Tag Archives: jorge j. santos jr.

The timely Out of the Gutters: Obscenity, Censorship, and Transgression in American Comics is out this June from UT Press

Posted on by
Out of the Gutters: Obscenity, Censorship, and Transgression in American Comics

Comics have long been a subject of moral panics, no doubt thanks to their in-your-face illustrations and their association with young readers. Indeed, the politicians and parents behind today’s book-banning campaigns reserve special ire for graphic novels. What makes today’s controversies different is the content of the alleged obscenity. Instead of targeting sex as such, censors now focus on affirmations of nonheteronormative identity, as in Maia Kobabe’s Gender Queer. And while violence is a constant in comics, stories that acknowledge nationalist oppression and violence, such as Art Spiegelman’s Maus, are also being blacklisted.

From UT Press and edited by Jorge J. Santos Jr. and Patrick S. Lawrence, Out of the Gutters: Obscenity, Censorship, and Transgression in American Comics is out June 10, 2025.

Out of the Gutters assembles scholars from diverse disciplines to examine US comics, graphic novels, and cartooning that have been challenged as obscene or transgressive. Covering well-known underground figures like Robert Crumb and Charles Burns, newcomers such as C. Spike Trotman and Emil Ferris, and mainstream creators including Chris Claremont and Archie Goodwin, the collection explores the market economics of transgression, historical representations of graphic violence, the ever-changing meaning of pornography, sex-positive comics by BIPOC authors, and queerness in pop-culture mega-properties like X-Men and The Walking Dead.

Order your copy from Bookshop, Amazon, and more.

Review: Mixed Race Superheroes

Posted on by
Mixed Race Superheroes

Ever since Barack Obama entered the court of public opinion, everything about him has been under public scrutiny. Things like where he grew up and just how intelligent he is have been regularly discussed or investigated. Even his time at Harvard and his work as a community organizer, nothing has seemed off limits, especially from his detractors. The most glaring thing that exposes most racists is his being mixed race.

Him being both Black and white, drums all those old ghosts that has made conservatives stoke Americans’ worst fears, but really is their internalized racism. For comic fans, the topic isn’t new. Readers know that this is a topic that has been explored as long as comics have exited. In the new essay collection from Rutgers University Press, Sika A. Dagbovie-Mullins and Eric L Berlatsky explore this dichotomy in Mixed Race Superheroes.

In the “Introduction”, the editors,  start off with W. Kamau Bell’s article for Wired where he talked about the hope she had for his mixed race children, citing  recent examples in Ant Man and The Wasp and Aquaman, where mixed race actors played characters of similar racial makeup. In “ Guess Who’s Coming Home”, Dagbovie Mullins explores how race has been seen throughout Spiderman’s canon in film and in comics. In “ The Ride Of Valkyrie against White Supremacy”, Mitchell talks about Tessa Thompson’s portrayal of Valkyrie onscreen, not only going against type but challenging racism within the geek community. In “Which World would you Rather Live In”, Gavaler talks about Gary Jackson’s poetry and how it formed some of the first comic book criticism whilst talking about race. In “Flash Of Two races”, Berlatsky talks about how both the comics and the TV show handled Wally West and the franchise’s larger narrative on race, incest and miscegenation. In “Let Yourself Just be whoever you are”, Collins dissects the issues of decolonial hybridity and LGBTQ possibilities in the Steven Universe franchise. In “ the Hulk and Venom”, Carter shows the parallels between the prevailing societal notion of superiority based on bloodlines, and how it is harmful , through its most extreme examples in Hulk and Venom. In “Monsters, Mutants and Mongrels”, Koenig-Woodyard, discusses the importance of character building in Monstress, and how its creators has made probably one of the best protagonist in comics in the past decade. In “Examining Otherness and the Marginal Man in DC’s Superman through Mixed-Race Studies”, Tembo discusses how using Superman to talk about mixed race can both be the perfect example and a complete fallacy. In “Talented Tensions and Revisions”, Santos delves into Miles Morales and how his double consciousness makes an even more interesting character than Peter Parker. In “They’re Two People in One Body”, Miller talk about the brave choices made, especially in reference to how mixed race was portrayed, in the television adaptation of Legion. In “Into the Spider-Verse and the Commodified (Re) Imagining of Afro-Rican Visibility”, Molina-Guzman talks about how the movie brought something refreshing to the canon. In the last essay, “Truth, Justice, and the (Ancient) Egyptian Way”, Resha talks about how the character of Doctor Fate has been portrayed and how a new wave of writers has made the hero relevant to geopolitical narrative.

Overall, Mixed Race Superheroes is an excellent book that is both entertaining and educating. The essays by the different authors are imperative, powerful and through provoking. The editing by  Dagbovie –Mullins and Berlatsky is well done. The art by the different artists is beautiful. Altogether, a book that speaks to our times and where the world is going.

Story: Eric L Berlatsky, Gregory T Carter, Chris Gavaler, Chris Koenig-Woodyard, Nicholas E Miller, Isabel Molina-Guzman, Jorge J. Santos Jr., Kwasu David Tembo, Sika A. Dagbovie-Mullins, Corinne Esther Collins, Jasmine Mitchell, Adrienne Resha
Art: Ron Frenz, Brett Breeding, Brett Booth, Norm Rapmund, Sana Takeda, Frank Quitely, Lee Bermejo, Sara Pichelli, Sonny Liew
Editing: Sika A. Dagbovie-Mullins and Eric L Berlatsky
Story: 10 Art: 9.0 Editing: 9.8 Overall: 9.97 Recommendation: Buy

Purchase: Amazon – Kindle – Bookshop