Your Latino Comics Program
The Ohio State University
Thompson Library Room 165
April 13, 2010 4-5 pm
I will be discussing my work by and about Latinos in comics based on my book, Your Brain on Latino Comics. I will lecture on mainstream comic book representations of Latino superheroes from the late 1970s till today as well as how Latino author/artists working today use the visual and verbal elements of the comic book medium to affect the cognitive and emotional responses of their readers.
http://library.osu.edu/blogs/outreach/
Monday, April 5, 2010
Full-spectrum comics An encyclopedia of graphic cultura
SAN ANTONIO CURRENT | 9/2/2009 Print
Courtesy Photo
Art from Love and Rockets by Jaime Hernandez
Art
Full-spectrum comics
An encyclopedia of graphic cultura
by Patricia Portales
(Available http://www.sacurrent.com/printStory.asp?id=70495)
In 1954, the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency recommended that comic-book publishers censor their amoral and violent storylines — thanks largely to the findings of
psychiatrist Fredric Wertham, who believed Batman and Robin’s relationship was suspicious and Wonder Woman’s lifestyle was anti-masculine — lest they corrupt the children.
If Wertham interpreted Wonder Woman’s rescue missions, which often interrupted her secretarial duties, as a threat to male authority, I wonder how he would have responded to Laura
Molina’s 1996 comic book Cihualyaomiquiz, the Jaguar, in which law student by day/superhero warrior by night Linda Rivera fights California’s militarized police and corporate capitalists. And he probably would have been alarmed by Ivan Velez’s Tales of the Closet, which illustrates the closeted life of Tony, Scotty, Ben and other LGBT teenagers who experience
alienation and violent hate crimes in and out of their school in Queens.
In Your Brain on Latino Comics: From Gus Arriola to Los Bros Hernandez, Frederick Luis Aldama examines the ways in which Latino author-artists contributed to the reemergence of the
comic-book industry following the restrictive 1950s, when it was rare for Latinos to be represented by anyone other than a heavily accented caricature. Latino comic-book auteurs,
many of whom started their careers in the alternative and underground comics of the 1980s, have developed psychologically complex characters who have smashed Latino and other stereotypes, “radically extended[ing] the alternative-comic-book storytelling mode in various ways while they detail the everyday firmly located within a larger society.”
Aldama profiles several comics populated with highly complex characters who suffer alienation in societies plagued by equally complex problems: crime, violence, rampant consumerism, racism. Wilfred Santiago’s ultra-morbid In My Darkest Hour, published by Fantagraphics, illustrates the life of anti-hero Omar Guerrero, who self-medicates to endure the psychic trauma of living in a violent society: “We all rot. Soon I’ll be nothing. Why bother with the triviality of ethics that are nothing more than man’s invention?” His musings are followed by a morose
contemplation of each cigarette he smokes: “It will take me seven minutes to finish this cigarette. Each cigarette snuffs eleven minutes out of you.”
Citing Los Bros Hernandez’s Love and Rockets, Molina’s Cihualyaomiquiz, the Luna Bros’ Ultra, Anthony Oropeza’s Amigoman, and Rafael Navarro’s Sonambulo, among others, Aldama argues that each author-artist’s innovative techniques developed the visual and verbal narrative available to characters of color. In part one of three, Aldama offers a history of Latino and African-American characters — often short-lived and stereotyped — such as DC’s El Dorado in Super Friends and Marvel’s Sam “Snap” Wilson, the Falcon in Captain America. Crediting the influence of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and the Culture Wars of the 1980s, Aldama
tracks the rise of realistic, multidimensional characters of color in the 1990s in Milestone’s Blood Syndicate, Azteca Productions’ El Gato Negro, and Jose Martinez’s Chosen Comic’s The Chosen, which first appeared at ComiCon in 1995.
