Puerto Rican comic books

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Puerto Rican comic books are ripe with fantastical villains and superheroes as is true of many American comic books; however, Puerto Rican comic books also deal with menacing dark forces of nature on the island, such as hurricanes, debt crisis, and US colonial oppression. Puerto Rican superheroes take on man-made disasters as well such as pollution, debt, military occupation and they rally around reconstruction efforts after the disasters. [1] Comic books are a male dominated industry but there are a growing number of Puerto Rican and Latinx female superheroes, especially in indie publications. [2]

Contents

Puerto Rican Super Heroes


Edgardo Miranda-Rodriguez’s LA BORINQUENA received widespread attention for creating Marisol, a New York City college student turned superhero who uses her powers to save the environment and her beloved island of Puerto Rico. [3] Her superpowers from the Taíno gods of her Puerto Rican ancestors, was acquired by the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History’s Superheroes exhibition. Marisol is the only superhero in the exhibit that was created and published independently and is not part of a large comic book imprint like Marvel. [4]


Ricanstruction: Reminiscing & Rebuiliding Puerto Rico (2018) is an anthology featuring the Puerto Rican comic book community of artists and friends such as Gail Simone, Greg Pak, Reginald Hudlin, Denys Cowan, Tony Daniel, Bill Sienkiewicz, Yanick Paquette, Gabby Rivera, Will Rosado, Jorge Jimenez, Mike Allred, Chris Sotomayor, and Latinx celebrities such as Rosario Dawson, Ruben Blades, Javier Munoz, and Sonia Manzano. [1] Among the highlighted Puerto Rican artists and organizers is Edgardo Miranda-Rodriguez creator of La Borinqueña, the Puerto Rican heroine he created in 2016, who fights alongside Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman for the betterment of Puerto Rico. [5] Proceeds from the sale of the book were directed to the rebuild of Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria. [6]


Giannina Braschi and Joakim Lindengren collaborated on the comic book United States of Banana (2017) [7] , a prophetic book that depicts natural disasters, war, the rise of Donald Trump as "Oliver Exterminator", and liberation of Puerto Rico. [8] The superheroes are drawn as aging intellectuals: the Puerto Rican poet Giannina, the depressed actor Hamlet, and the bearded, decrepit philosopher Zarathustra; they join forces to free the Puerto Rican prisoner Segismundo from the dungeon of the Statue of Liberty. [9]

The first Puerto Rican superhero in a Marvel comics was the first White Tiger, Hector Ayala, a street level crime fighter in the 1970s and 1980s. A person becomes the White Tiger via the powers of a magical amulet that enhances the body to superhuman levels. [10]

Yo-Yo Rodriguez (Slingshot, 2017) is a Puerto Rican born superhero and daughter of known super-criminal John Horton, aka the Griffin. She has the ability to run faster than a human heartbeat. Yo-Yo has both of her arms cut off but is eventually able to regain dexterity with prosthetics.

Puerto Rican Comic Book Artists

Platforms for Publication and Research

Puerto Rican creators have had to extend beyond traditional outlets to reach a Latinx audience. That includes events such as Puerto Rico Comic Con, [11] Latino Comics Expo, Nerdtino Expo, and Sol-Con. [12] The Center for Puerto Rican Studies (Centro de Estudios Puertorriqueños) archives Puerto Rican comic books and hosts panels with Boricua artists, including Edgardo Miranda-Rodriguez, Chris Batista, Emilio J. López, and Mark Texeira. [13] Latinographix [14] publishes Latinx comic books including United States of Banana by Boricua Giannina Braschi. El Espace is an online news column dedicated to Latinx communities, including Puerto Rican comics, in Spanish and English.

Further reading

Related Research Articles

Nuyorican movement Cultural movement for Puerto Ricans living in or near New York City in the late 1960s / early 1970s

The Nuyorican movement is a cultural and intellectual movement involving poets, writers, musicians and artists who are Puerto Rican or of Puerto Rican descent, who live in or near New York City, and either call themselves or are known as Nuyoricans. It originated in the late 1960s and early 1970s in neighborhoods such as Loisaida, East Harlem, Williamsburg, and the South Bronx as a means to validate Puerto Rican experience in the United States, particularly for poor and working-class people who suffered from marginalization, ostracism, and discrimination.

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Joakim Lindengren Swedish cartoonist

Joakim Lindengren is a Swedish cartoonist, illustrator and artist.

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Frederick Luis Aldama American university professor

Frederick Luis Aldama is a University Distinguished Professor, Arts and Humanities Distinguished Professor of English, and University Distinguished Scholar at The Ohio State University. He teaches courses in the departments of English, Spanish, and Portuguese covering Latino and Latin American cultural phenomena including literature, film, TV, music, sports, video games, and comic books. He is also a member of the Center for Cognitive and Brain Sciences. He is the author, co-author, or editor of thirty six books, including the 2018 International Latino Book Award and Eisner Award-winning Latinx Superheroes in Mainstream Comics. He is the founder and director of Latinx Space for Enrichment Research (LASER), which was named a "Hispanic Education Bright Spot" by the Obama administration's White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanics. In 2016, Aldama received the Ohio Education Summit Award for founding and directing LASER. He is the founder and co-director of the Humanities & Cognitive Sciences High School Summer Institute at The Ohio State University. He has been honored with the 2016 American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education's Outstanding Latino/a Faculty Award. Aldama is the creator and curator of the Planetary Republic of Comics, a platform for accessible scholarly knowledge about comic books and graphic nonfiction from around the world.

