Honestly, I don't usually rant, but a buddy gave me a heads up that Gangbuster just showed up in Superman #30 a month earlier than the above solicit. As he's been my favorite Hispanic DC character since forever, I stopped by my LCS and..............W T F??? First, Hector Ayala (my favorite Hispanic Marvel character) becomes "Angela" then eventually "Ava." Then Aztek the Ultimate
M A L E “Uno”(my second favorite Hispanic DC character) becomes "Nayeli" Una? And now Jose Delgado is now what? Josephina? I am tired of this hack writer b*llsh!t of feminizing these ORIGINAL existing diverse male characters of color...for what? To be more woke? More progressive? Do they not have enough Caucasian male characters that they can transition? Nothing against creating new ORIGINAL female characters. Nothing! But the key word is ORIGINAL. How hard would it have been to create original legacy or connected characters without killing off and/or replacing the original----Tigre or Tigre Blanca, Azteka or Maya, Crimebuster or Justice? Or an original non-connected female Latina character from scratch. Originality is literally part of their jobs!
Yes, these are C-listers, maybe D-listers to some. But these characters mean something to some of us. The White Tiger is credited as Marvel's very first Hispanic superhero. He's all we had for the longest time. I'm Mexican-American and as a child I embraced this Puerto Rican hero as my own. Who else was there? I'm not 100%, but outside of the non-US based Global Guardian heroes (Fury, Bushmaster) and El Dorado (limited to cartoons) for the life of me I can not remember a Hispanic hero appearing in comics before Gangbuster. Why do we not have more Hispanic writers who grew up with these C-Listers like myself, that can take the reigns on these characters instead of hacks who have no appreciation for them?
I’m sure I’ll get crap for caring about characters that most of comicdom doesn’t, but I’m not a Caucasian who could look up to and appreciate a Batman, a Spiderman, a Flash and fall back on a Captain America, an Iron Man, even a “Kryptonian” Superman. Or an African-American fan who could look up to and appreciate a Black Panther, a Cyborg, a Luke Cage, Bishop, Mr. Terrific, or War Machine. We’ve had no representation then and no representation now that are even close to being at the A-List level of these 12 aforementioned characters and I’ve grown very tired of it. I would bounce off the walls if we did…even just one! Hell, just before he passed away, Stan Lee announced that he would introduce a new original Latino superhero under his own banner. Losing Stan the Man was devastating, but you can’t help but wonder what could have been.
I love comics. Well, loved comics, for the better part of almost 40 years. On top of everything, today’s current storylines are not doing it for me anymore and 40 years is just too long to wait on representation. We are an afterthought. Maybe it’s time to walk away from comics as there doesn’t seem to be anything left for me. Why spend another dime on something so dissatisfying. At least from the big 2. Sh!t, I can’t even get that C-lister Gangbuster anymore
. With both DC and Marvel coming out with anthologies focusing on diverse groups like Native Americans, LGBQ, Women and Asians among others, I guess it is kind of expected that at least one of the two will produce one representing Hispanics(September?) I do not have high expectations for it. Character-wise or creator-wise. I really hope I’m wrong.
Well, I have been working on some of my own graphic novel writing for awhile. Maybe I’ll just revisit and focus on that. On top of some other existing life matters, this latest frustration just has me so deflated. Maybe writing can keep me connected.
Off my soapbox, thanks for reading.
And for the curious, here’s "Wokebuster".
https://comicvine.gamespot.com/a/upl...gangbuster.jpg