Marvel’s First Queer Latina Superhero is a Nazi-Fighting Badass

Marvel’s America Chavez is the first queer Latina superhero and she’s awesome.

Although there have been a few other LGBTQ superheroes of color, Chavez is the first to get her own series with Marvel.

Entitled America, the books are penned by openly queen writer Gabby Rivera and features Chavez fighting threats to the Sotomayor University campus. (Note: Uh, can we please make this a real university?)

The series premiered its first on March 1 and is gearing up for the release of book two.

The best part of book one of is when America is transported back in time to World War II where she meets up with Captain America in the middle of his fight with Hitler. For those of you who are not comic book aficionados, the first issue of Captain America back in 1941 featured a now-iconic image of Captain America fighting Hitler so it’s pretty special that they have put America Chavez back into this scene retroactively. The image is obviously still quite timely and it’s the perfect time to send the message that America is ready to fight white supremacy with full force.

We also love that they chose to name her “America.” With so much hatred in our government for Latino Americans, it’s a perfect reminder that America incorporates people of all backgrounds and races.
This isn’t the first time that Marvel has sent a message of this kind, however. The comic book empire recently employed Roxane Gay as their first queer black writer. Gay started the critically-acclaimed series World of Wakanda, which is a spinoff of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ series Black Panther.

Marvel received a ton of criticism prior to this for their narrow view of superheroes (i.e. white, male, and heterosexual), so we’re glad that they took the notes to heart. Keep up the good work!

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