Your Brain on Latino Comics: From Gus Arriola to Los Bros Hernandez (Cognitive Approaches to Literature and Culture)

343 Pages·2009·8.98 MB·English

by  Frederick Luis Aldama

Your Brain on Latino Comics
Cognitive Approaches to Literature and Culture Series

edited by frederick luis aldama, arturo j. aldama, and patrick colm hogan

Cognitive Approaches to Literature and Culture includes monographs and edited volumes that
incorporate cutting-edge research in cognitive science, neuroscience, psychology, linguistics,
narrative theory, and related fields, exploring how this research bears on and illuminates cultural phenomena such as, but not limited to, literature, film, drama, music, dance, visual art,
digital media, and comics. The volumes published in this series represent both specialized
scholarship and interdisciplinary investigations that are deeply sensitive to cultural specifics
and grounded in a cross-cultural understanding of shared emotive and cognitive principles.
YOUR

ON LATI NO COM ICS

From Gus Arriola to Los Bros Hernandez

frederick luis aldama

University of Texas Press Austin
Copyright © 2009 by the University of Texas Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
First edition, 2009

Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to:
Permissions
University of Texas Press
P.O. Box 7819
Austin, TX 78713-7819
www.utexas.edu/utpress/about/bpermission.html

∞ The paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements of ansi/niso z39.48-1992
(r1997) (Permanence of Paper).

library of congress cataloging-in-publication data

Aldama, Frederick Luis, 1969–
Your brain on Latino comics : from Gus Arriola to Los Bros Hernandez / Frederick Luis
Aldama. — 1st ed.
p. cm. — (Cognitive approaches to literature and culture)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-0-292-71934-7 (cloth : alk. paper) — isbn 978-0-292-71973-6 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Comic books, strips, etc.—United States—History and criticism. 2. Hispanic Americans—Comic books, strips, etc. 3. Hispanic Americans in literature. I. Title.
pn6725.a38 2009
791.5'352968—dc22
2008049356

The interview with Jaime Hernandez was published previously in Frederick Aldama, Spilling the
Beans in Chicanolandia: Conversations with Writers and Artists (University of Texas Press, 2006).
For Corina Isabel

and with a special thanks to

Evan Thomas

and

Shawn Saler
THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK
Contents

Part I: An Overview of Latino Comics

. Introduction
. So Many Approaches, So Little . . .
. Concerned Comics
. The Good, Bad, and . . . Beautiful
. Mainstreamed Compadres
. Slipstreamed Latinos
. Latinos Strike Back
. Spandexed Latinas, Where Art Thou?
. More Superheroes Revealed
. Spandex Alternatives
. All That Is White Turns Noir
. Other à la Modes
. Strips with New Stripes 













Part II: Brains A-sizzle on Latino Comics

. Introduction
. Comic, Tragic, Epic—Redux
. Proof’s in the Pudding
. Getting Emotional
. Abracadabra . . . the Mind-Reading Trick
. Double Trouble: The Visual and Verbal Narrator
. Latinos Conjured Up
. Rereading Race and Ethnicity
. It’s a Burrito Wrap 









Part III: Conversations with the Creators

David Alvarez
Gus Arriola
Hector Cantú
Carlos Castellanos 



Richard Dominguez
Frank Espinosa
Roberta Gregory
Gilbert Hernandez of Los Bros Hernandez
Jaime Hernandez of Los Bros Hernandez
Javier Hernandez
Jonathan and Joshua Luna of The Luna Brothers
Laura Molina
Rhode Montijo
Rafael Navarro
Anthony Oropeza
Peter Ramirez
Fernando Rodriguez
Bobby Rubio
Carlos Saldaña
Wilfred Santiago
Ivan Velez Jr.

notes
bibliography
index

viii your brain on latino comics

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Your Brain on Latino Comics