Mexican Action Figures! Xicanosmotic Toy Department!

Jimmy Olsen and his Mexican Stereotypecasting Problems

PostModernBarney is replete with comic book lore, pop-culture, and movie screen icons of both female siren and hunky men persuasion. Here's his take on a found Jimmy Olsen comic book adventure.

"Oh, man…a “sleepy” latino, complete with poncho and sombrero. All he’s missing is a little burro on a string to complete the racist stereotype trifecta." by postmodernbarney.com

No Sombrero? Not a Mexican peon.



Rosita is a lying Mexican vixen of course. She calls poor sappy Jimmy Olsen a "Stupid Gringo." (According to the set up premise of stereotypes, readers should assume she pronounced it Es-tiuped Grringo).

Check out the end when Jimmy Olsen's creators cast a nice generalization on the Roma too. If justice was served, the slap he got in the end was for the tired portrayals and caricaturizations, not for being a two-timing Ese.



For the whole postmodernbarney experience and the original post go here.

Superman Saves The Barrio For the United Farmworkers Union: Cesar Chavez's Buddy in Tights!

original posting: 9/26/07

Growing up in Laredo, ensconced in my room with Snoopy posters and UT Longhorn banners, I always thrilled to the wonders of Curt Swan and Murphy Anderson's Superman stories for DC comics. Little did I know that one of these wonders--January 1972, issue 247--featured the Man of Steel as a defender of Mexican Farm Workers. Small World.

A former student of mine and regular Tex[t]-Mex Galleryblog contributor, Professor Marc García-Martinez, of Hancock College, writes in with this comic book, blast-from-the-past, skinny:

At the end of the tumultuous 60’s decade TIME magazine featured Cesar Chavez on its famous cover and a timely story on “The Grapes of Wrath, 1969: Mexican-Americans on the March.”

At the beginning of 1980 National Geographic, that distinguished magazine devoted to all things natural and cultural, featured an honest piece on “Mexican-Americans: A People on the Move.”

Somewhere in between, circa 1972, DC comics contributed its own unique brand of homage to La Raza by presenting an peculiar tale in its Superman No. 247 that could have justly been called “Mexican-Americans: Idle Farm Workers on Attack.”

Featuring in the relative climax of the story an assortment of Mexican-[ergo geographically-laborious-American] farm workers in California’s central valley, the story is an ironic and curious little portrait of the Mexican, that seems to cut too close to the spineless, indolent, leech-off-the-government for aid portrayals we’ve seen all too often lately.

This is some strange verbal-visual caca here, carnal…perhaps inadvertent. Let’s chat about this some more!

En la lucha,

Marc

García-Martinez also forwarded cool scans from the story; I would appreciate it if anyone has issue 272, as it is, oddly, missing from my collection. I'll offer a free copy of Tex[t]-Mex to the first person to email me at memo@sdsu.edu to let me know you are willing to loan or give me this prized issue!
























update

Professor García-Martinez just gave me the headsup on a Mexico City, Spanish-language edition of this story! I just bought it off ebay. Abrazos a mi amigo en Hancock College.