locas (Ellen M. Gil-Gómez) Part III. Tortilla Strips Six. Latino Identity and the Market: Making Sense of Cantú and Castellanos’s Baldo (Héctor Fernández L’Hoeste) Seven. The Archeology of the Post-social in the Comics of Lalo Alcaraz: La Cucaracha and Migra Mouse: Political Cartoons on Immigration (Juan Poblete) Eight. My Debt to Rius (Ilan Stavans) Part IV. A Bird, a Plane ... Straight and Queer Super-Lats Nine. The Alien Is Here to Stay: Otherness, Anti-Assimilation, and Empowerment in Latino/a Superhero Comics (Mauricio Espinoza) Ten. Anya Sofía (Araña) Corazón: The Inner Webbings and Mexi-Ricanization of Spider-Girl (Isabel Millán) Eleven. Revealing Secret Identities: Gay Latino Superheroes and the Necessity of Disclosure (Richard T. Rodríguez) Part V. Multiverses, Admixtures, and More Twelve. Everybody Wants to Rule the Multiverse: Latino Spider-Men in Marvel’s Media Empire (Kathryn M. Frank) Thirteen. Mapping the Blatino Badlands and Borderlands of American Pop Culture (Adilifu Nama and Maya Haddad) Fourteen. The Paradox of Miles Morales: Social Gatekeeping and the Browning of America’s Spider-Man (Brian Montes) Works Cited Contributors Index

Reviews

<cite>Graphic Borders is a meaty and expansive read, with a core through-line of unpacking the idea that Latina/o comics are redrawing the known borders of comics narrative... The writing in this collection is strong and compelling, the themes wide ranging and cohesive, and the message highly relevant. If you want to get a great sense of what Latino/a comics are doing in the culture right now, this is a necessary starting point to your journey. Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics

For those wanting a deeper look at the wells of artistic styles, cultural trends, and historical pressures that influenced our current crop of Latino artist-authors, this anthology digs wide and deep. * Pasatiempo * Graphic Borders is a meaty and expansive read, with a core through-line of unpacking the idea that Latina/o comics are redrawing the known borders of comics narrative. . . . The writing in this collection is strong and compelling, the themes wide ranging and cohesive, and the message highly relevant. If you want to get a great sense of what Latino/a comics are doing in the culture right now, this is a necessary starting point to your journey. * Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics *

Author Information

Frederick Luis Aldama is Arts and Humanities Distinguished Professor of English and University Distinguished Scholar at the Ohio State University. Christopher González is an assistant professor of English at Texas A&M University-Commerce.

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