RACE AND ETHNICITY 501
In the end, the book’s many cultural clashes, framed as farce, illustrate Jin’s complicated
negotiation of ethnic identities.
Jessica Abel’s La Perdida (2006) off ers another important example of the histori-
cally conscious ethnic autobiography, in the tradition of other Latino graphic novels
like Ilan Stavans’s Mr. Spic Goes to Washington (2008) and the Hernandez Brothers ’
collected Love and Rockets stories. Th e main character, Carla, moves from the United
States to Mexico City as a way of coming to terms with her mixed-race background
and her Mexican father’s early abandonment. Th ough she lives in Mexico for a full year,
she spends much of her time partying and fi ghting with various boyfriends. Her tenure
there ends when she discovers that a group of her male friends have kidnapped her
wealthy American ex-boyfriend and are holding him for ransom. After police unravel
the kidnapping plot, she is forced to return to the United States and is forbidden to
return to Mexico. Her essence may remain “lost,” as the title suggests, since she never
visits her father or loses the sense that she is exploiting a culture to which she has
only tenuous links, but she succeeds in recognizing her own shortcomings. Abel’s care-
ful depiction of Carla’s transition into Spanish fl uency and the book’s glossary of key
terms render this graphic novel a crucial indicator of comics’ new investment in issues
of transnational identity and culture.
As the fi eld of comics continues to diversify, more authors are responding directly
to the genre’s classic titles, heroes, and styles, while others see comics as a forum in
which to create new perspectives on traditional literature and mainstream versions of
history. Alan Moore’s Supreme (2002, 2003), for instance, parodies the uniform white
American patriotism of heroes like Superman through an endless parade of Supremes
at every age and a blindingly white costume. Paul Chadwick’s Concrete (ongoing) tackles
such issues as environmental decay and terrorism through a once-human hero who suf-
fers social isolation after his brain is preserved within an impenetrable concrete body.
Harvey Pekar and Gary Dumm’s Students for a Democratic Society: A Graphic History
(2008) represents an increasing number of nonfi ction histories, dealing particu larly
with moments of social change, that are being produced in graphic form. Several
literature series, including No Fear Shakespeare and Graphic Classics , take advantage
of the form’s visual characteristics in order to stress lesser-studied elements of classic
literature such as gender roles, class concerns, and racial and ethnic identities. Th ese
trends suggest that diversity and diff erence have emerged as dominant preoccupations
of modern comics.
Selected Bibliography: Brown, Jeff rey A. Black Superheroes, Milestone Comics, and
Th eir Fans. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2001; Buhle, Paul., ed. Jews and
American Comics: An Illustrated History of an American Art Form. New York: New
Press, 2008; Fingeroth, Danny. Disguised as Clark Kent: Jews, Comics, and the Creation
of the Superhero. New York: Continuum, 2007; Strömberg, Fredrik. Black Images in the
Comics: A Visual History. Seattle: Fantagraphics Books, 2003.
Jennifer D. Ryan
