DC Comics covers with Green Lantern holding tamales, Hawkwoman with platanos fritos, and Blue Beetle holding tacos.
DC Comics
hide title
change the subtitles
DC Comics
DC Comics covers with Green Lantern holding tamales, Hawkwoman with platanos fritos, and Blue Beetle holding tacos.
DC Comics
Although Hispanic Heritage Month doesn’t begin until September 15th, DC Comics is getting an early start by unveiling some special covers in their effort to celebrate the upcoming month.
The covers, which were revealed in Junefeatures some of DC’s superheroes surrounded by, holding or eating a variety of Latin American foods such as tacos, flan, tamales and platanos fritos. Comic book fans on Twitter, especially Latino fans, are not too happy with this rendition of the DC heroes.
I seriously can’t get over how pathetically uncreative these covers are when it comes to the visual representation of Hispanic heritage pic.twitter.com/HbGTLEDPfL
— Travis B. Hill (@travisbhill5) August 27, 2022
Edgardo Miranda-Rodriguez, who is the creator of his comic series Borinqueña and has collaborated with DC Comics in the past, told NPR that he believes these covers are “tasteless.”
“I think it’s incredibly dull — almost like a parody of our culture when we’re limited in food, you know? And this, street food,” Miranda-Rodriguez said. “It’s very, very coded for me. But it also speaks to how unaware they are that this is coded, that this is offensive, that it’s tasteless. And it feels very exhausting.”
A cover featuring Kyle Rayner as Green Lantern has gotten more heat than the rest. It shows the hero holding a large green flag in one hand that reads “Viva Mexico!!” while the other carries a shopping bag filled with tamales. However, this was not the original illustration.
In June, illustrator Jorge Molina detected on Twitter that he created a Green Lantern cover for DC. The original illustration was supposed to be an homage to him homeland, a famous mural by Mexican painter Jorge González Camarena. In the unfinished illustration, the Green Lantern was carrying a lantern instead of a tamale, had an eagle with a snake perched on its wing, and carried a Mexican flag without the coat of arms.
I made this cover for DC for #hispaniçeritagemuah Kyle Reyner being of Mexican descent and being Mexican myself, it was a great honor to have the opportunity to pay tribute to my country and my roots, so I decided to pay tribute to Jorge Gonzales Camerena. pic.twitter.com/463HBs8j0U
– Jorge Molina (@jorge_molinam) June 20, 2022
According to Molina, the cover was “it’s not supposed to see the light of day” due to “legal issues” and how it was promoted by DC remained a mystery to him.
DC Comics tells NPR that the controversial Green Lantern cover will not be published. “It is part of DC’s internal creative process to receive and develop multiple versions of comics from our artists. Some are released as variant covers, others are never used,” the company said in a statement. It was “erroneously” reported as the official cover.
DC says it plans to release Molina’s original cover on September 20.
The company did not address the controversy over the other planned covers. Fans across Twitter have taken to the platform to call out DC Comics for portraying Latino heroes only in relation to their food.
Miranda-Rodriguez encouraged Latinos to continue to mobilize and “rock the boat” when it came to social issues like this, but was ultimately disappointed with how DC Comics chose to appeal to their Latino readership.
“Their characters will continue to inspire generations to come as before, but it’s exhausting when you have a situation like this,” he said. “They don’t just see this as an opportunity to do something to celebrate our heritage, and basically, turn it around and make fun of our heritage and reduce us to menu items.”
