The first volume in a trailblazing series on world comics and graphic nonfiction, this book presents a comprehensive array of historical, formal, and cognitive approaches to Latino comics—an exciting popular culture space that captures the distinctive and

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 CitedContributorsIndex

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.

Once upon a time, in a galaxy as close as your local comic book store, worlds populated with Latino superheroes, misfits, legends, and all manner of wondrous characters filled a gaping void in American graphic fiction. Graphic Borders is a must-read for anyone studying graphics and the emerging multi-cultural, multi-racial, multi-sexual, multi-abled, multi-dimensional literary imagination that our artists and storytellers keep building, gorgeously, every day.

"Once upon a time, in a galaxy as close as your local comic book store, worlds populated with Latino superheroes, misfits, legends, and all manner of wondrous characters filled a gaping void in American graphic fiction. Graphic Borders is a must-read for anyone studying graphics and the emerging multi-cultural, multi-racial, multi-sexual, multi-abled, multi-dimensional literary imagination that our artists and storytellers keep building, gorgeously, every day." -- Lisa Sanchez Gonzalez, University of Connecticut, author of Boricua Literature and Puerto Rican Folktales/Cuentos folcloricos puertorriquenos "With the proverbial 'brown tide rising' come swells of creativity and diversity in US Latino comic books and graphic nonfiction. This timely critical intervention delivers wide-ranging and comprehensive critical thinking about comics as a malleable, exciting, and innovative mode of storytelling about Latina/o lived experiences, creative industry, and speculative aspirations and desires. It opens imaginations wide to the splendors of well-known and emergent Latina/o comic artists-and Latinos in the comic book mainstream. Like Latinos in comics today that know no bounds, this collection soars to new scholarly heights." -- Paul Allatson, University of Technology, Sydney, author of Latino Dreams and Key Terms in Latino/a Cultural and Literary Studies "Holy Blatino Spidey! Aldama and Gonzalez leave no stone unturned. Addressing alternative Latino comic book auteurs like Los Bros Hernandez as well as mainstream creators like Cantu and Castellanos, the rich and varied theoretical explorations included in this volume extend the range and deepen the insight of Aldama's seminal Your Brain on Latino Comics. Trust your spider-sense. This collection will slingshot you into danger zones, just as today's Latino graphic artists are explosively transmogrifying all of US culture." -- Enrique Garcia, Middlebury College, author of Cuban Cinema After the Cold War "In Marvel comics the Watchers are an alien race that roams the galaxies observing and documenting all that goes on. The essayists in this collection are the 'Watchers' of the micro-universe that is Latino comics. Aldama and Gonzalez gather an extraordinary league of comic book Watchers who observe and analyze as well as make visible the living, breathing archive of those at the vanguard of Latino sequential art creation. Lock those tractor beams on this one. It'll blow your mind." -- Eric J. Garcia, El Machete Illustrated "Zam! Pow! !Guey! Graphic Borders smashes through perceptual blockades to radically reveal a Latino/a comics universe that blasts aesthetic boundaries. Aldama, Gonzalez, and their scholarly superhero team hurl psionic pulse waves of cognitive, historical, and formal analyses to vitally reconfigure today's comic-book borderlandia. Dare to enter! Dare to be masked!" -- Cruz Medina, Santa Clara University, author of Reclaiming Poch@ Pop