"Once upon a time, in a galaxy as close as your local comic book store, worlds populated with Latino superheroes, misfits, legends, and all manner of wondrous characters filled a gaping void in American graphic fiction. Graphic Borders is a must-read for anyone studying graphics and the emerging multi-cultural, multi-racial, multi-sexual, multi-abled, multi-dimensional literary imagination that our artists and storytellers keep building, gorgeously, every day." -- Lisa Sanchez Gonzalez, University of Connecticut, author of Boricua Literature and Puerto Rican Folktales/Cuentos folcloricos puertorriquenos "With the proverbial 'brown tide rising' come swells of creativity and diversity in US Latino comic books and graphic nonfiction. This timely critical intervention delivers wide-ranging and comprehensive critical thinking about comics as a malleable, exciting, and innovative mode of storytelling about Latina/o lived experiences, creative industry, and speculative aspirations and desires. It opens imaginations wide to the splendors of well-known and emergent Latina/o comic artists-and Latinos in the comic book mainstream. Like Latinos in comics today that know no bounds, this collection soars to new scholarly heights." -- Paul Allatson, University of Technology, Sydney, author of Latino Dreams and Key Terms in Latino/a Cultural and Literary Studies "Holy Blatino Spidey! Aldama and Gonzalez leave no stone unturned. Addressing alternative Latino comic book auteurs like Los Bros Hernandez as well as mainstream creators like Cantu and Castellanos, the rich and varied theoretical explorations included in this volume extend the range and deepen the insight of Aldama's seminal Your Brain on Latino Comics. Trust your spider-sense. This collection will slingshot you into danger zones, just as today's Latino graphic artists are explosively transmogrifying all of US culture." -- Enrique Garcia, Middlebury College, author of Cuban Cinema After the Cold War "In Marvel comics the Watchers are an alien race that roams the galaxies observing and documenting all that goes on. The essayists in this collection are the 'Watchers' of the micro-universe that is Latino comics. Aldama and Gonzalez gather an extraordinary league of comic book Watchers who observe and analyze as well as make visible the living, breathing archive of those at the vanguard of Latino sequential art creation. Lock those tractor beams on this one. It'll blow your mind." -- Eric J. Garcia, El Machete Illustrated "Zam! Pow! !Guey! Graphic Borders smashes through perceptual blockades to radically reveal a Latino/a comics universe that blasts aesthetic boundaries. Aldama, Gonzalez, and their scholarly superhero team hurl psionic pulse waves of cognitive, historical, and formal analyses to vitally reconfigure today's comic-book borderlandia. Dare to enter! Dare to be masked!" -- Cruz Medina, Santa Clara University, author of Reclaiming Poch@ Pop
Frederick Luis Aldama is Arts and Humanities Distinguished Professor of English and University Distinguished Scholar at the Ohio State University.
Christopher González is an assistant professor of English at Texas A&M University-Commerce.
Graphic Borders is a meaty and expansive read, with a core
through-line of unpacking the idea that Latina/o comics are
redrawing the known borders of comics narrative. . . . The writing
in this collection is strong and compelling, the themes wide
ranging and cohesive, and the message highly relevant. If you want
to get a great sense of what Latino/a comics are doing in the
culture right now, this is a necessary starting point to your
journey.
*Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics*
For those wanting a deeper look at the wells of artistic styles,
cultural trends, and historical pressures that influenced our
current crop of Latino artist-authors, this anthology digs wide and
deep.
*Pasatiempo*
While the collection itself speaks more to notions of Latino
culture and comic books in popular culture, the volume is wisely
constructed to convey critical looks toward various dynamics of
culture as a whole. . . In today’s contentious understandings of
national, state, and urban borders, the use of comic books lays out
an intriguing history of these political dynamics. . . Graphic
Borders is a thorough look at Latino culture and comic books that
engages subjects like borders, gender, history, politics, and
sexuality in a cohesive collection of essays.
*Popular Culture Studies Journal*
The essays in Graphic Borders do not fail to amaze, and the
marshalling of such a wide variety of topics and comics by Aldama
and González is nothing short of breathtaking. Whether for the
comics novice or aficionado, this collection will introduce the
reader to new modes of graphic narrative analysis and will shine as
a lodestar for future scholarship in the years to come.
*Studies in Twentieth and Twenty-first Century Literature*
The anthology undoubtedly advances the scholarship on Latin@ comics
in resourceful ways, as it brings to the fore the Latin@
intellectual multiverse.
*Latino Studies*
Graphic Bordersquestions and redefines the 'American way,' building
in new fissures, i.e. new territories that one can walk into to
experience the Latino imagery, especially Latino comic imagery, in
a new way.
*Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies*
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