Back to Blog
Identity crisis mycomics6/30/2023 ![]() ![]() He articulates the “queerness” of each in respect to Anglo hegemony as a means of inserting himself into the discourse of both national and popular culture (the two condensed within the figure of the superhero). By using superheroes as vehicles for this decenteredness, Hernandez intersects his identities as a Chicano and as a comic book fan. It is through the affective register of nostalgia (the recollection of assimilation within and resistance to hegemony via the superhero) that Hernandez rearticulates the excessive bodies of superheroes to reveal the inherent non-heteronormativity, or queerness, of the genre and of fandom.ĢHernandez follows the strategy of queer Chicano writer Manuel Muñoz, who “decenters queer speaking subjects,” enabling “a deeper understanding of the intersubjective and social contexts in which queer subjects come into being” (Martiñez 227). His very personal take on the superhero genre embraces marginalization in a utopian gesture constituted first and foremost by affect. In foregrounding the personal, Hernandez employs a collective outlook on two registers: as a Chicano and as a comic book fan. This fantastic is the expression of individual non-heteronormative utopian desire. The transformation of the everyday into the fantastic of conventional superhero comic books is here revised as the assertion of the fantastic embedded in the everyday. ![]() As a result, Hernandez radically redirects the utopian impulse that resides at the heart of the genre. This is both a diegetic and extra-diegetic master narrative, thus linking creator with fantasy, and citizen with nation. God and Science undermines an Anglo-American master narrative sustained by the Silver Age superhero comics Hernandez is so clearly inspired by. In doing so, he gives voice to and makes visible the otherwise unheard and previously unseen in mainstream superhero comic books, uncovering the latent subversive appeal of the genre. ![]() In turning to the superhero genre, historically so heavily invested in idealizing a white, heteronormative American identity (that proverbial “truth, justice, and the American way”), Hernandez successfully subverts the homogenizing strategies of national rhetoric and of mass culture. In the process, he collapses a number of other binaries: the past and the present, the mundane and the fantastic, and the private and the public. By marrying his childhood love of Silver Age superhero comic books to the autobiographical qualities of alternative comic books, Hernandez actualizes his dual hyphenated subjectivities of pro-fan and Mexican-American. 1In the graphic novel God and Science: Return of the Ti-Girls (2012), about a multi-ethnic group of female superheroes, writer-artist Jaime Hernandez offers a compelling example of the creator who uses his own subjectivity as a mode of textual production. ![]()
0 Comments
Read More
Leave a Reply. |