HISPANIC ATTACK

Re: the title-- it's "attack" as in "attack of the neglected Hispanic/Latino characters who are continually underrepresented in popular fiction of all genres," FWIW.

As I write this, "Hispanic Heritage Month" is almost over, but I decided to use the occasion to compile my own "top ten" of Hispanic characters who have proved significant in comic books and strips. A year ago one of the CBR boards did roughly the same thing, albeit only for Marvel characters. I'll include characters who didn't start out in comics (the first two on the list, in fact) as well as any whose racial makeup is part-Hispanic, part-anything else. The only ones not included would be anyone doing "brownface," such as that Golden Age DC Comics character The Whip, who was a white guy who talked in a fonny accent.

THE LIST:

(1) ZORRO-- the big enchilada; probably one of the few Hispanic characters who remains well-known since his invention. I'm most familiar with the Alex Toth comics from the 60s but Zorro's had his share of excellent work by other hands.

(2) THE CISCO KID-- The Kid had his high point in a series of comic strips by Rod Reed and Jose Luis Salinas, running from 1951 to 1967.

(3) MAGGIE CHASCARILLO-- where the two LOVE AND ROCKETS guys are concerned, I choose to focus only on one Hispanic character from their respective serials. Thus Maggie stands as a representative for all the varied Latino characters of Jaime Hernandez's "Locas" series.

(4) LUBA-- same thing as above, with Luba standing in for the wealth of "Palomar" characters created by Gilbert Hernandez.

(5) GORDO-- from the comic strip of the same name.

(6) BALDO-- ditto, with the notation that BALDO's one of the few family-humor strips, Latino or otherwise, that I find attractive to the eye.

(7) FIREBIRD/LA ESPIRITA-- I have no idea what the character's doing at Marvel these days but Steve Englehart did a great job of taking a rather rote character from Bill Mantlo's HULK run and fleshing her out to good effect in WEST COAST AVENGERS.

(8) EL AGUILA-- a minor Marvel Comics player invented by Dave Cockrum and Mary Jo Duffy for the POWER MAN/IRON FIST comic. Not a bad character but chiefly interesting for the late Cockrum's usual flair with inventive costumes.

(9) I'd like to include a DC character here, too, but damn it, I just didn't like any of them. So I'll default back to Marvel for the second (and female) version of The Tarantula, seen to best effect in the early issues of HEROES FOR HIRE.

(10) Lastly, I really wanted to include a good Hispanic villain, but I'm not sure there really are any. It might be argued that in early westerns both "black" and "red" antagonists took on a certain mythic force, "brown" ones don't seem to have been as significant, and much the same disparity seems to hold in comic books and strips. At the moment the only one who seems to break from the "bandit lord/bandit queen" mold of the westerns might be the two-shot IRON MAN villain "The Crusher," but he may not be the best choice as he died early in his career and probably isn't memorable to anyone who didn't grow up with the Archie Goodwin IRON MAN run.

I'll probably put that one out on some boards and see if anyone has a better nomination...