If Superman and Batman were expressions of the collective unconscious of their era, I asked myself, what kind of fictional hero would I invoke, and what would make him unique? In this genre, creating a new superhero always happens in dialogue with the source archetypes who ignited it all. That’s when the opportunity arose to manifest Sereno, my own creator-owned superhero for the local Argentinian scene. In that, there is no justice.Ī few decades later, I found myself working as a freelance professional artist juggling assignments for DC (which shares a parent company with CNN) and Marvel, living my childhood fantasy. Still, it would take me 21 years of life to build up the strength and courage to face my fears and start living my truth. And like many young gay geeks, I orbited toward Wonder Woman, with her fierce compassion, as my icon of anti-patriarchy. I was separated from my truth and the organic emotional growth that cisgender, heterosexual people too often take for granted.Īs for many, the ongoing metaverse of monthly superhero comics remained, as I grew up, a place of refuge and expansion where anything could happen, in contrast with the then-dull world outside my window. Even when I wasn’t an outsider in my social surroundings, I was always an outsider to myself. I grew up as a closeted queer kid in self-denial, in a cultural context with scarce representation and acceptance. But coding through metaphor, while sometimes producing smart and less obvious reads, can also be optional and invisible to those who prefer to stay unaware of what they reject. The dual identity of the closeted life, the customization of our image and presentation, the sense of otherness and finding a chosen family among peers and even the intentionally coded narrative of mutants as a metaphor for marginalized groups. There are a few points of resonance between queer identity and superhero narratives. And either through stubbornness or precognition, it came to happen. With the commitment of a young Bruce Wayne’s oath to fight for justice, I swore on a pile of Spanish translation editions that drawing the comics I loved would be my job when I grew up. To draw! To imagine heroes and give them life. Even as a child I could recognize my own superpower. To me, Superman and his kind really existed.
The gaps of geopolitical contrast and cultural difference between North and South America were closed with a powerful single bound.
In my case, that lightning hit me as a young kid in Zárate, my own Smallville in Argentina, a corner of the Global South very, very far from where the heroes I was reading about were born. Luciano Vecchio Courtesy of Luciano Vecchio
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