Twenty-one interviews with the author-artists comprise the book’s third section, and what a gem it is. Gus Arriola, author-artist of the 40-year-old strip Gordo, shares his beginnings as Columbia Screen Gems illustrator for the series Krazy Kat and other minor cartoons during the Great Depression. El Gato Negro creator Richard Dominguez discusses Marvel’s and DC’s buyout of distributors and its effect on his work. Roberta Gregory, currently working on her novel Mother Mountain, admits that writing and illustrating a graphic novel would take too long. El Muerto creator Javier Hernandez relates the story of the one-and-a-half minute NPR interview that led
to the film adaptation featuring Wilmer Valderrama in the title role. Aldama focuses largely on comic books and devotes very few pages to comic strips, seemingly because Latino produced
comic books outnumber strips, but he does include Dupie: The Life and Times of a College Student as Seen through the Pen of Campus Cartoonist, Gil Morales, which ran in the Stanford Daily for four years, Lalo Alcaraz’s politically charged La Cucaracha, and David Gonzales’s comic-strip-turned-plastic-figurines Homies. Still, the book is a storehouse of information for any would-be comic aficionado, and like Aldama, urges the reader to further his or her own study of Latino comics.
Your Brain on Latino Comics:
From Gus Arriola to Los Bros Hernandez
By Frederick Luis Aldama
University of Texas Press
$24.95, 331 pages
© 2010 San Antonio Current
San Antonio Current http://www.sacurrent.com/printStory.asp?id=70495
2 of 2 4/5/10 11:09 AM
Courtesy Photo
Art from Love and Rockets by Jaime Hernandez
Art
Full-spectrum comics
An encyclopedia of graphic cultura
by Patricia Portales
(Available http://www.sacurrent.com/printStory.asp?id=70495)
In 1954, the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency recommended that comic-book publishers censor their amoral and violent storylines — thanks largely to the findings of
psychiatrist Fredric Wertham, who believed Batman and Robin’s relationship was suspicious and Wonder Woman’s lifestyle was anti-masculine — lest they corrupt the children.
If Wertham interpreted Wonder Woman’s rescue missions, which often interrupted her secretarial duties, as a threat to male authority, I wonder how he would have responded to Laura
Molina’s 1996 comic book Cihualyaomiquiz, the Jaguar, in which law student by day/superhero warrior by night Linda Rivera fights California’s militarized police and corporate capitalists. And he probably would have been alarmed by Ivan Velez’s Tales of the Closet, which illustrates the closeted life of Tony, Scotty, Ben and other LGBT teenagers who experience
alienation and violent hate crimes in and out of their school in Queens.
In Your Brain on Latino Comics: From Gus Arriola to Los Bros Hernandez, Frederick Luis Aldama examines the ways in which Latino author-artists contributed to the reemergence of the
comic-book industry following the restrictive 1950s, when it was rare for Latinos to be represented by anyone other than a heavily accented caricature. Latino comic-book auteurs,
many of whom started their careers in the alternative and underground comics of the 1980s, have developed psychologically complex characters who have smashed Latino and other stereotypes, “radically extended[ing] the alternative-comic-book storytelling mode in various ways while they detail the everyday firmly located within a larger society.”
Aldama profiles several comics populated with highly complex characters who suffer alienation in societies plagued by equally complex problems: crime, violence, rampant consumerism, racism. Wilfred Santiago’s ultra-morbid In My Darkest Hour, published by Fantagraphics, illustrates the life of anti-hero Omar Guerrero, who self-medicates to endure the psychic trauma of living in a violent society: “We all rot. Soon I’ll be nothing. Why bother with the triviality of ethics that are nothing more than man’s invention?” His musings are followed by a morose
contemplation of each cigarette he smokes: “It will take me seven minutes to finish this cigarette. Each cigarette snuffs eleven minutes out of you.”