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United States of Banana (2011) is a postmodern geopolitical tragicomedy by the Puerto Rican author Giannina Braschi. It is a cross-genre work that blends experimental theatre, prose poetry, short story, and political philosophy with a manifesto on democracy and American life in a post–9/11 world. The book dramatizes the global war on terror and narrates the author's displacement after the attacks from her home in the Battery Park neighborhood in New York City. The work addresses Latin American immigration to the United States, Puerto Rico's colonial status, and "power imbalances within the Americas."

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Edgardo Miranda-Rodriguez

Edgardo Miranda-Rodriguez is a writer at Marvel Entertainment, Editor-in-Chief at Darryl Makes Comics LLC, Art Director/Owner at Somos Arte and Studio Edgardo creative services, and creator of La Borinqueña, a new and original comic book character that has grown into a cultural phenomenon and a nationally recognized symbol of Puerto Rican patriotism, social justice, and equality for all.

La Borinqueña is a graphic novel by Edgardo Miranda-Rodriguez published in 2016.

Latino philosophy is a contemporary thought practice concerned with Latinos, including the political, social, epistemic, and linguistic significance of Latino peoples and cultures. Contemporary practitioners often write in Spanish and/or English. Latino philosophy often explores subjects such as Latino identity, borders, immigration, gender, race, feminism, citizenship, incarceration, freedom, postcolonialism, and decoloniality.

Puerto Rican poetry is the poetry written in Puerto Rico or outside the island by Puerto Ricans. Most Puerto Rican poetry is written and published in Spanish, but work by poets of the diaspora is also written and published in Spanglish and English. The literary arts emerge on the island formally in mid 1800's but did not reach international recognition until the 20th century when Puerto Ricans intellectuals, artists, dramatists, and poets of the diaspora created the phenomena known as the Nuyorican Poetry Movement.

References

  1. 1 2 Miranda-Rodriguez, Edgardo (2018). Ricanstruction : reminiscing & rebuilding Puerto Rico. [Brooklyn, New York]. ISBN   978-0-692-09221-7. OCLC   1038072241.
  2. ↑ "How 3 Latina Comic Book Artists Carved Out a Space in a Male-Dominated Industry". Remezcla. 2016-10-14. Retrieved 2020-08-23.
  3. ↑ "La Borinqueña: a superhero for Puerto Rico". WHYY. Retrieved 2020-08-23.
  4. ↑ "The superhero 'La Borinqueña' is at the Smithsonian. We speak to her proud creator". NBC News. Retrieved 2020-08-23.
  5. ↑ Gustines, George Gene (2018-03-20). "A Puerto Rican Hero Joins With Wonder Woman and Others for Hurricane Relief". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2020-08-23.
  6. ↑ Gustines, George Gene (2018-03-20). "A Puerto Rican Hero Joins With Wonder Woman and Others for Hurricane Relief". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2020-08-23.
  7. ↑ ivetteromero (2017-07-21). "Giannina Braschi's "United States of Banana" as graphic novel". Repeating Islands. Retrieved 2020-08-23.
  8. ↑ "Vol. 2, No. 2, Spring 2018 of Chiricú Journal: Latina/o Literatures, Arts, and Cultures on JSTOR". doi:10.2979/chiricu.2.issue-2 (inactive 2020-08-23).Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  9. ↑ Stanchich, Maritza; Frederick Luis Aldama, Editor (2020). Bilingual Big Bang: Giannina Braschi's Trilogy Levels the Spanish-English Playing Field (Poets, Philosophers, Lovers). Pittsburgh: U Pittsburgh.
  10. ↑ Montoya, Yvette (2018-12-23). "20 Latina Superheroes You Never Knew You Were Rooting For". HipLatina. Retrieved 2020-08-23.
  11. ↑ "#PRCOMICCON". #PRCOMICCON. Retrieved 2020-08-23.
  12. ↑ Jeunesse, Marilyn La. "Latinx People Helped Build the World of Comic Books — While Often Being Left Out of the Pages". Teen Vogue. Retrieved 2020-08-23.
  13. ↑ "Café Con Comics: Boricuas in the Comic Book Industry | Centro de Estudios Puertorriqueños". centropr.hunter.cuny.edu. Retrieved 2020-08-23.
  14. ↑ Primiani, Alex. "Latinographix, a new comics series from OSU Press, hopes to give voice to Latinx in the US » MobyLives". Melville House Books. Retrieved 2020-08-23.
  15. ↑ Aldama, Frederick Luis, 1969- (2016). Latinx comic book storytelling : an odyssey by interview. Padilla, Ricardo,, Fernández l'Hoeste, Héctor D., 1962-, González, Christopher (First ed.). San Diego, CA. ISBN   978-1-938537-92-9. OCLC   973339575.CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
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