Morpheus is in the house! (or the planet)...Pedro Parquero resurrected! (well, kinda'): Mestizaje raises its head in current comic books and film

Follow this link here to a report from Newsarama on Africano actor Lawrence Fishburne's upcoming role as the fairly caucasoidal (and double entendre-d) Perry White in director Zack Snyder's forthcoming film release Superman—Man of Steel.

And this link here to an honest Newsarama essay on race, culture, and Marvel Comics' new Spiderman—a half-Ethiopian, half-Mexican teenager by the name of Miles Morales ("my mestizaje sense is tingling").

Little Dot and Waves of Nostalgia

My grandmother Ana Juarez (di Nericcio) infected me and my sister Josie with the pleasures of reading with comic books--this particular issue, from 1962, strikes a particularly hard chord of memory.

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.

Comic Books and Race at Racialicious!

Comic Book Memories: The Uncanny in Pulp and Ink

Bizarre comics worthy of Ware, Clowes, Hernandez, Abel, Tomine, Crumb and Spiegelman--but from the mainstream.

Ham Fisher's Palooka and Lupe Vélez

The Lupe Vélez chapter of Tex[t]-Mex features a brief, close-reading of Palooka, a movie starring James Cagney's brother (perhaps one of its only claims to fame), Jimmy "The Schnoz" Durante, and the one and only Mexican Spitfire! The movies were based on a popular comic strip by Ham Fisher--this became a comic book in the 1950s. All this as preface to the posting of a striking cover from an issue of Palooka--one that features the ham-faced gabacho in a wild-west fight with a swarthy-looking desperado (aka "Mexican"):

OK, maybe he is not "Mexican" but he sure is "dark," roguish, acne-scarred, etc. More on this soon.

And, lastly, a brief Lupe-dedicated film-short novelty: