In June and well ahead of Latino Heritage Month (September 15 to October 15), DC Comics released variant cover images of current stories featuring several Latinx characters, written and illustrated by talented creators of similar backgrounds. These characters include two Green Lanterns (Kyle Rayner and Jessica Cruz), Hawk Girl, Renee Montoya, Blue Beetle (Jaime Reyes) and more. While there was initial criticism, it flew under the radar until last weekend, when a growing number of critics pointed out a strange similarity between them all: the need to connect their relationships with their respective cultures to food.
Each variant features a hero or villain munching on, or on their way to, some culturally significant food, from tamales and burritos to plantains. And while some of them may just be due to the artists’ choices, it seems that at least in some cases this was a decision made on the artists’ heads.
That aside though, if it was just the Bane cover Task Force Mr (by artist Chris Batista) or the heroes that make up Blood Syndicate (by artist Jorge Corona), that would make sense too. Bane is a big dude who has to keep eating to stay bulky (even before Venom). Also, the Blood Syndicate is a multicultural vigilante team and the families eat together so that works as well. These make the most sense, but also, a single issue would have worked as opposed to an ongoing thread.
However, when it’s every single cover, it looks like a big mess. On TikTok, Houston-based creator @BigDaddyPancho talked about how he looked forward to buying issues for his daughter so she could grow up with images in comics that showed the full breadth of her cultural heritage represented. However, he doesn’t feel all that excited right now.
@biggdaddypanchoyt No good titles here #Hispanictiktok#Hispanic#DC#Marvel#ComicBooks#Comics#ComicTok#Spiderman#MilesMorales#AmericaChavez#greenlantern#bbubeetle#greenscreen ♬ original sound – BiggDaddyP
While it’s unclear how all of the individual artists felt about this, there is at least one person who has spoken out about this editorial decision. We know this because the final cover wasn’t even the original artwork – the food was made more prominent in the edits.
This was not the original vision
Green Lantern art (by Mexican/Irish hero Kyle Rayner for Titans United: Bloodpact) comes from Mexican artist Jorge Molina and the original pays homage to the painting of Jalisco artist Jorge González Camarena the motherland (motherland). Camarena was part of the Mexican muralist movement, and the original painting is known to some as it served as the cover of many civic (free) student textbooks for about a decade in Mexico. Molina shared his thoughts and original drawing in June, and the same tweets were shared over the weekend. Molina has since said that if anything good came out of this, it’s that he appreciates love his original illustration has received
Food is an important part of all cultures, but to reduce one’s culture to a single aspect like this, as a kind of theme, is very crude and feels like a travesty. Most understand this when it comes to different non-white cultures, but it is not exclusive to people of color. Americans have used this stereotype against many ethnic groups before they were largely folded into whiteness, such as Irish, Italian, German, and Jewish people. No wonder there have been so many memes of this choice to use food to represent those of Latin American heritage by DC editorial.
A person (or DC character) is equally valid in their experience of their particular ethnicity, regardless of whether they are wearing overt cultural markers (including clothing, language, hairstyle, body art, etc. ) or if they “just” do anything else that doesn’t specifically connect them to their cultural background. This should serve as a reminder to DC Comics that it’s not just the artists and writers, but that ultimately, there should be cultural competence and diversity of staff. These decisions went through many people, including editors, project managers, marketing teams and more.
(via Twitter, featured image: DC Comics)
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