Marvel Voices Comunidades #1: Strength in Community

By Gabriel de Jesus and Duna Haller

Marvel Voices: Comunidades #1 gives Latinx creators the opportunity to tell stories that take the Latinx experience and apply it to the world of Marvel. While each writer approaches their stories from different perspectives, common themes of community, identity, and history and culture can be found. 

A connective thread throughout the anthology are the precise, creative letters of Ariana Maher, which manage to both create a coherent framework for the reader’s comfort and include coloring, playfulness with shaping and balloons, and vibrant emotions out of every character’s dialogue.

Community

One example of how the various stories work together to spin a narrative is the two White Tiger stories. In “Pa’lante Juntos”, Daniel Jose Older, German Peralta, and Jesus Aburtov tell a story of the original White Tiger, Hector Ayala. Later in “Legados”, Amparo Ortis, Caio Majado, and Dono Sanchez-Almara use Ava Ayala, Hector’s younger sister and the current White Tiger. In both stories, the two White Tigers find themselves trying to be heroes, not just to the world as a whole, but to their community.

Both writers utilize culturally significant points of history to tell their stories. Older bases his story on the fight for rights undertaken by an activist group in the 60s, taking the real-life struggles faced by people in Spanish Harlem and personifying it into a supervillain. Ortiz sets her story in the after-effects of the 2019 earthquake in Puerto Rico. Unlike Hector’s story, Ava’s villain is one from within. While the Tiger God is the villain, Ava fights the words spoken by the Tiger God are those of Ava’s own insecurities. In both stories, it is through the strength of community that they are able to defeat their adversaries.

All these themes permeate in similar ways through our third story: “You’re Not Alone” by Claribel Ortega, Adriano Melo, Victor Nava, and Dijjo Lima, where America Chavez needs to lean on others. Ortega takes this a step further. America Chavez is able to easily ask for help, but she needs to take strength from this help to propel her to find strength despite her past setbacks, and all of that is shown through art that doesn’t fear being action-focused, as well as realistic when the drama of the story needs it.

“Homecoming” by Alex Segura, Alba Glez, Jose Marzan Jr, and Cris Peter takes Sunspot back home. Roberto reconnects to what remains of his community from before his power manifested, and said reconnection brings along his building of a mutant community. Sedura also shows the complexities of identity and community by acknowledging Sunspot’s origin and the racism that had been present. The choice of emotive, manga-influenced art and a reflexive tone serves to create a pathway between the reader and Sunspot’s racial and mutant-related trauma, and brings great joy to the corrective story in which Sunspot becomes, in a way, the superhero he and his friends needed when they were young.