Citing Los Bros Hernandez’s Love and Rockets, Molina’s Cihualyaomiquiz, the Luna Bros’ Ultra, Anthony Oropeza’s Amigoman, and Rafael Navarro’s Sonambulo, among others, Aldama argues that each author-artist’s innovative techniques developed the visual and verbal narrative available to characters of color. In part one of three, Aldama offers a history of Latino and African-American characters — often short-lived and stereotyped — such as DC’s El Dorado in Super Friends and Marvel’s Sam “Snap” Wilson, the Falcon in Captain America. Crediting the influence of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and the Culture Wars of the 1980s, Aldama
tracks the rise of realistic, multidimensional characters of color in the 1990s in Milestone’s Blood Syndicate, Azteca Productions’ El Gato Negro, and Jose Martinez’s Chosen Comic’s The Chosen, which first appeared at ComiCon in 1995.
Twenty-one interviews with the author-artists comprise the book’s third section, and what a gem it is. Gus Arriola, author-artist of the 40-year-old strip Gordo, shares his beginnings as Columbia Screen Gems illustrator for the series Krazy Kat and other minor cartoons during the Great Depression. El Gato Negro creator Richard Dominguez discusses Marvel’s and DC’s buyout of distributors and its effect on his work. Roberta Gregory, currently working on her novel Mother Mountain, admits that writing and illustrating a graphic novel would take too long. El Muerto creator Javier Hernandez relates the story of the one-and-a-half minute NPR interview that led
to the film adaptation featuring Wilmer Valderrama in the title role. Aldama focuses largely on comic books and devotes very few pages to comic strips, seemingly because Latino produced
comic books outnumber strips, but he does include Dupie: The Life and Times of a College Student as Seen through the Pen of Campus Cartoonist, Gil Morales, which ran in the Stanford Daily for four years, Lalo Alcaraz’s politically charged La Cucaracha, and David Gonzales’s comic-strip-turned-plastic-figurines Homies. Still, the book is a storehouse of information for any would-be comic aficionado, and like Aldama, urges the reader to further his or her own study of Latino comics.
Your Brain on Latino Comics:
From Gus Arriola to Los Bros Hernandez
By Frederick Luis Aldama
University of Texas Press
$24.95, 331 pages
© 2010 San Antonio Current
San Antonio Current http://www.sacurrent.com/printStory.asp?id=70495
2 of 2 4/5/10 11:09 AM
Monday, February 1, 2010
ReadAloud Special : Latino Comics Program in Thompson Library
Tuesday February 16, 4-5 pm
Professor Aldama will be discussing his work by and about Latinos in comics and graphic novels-mainstream and alternative-that appears his book, Your Brain on Latino Comics. He will lecture on mainstream comic book representations of Latino superheroes from the late 1970s till today as well as how Latino author/artists working today use the visual and verbal elements of the comic book medium to affect the cognitive and emotional responses of their readers.Frederick Luis Aldama is Arts and Humanities Distinguished Professor of English at the Ohio State University where he uses the tools of narratology and research in the cognitive- and neuro- sciences in his teaching and scholarship on Latino and Postcolonial literature, film, and comic books. He is the editor of five collections of essays and author of seven books, including most recently A User’s Guide to Post-colonial and Latino Borderland A User’s Guide to Post-colonial and Latino Borderland Fiction.
http://library.osu.edu/blogs/readaloud/
Tuesday February 16, 4-5 pm
Professor Aldama will be discussing his work by and about Latinos in comics and graphic novels-mainstream and alternative-that appears his book, Your Brain on Latino Comics. He will lecture on mainstream comic book representations of Latino superheroes from the late 1970s till today as well as how Latino author/artists working today use the visual and verbal elements of the comic book medium to affect the cognitive and emotional responses of their readers.Frederick Luis Aldama is Arts and Humanities Distinguished Professor of English at the Ohio State University where he uses the tools of narratology and research in the cognitive- and neuro- sciences in his teaching and scholarship on Latino and Postcolonial literature, film, and comic books. He is the editor of five collections of essays and author of seven books, including most recently A User’s Guide to Post-colonial and Latino Borderland A User’s Guide to Post-colonial and Latino Borderland Fiction.
http://library.osu.edu/blogs/readaloud/
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Esai Morales is Back!!!!!!! : Freudian avatar Vatos in Caprica (2010) by Arturo Aldama
I was channel surfing in my usual brain dead procrastinate want to reach a light alpha brain wave mode to wind down from a busy day at campus and the name Caprica caught my attention. I read the description and saw avatar, Esai Morales and apocalypse and I was piqued enough to set the DVR to watch it and fast forward through commercials.
