Originally Posted by
Lorendiac
That's right -- the idea was that about 100 issues after Kyle received a power ring, it was suddenly "retconned in" that his long-lost father was not an Irish-American named "Rayner," but instead a man of obvious Mexican heritage, with "Rayner" having simply been a cover identity for him at one time. Kyle himself had spent the first twenty-odd years of his life thinking his heritage was very, very Irish. So he sure wasn't supposed to have grown up thinking of himself as being part of a "Mexican-American" or "Hispanic" or "Latino" subculture. Writer Judd Winick apparently thought it would be a peachy keen idea to make Kyle part-Hispanic all of a sudden, but as far as I know, practically everybody else who's written any later stories about Kyle Rayner has basically just shrugged and ignored that little detail.
This reminds me of a point I was researching a few weeks ago. (I asked for help on this forum.) My basic question was: "I've heard that Kendra Saunders, the Hawkgirl in the JSA comics of the 2000s, was revealed to be part-Hispanic on her mother's side at some point. Just when did that first get mentioned for the record?" The answer turned out to be: Almost three years after her debut appearance, it was casually mentioned in one line of dialogue in "Hawkman #1" that Kendra's mom (Trina Saunders) had been a "beautiful Hispanic woman." Until then, nobody had any solid reason to think the new Hawkgirl wasn't just another dark-haired girl with an Anglo-Saxon-sounding name and a spiffy costume! (Which raises the question of whether the Hispanic heritage was part of the official game plan for that character from day one, or just a belated retcon in the name of diversity?)