In Defense of the Effete Superhero: Theorizing the First Queer Latinx Superhero, Extraño/Gregorio de la Vega

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Debuting in the 1987 eight-issue miniseries Millennium , Extraño/Gregorio de la Vega lays claim to being the first gay superhero in superhero comic history. He is also one of the first queer Latinx superheroes to be depicted in the genre. This article examines the mediations and transformations of Extraño/Gregorio de la Vega’s character across the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, analyzing how his disruptive queer effete superheroics runs counter to representational agendas that seek to fix or erase gender transgression and nonnormative sexualities in superhero comics. In order to do so, this article proposes a critical reading practice called superheroic minorness. By looking to one-shot issues, double-page team spreads, back covers, letters to the editors, and splash pages, this article examines how his superheroic minorness entails sleuthing across a constellation of details, minutiae, and arrangements in order to compose a comprehensive sketch of an otherwise undervalued or underexamined character who, nonetheless, helps articulate repressed, negated, and/or erased aesthetic-political possibilities. Reading for superheroic minorness is a conceptual strategy for theorizing the importance of the effete superhero and the interpretive frameworks the effete opens up for interrogating the majoritarian sphere and minoritized representation in comics, superhero aesthetics, and popular culture. Rather than situating the minorness or stereotyping of Extraño/Gregorio de la Vega as a lack or a problem for critical inquiry, this essay positions it as a means of revaluing and imagining the effete superhero, the abject, peripheral queer Latinx character who overloads straightforward notions of respectability, assimilation, and conformity.