Esai Morales, the Boricua by birth, icon of Chicano themed cinema as seen with Mi Familia and the mimetically racist NYPD Blue, and the vato loco brother in Ritchie Valens among others, is back with the brand new series of Caprica (a type of prequel to Battlestar Galactica that starred an even more iconic figure in Chicano themed cinema, Edward James Olmos in recent seasons).
So in a not too distant future 58 years before the Battlestar Galactica flees man made cyborg annihilation, we first see Esai, a Tauron, in a turn of a century Italian mafia style suit with black dainty gloves and Stetson fedora with hints towards the Godfather working as a lawyer. His fellow Taurons are morenos and mestizos and have tribal markings, and Esai (his characters last name is Adama, if it had the L in the name it would be a full narcisisstic moment) plays a subdued and assimilationist figure, trying to blend in and be low key as he defends his fellow Taurons in the court sytem. The judge, an African-American women, lets off his client who is smugly guilty only to find that she was happy to be bribed. (So I guess folks of color in positions of judicial are untrustworthy—hmm?) The future is more interpellated with a growing consumer use of military grade artificial intelligence, the coloniality of power between white Eurocentric controllers of technology and capital and the Taurons like Chicanos continues to play itself out at all levels. Taurons deal with and in some cases reinforce the imposed baggage of criminality: savage, untrustworthy, deceitful, stoic, folkloric, and simplistic. So what remains in city scapes that look like white washed and only upper class Seattle and Vancouver (no homeless folks and no evidence of abject poverty, a type of Starbucks fantasy of happy bourgeois consumers enjoying the hustle bustle of clean living city life).
The tropes of Eurocentric privilege remain, applied cognitive science and capitalism create new markets and desire remains strictly Freudian and repressed. People maintain their surface lives living as consumers of the coloniality of power and act out their ids in a full avatar sensorium with hacked holobands. Rather than the digital anime like avatars we see in current gaming circles, these avatars are identical human replicas of their users with sexy SM like couture. They enter into a type of Caligula like night-club with stages, lofts, and reserved lounge areas seen in most mid to high end clubs in most cities. Teenage group sex is rampant, unfettered drug use, the hard stuff, real time virgin sacrifices to one of the few African American women who transmutes to a demonic figure, and literal shoot to kill fight clubs, and bare knuckle brawling with orgiastic religious fervor crowds. Sex and violence is the mega church of repressed desire.
The terrorist tactic liberators from the moral outrage of these avatar Freudian pits of unfettered sexual violence are now bomb carrying messianic evangelical disciples of the one god who blow up trains to prepare for the coming. So far in this episode they are deeply privileged kids, mainly white, and the only E. Indian and/or Pakistani kid is the actual bomb detonator on a subway train.
The tropes of Freud and his now famed incest taboo complex is given even deeper rein in the avatar worlds where fathers (a highly successful biomedical technocrat with a house that looks like Bill Gates’ on the Seattle environ shorelines and Esai who as a good stoic Chicano in the colonialist gaze eschews technology and prefers old school ways of power, bribery and knifing for honor) can act out their repressed desires for their teenage daughters. Grieving the loss of their “real” daughters because of the one G..d bombing, they work towards embodying their Avatar daughters and making what will be a Stepford wife version of the teenage chicas. Where they will, I imagine always want to hold the remote control on their daughters brain chips. It is interesting that the “forbidden” and “repressed” gets full holographic range in the avatar nightclubs and state racism towards to Taurons is still considered part of respectable above ground society? Hum? Muy interesante?
