Miss America: a brand new kind of superhero for Marvel
America Chavez is an 18-year-old university student, who attends classes by day, and fights evil aliens in her spare time. With her long, curly hair, and classic stars-and-stripes wardrobe, she has her own Marvel Comics series.
America breaks down the barriers of normal superheroes
However, Miss America is breaking down barriers and shattering the normal ideal of superhero values. She is hardly the typical, comic-book heroine, and she is not the Latina girl from the ghetto that you normally see on the big screen. Created by Joe Casey and Nick Dragotta in 2011, she has been a regular character in Marvel’s “Young Avengers” series, and has made appearances in the “Ultimates” series as well.
The first lesbian, Latina superhero
Miss America now has her own series, that was shown for the first time in March 2017, in which she has alternated her normal life of hanging with her friends with her alter-ego’s darker world of fighting evil villains and dangerous aliens. But despite her amazing speed, superhuman strength, and the ability to travel between dimensions, America Chavez is still just a normal teenager trying to work it all out, and trying to survive university life as a lesbian. Marvel fans seem to think she is just what the superhero world needs right now.
Marvel is making superheroes more realistic
America is the result of Marvel Comics push towards a more inclusive and diverse world of superheroes. In the last ten years, Marvel fans have seen the introduction of the first ever Muslim superhero, Ms. Marvel. They have witnessed the coming of the female version of Thor, complete with Mjolnir, and an African-American, female Iron Man. There has even been a black Captain America. But no Latino characters have ever had their own series before now.
Many writers have no comic-book experience
Miss America writer, Gabby Rivera, thinks this is America’s moment, as Marvel Comics has diversified its comics, from cover to production teams. Rivera, who previously wrote long-form literary work, has no comic-writing experience, just like many of the new writers for Marvel’s superheroes. National correspondent for The Atlantic, Ta-Nehisi Coates, has been working on the revival of the Black Panther series, and Roxanne Gay, a book writer, Yona Harvey, a poet, have been writing the “World of Wakanda” Black Panther spinoff.
Relating to the character she writes about
Rivera, 34-years-old, does share some of America’s traits, though. While she may not have the speed, strength, and other superhero abilities, she is also lesbian, and Puerto Rican, though she comes from the Bronx, in New York. And last year she published her first book, a modern-day coming-of-age novel about a teenage, Puerto Rican lesbian who is forced to leave home after “coming out”. And it was that book that caught a Marvel editor’s imagination and sent her a request to come and write Miss America.
For the past six months, Rivera has been researching comic-book writing, and learning as much as she can about the world of the Marvel superheroes, as well as America Chavez and the Latino culture. “I’m really trying to listen to my community,” she says.
h/t: CNN
