Andres Olan-Vazquez

This project examines the erasure of Latinx labor within the mainstream comic book industry in the United States. It explores the role of Latinx creators within the political economy of various media industries surrounding comics, acknowledging comic books as sources for transmedia intellectual property. The cultural division of labor and hierarchization of value within the comics industry follows a process that enacts a façade of seamlessness by invisibilizing the collaborative creative labor that goes into production; the work that goes into making comics, and the people that perform this work, are intentionally rendered invisible by the industry itself. A storytelling industry historically concerned with the concept of Otherness represents marginalization through metaphor while failing to reckon with marginalization within its own economic structures, leading Latinx producers and consumers to seek alternative venues empowering them to represent themselves. Through ethnographic work, digital ethnography, archival research, media analysis, and extensive interviews with producers, distributors, retailers, and consumers of comics, I articulate concepts of metaphorized marginality and heterotopic collaborative creativity within media industries. This research expands upon Latinx cultural production and creative labor within an often-neglected industry that exemplifies trends of racially fragmented and invisibilized labor in contemporary late capitalism.