So in the grand Puritan traditions of the American Empire, public culture represses desire to the forbidden and the grotesque, and is released without filters in avatar pits. Racism, capitalism, privilege and Freud seem atemporal, Latinos if that is what Taurons are, the state defined others, are, are not only atemporal but stuck in 1910 America with the great waves of immigration and values from the old country: we continue to exist in different chronotopes.
Can’t wait to see the next episodes as Freudian desire becomes cyborg revenge on their literal patriarch creators. I wonder what would Freud would say about that?
Esai Morales, the Boricua by birth, icon of Chicano themed cinema as seen with Mi Familia and the mimetically racist NYPD Blue, and the vato loco brother in Ritchie Valens among others, is back with the brand new series of Caprica (a type of prequel to Battlestar Galactica that starred an even more iconic figure in Chicano themed cinema, Edward James Olmos in recent seasons).
So in a not too distant future 58 years before the Battlestar Galactica flees man made cyborg annihilation, we first see Esai, a Tauron, in a turn of a century Italian mafia style suit with black dainty gloves and Stetson fedora with hints towards the Godfather working as a lawyer. His fellow Taurons are morenos and mestizos and have tribal markings, and Esai (his characters last name is Adama, if it had the L in the name it would be a full narcisisstic moment) plays a subdued and assimilationist figure, trying to blend in and be low key as he defends his fellow Taurons in the court sytem. The judge, an African-American women, lets off his client who is smugly guilty only to find that she was happy to be bribed. (So I guess folks of color in positions of judicial are untrustworthy—hmm?) The future is more interpellated with a growing consumer use of military grade artificial intelligence, the coloniality of power between white Eurocentric controllers of technology and capital and the Taurons like Chicanos continues to play itself out at all levels. Taurons deal with and in some cases reinforce the imposed baggage of criminality: savage, untrustworthy, deceitful, stoic, folkloric, and simplistic. So what remains in city scapes that look like white washed and only upper class Seattle and Vancouver (no homeless folks and no evidence of abject poverty, a type of Starbucks fantasy of happy bourgeois consumers enjoying the hustle bustle of clean living city life).
The tropes of Eurocentric privilege remain, applied cognitive science and capitalism create new markets and desire remains strictly Freudian and repressed. People maintain their surface lives living as consumers of the coloniality of power and act out their ids in a full avatar sensorium with hacked holobands. Rather than the digital anime like avatars we see in current gaming circles, these avatars are identical human replicas of their users with sexy SM like couture. They enter into a type of Caligula like night-club with stages, lofts, and reserved lounge areas seen in most mid to high end clubs in most cities. Teenage group sex is rampant, unfettered drug use, the hard stuff, real time virgin sacrifices to one of the few African American women who transmutes to a demonic figure, and literal shoot to kill fight clubs, and bare knuckle brawling with orgiastic religious fervor crowds. Sex and violence is the mega church of repressed desire.
The terrorist tactic liberators from the moral outrage of these avatar Freudian pits of unfettered sexual violence are now bomb carrying messianic evangelical disciples of the one god who blow up trains to prepare for the coming. So far in this episode they are deeply privileged kids, mainly white, and the only E. Indian and/or Pakistani kid is the actual bomb detonator on a subway train.
The tropes of Freud and his now famed incest taboo complex is given even deeper rein in the avatar worlds where fathers (a highly successful biomedical technocrat with a house that looks like Bill Gates’ on the Seattle environ shorelines and Esai who as a good stoic Chicano in the colonialist gaze eschews technology and prefers old school ways of power, bribery and knifing for honor) can act out their repressed desires for their teenage daughters. Grieving the loss of their “real” daughters because of the one G..d bombing, they work towards embodying their Avatar daughters and making what will be a Stepford wife version of the teenage chicas. Where they will, I imagine always want to hold the remote control on their daughters brain chips. It is interesting that the “forbidden” and “repressed” gets full holographic range in the avatar nightclubs and state racism towards to Taurons is still considered part of respectable above ground society? Hum? Muy interesante?
So in the grand Puritan traditions of the American Empire, public culture represses desire to the forbidden and the grotesque, and is released without filters in avatar pits. Racism, capitalism, privilege and Freud seem atemporal, Latinos if that is what Taurons are, the state defined others, are, are not only atemporal but stuck in 1910 America with the great waves of immigration and values from the old country: we continue to exist in different chronotopes.
Can’t wait to see the next episodes as Freudian desire becomes cyborg revenge on their literal patriarch creators. I wonder what would Freud would say about that?
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
What's Your Story? Faculty Lecture Series
What's Your Story?
Faculty Lecture Series
Please come out and join us for our very first lecture in our inaugural faculty lecture series! This series will highlight Ohio State faculty and their research around social justice and identity. Each lecture will be complemented by a book authored, co-authored, or edited by the lecturer. The books will be distributed on a first come first served basis to students who rsvp and attend the event.
Dr. Frederick Aldama will be lecturing on Latino representation in comics. Supplementing this lecture will be his book titled "Your Brain on Latino Comics." This event is FREE and open to the public!
When: MONDAY OCTOBER 5TH 2009
Time: 4:00pm
Where: Younkin Success Center Room 300
1640 Neil Ave, Columbus, OH 43210
*A limited number of books will be distributed to students on a first come, first served basis. You must present your Buck ID to receive the book.*
If you have any questions feel free to contact TJ Stewart at the Multicultural Center:
614-688-8449
tstewart@studentlife.osu.edu
http://mcc.osu.edu <http://mcc.osu.edu>
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Frederick Luis Aldama: Latino comics explored
At some point in childhood a kid makes a choice about his comics: Is he a fan of Superman? Or does he prefer Amigoman, the Latin Avenger?
Or does he read both?
The preference is a central question asked by Frederick Luis Aldama, an English professor and author of "Your Brain on Latino Comics: From Gus Arriola to Los Bros Hernandez," a book that analyzes Latino artists and their work, yet also explores why younger readers like the stories they like.
Aldama calls the early "cultivation of taste" - whether from reading children's books or comics - among one's first introductions to art and storytelling. The kids who later reach for the DC-superhero genre may neurologically seek out the thrill of escapism in leaping buildings and avoiding bullets; others, like Aldama, may be attracted to the latest issue of Gilbert Hernandez's "Love and Rockets" for its day-to-day narrative and complicated characters.
Drawing out a character's complexity and nuanced backstory has become a hallmark among Latino comic artists, Aldama said. "Even though the characters are still fighting social injustices," Aldama said, "there's a bigger range of character types and more background on each character. There's a real sense of responsibility to the cultural particulars."
When a large comic book publisher attempts to tackle those cultural particulars, it can make for clumsy handling, Aldama said. One wince-inducing flub occurred in 1981 when Marvel introduced the Latina character Firebird. The female superhero (born Bonita Juarez) from New Mexico showed up in an Incredible Hulk series and saved the day for a group of Anglo characters, Aldama noted. Firebird was accompanied by Red Wolf, the first American Indian superhero in mainstream books.
"They're asked to stand aside while the team finishes the business," Aldama said.
Since then, mainstream publishers have developed more thoughtful Latino characters, and to their credit, Aldama said, they're characters of depth and moral complexity.
Araña, a half-Puerto Rican, half-Mexican teenager, fights crime for Marvel at night but is also beset by the troubles of young adulthood. DC revived the Blue Beetle (born Jaime Reyes) who lives along the Texas-Mexico crossing and tackles the moral troubles of the border.
"You get a real sense that it's not enough to create Latino characters anymore, but there's an attempt to also make it interesting," Aldama said. "Because the younger generation today who's reading it won't settle for it."
5:30 tonight. University Press Books, 2430 Bancroft Way, Berkeley. (510) 548-0585. www.universitypressbooks.com.
- Justin Berton, jberton@sfchronicle.com
Monday, August 10, 2009
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