Real-Life Superheroine Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Is The Star Of A New Comic Book
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) has been the conversation on everyone’s lips since she unseated 10-term incumbent Joseph Crowley last June. The youngest woman in Congress’s heroic win, progressive proposals, clever clapbacks and unapologetic style choices have been the center of countless thought pieces and a $10 million Netflix documentary, so it comes with little surprise that she’s now the star of a new comic book.
Last month, Devil’s Due Comics announced the one-off commemorative comic Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the Freshman Force: New Party Who Dis? The comic anthology, which will also include appearances from fellow newschool congressional badasses like Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), Veronica Escobar (D-Texas) or Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), will feature fun, straight-forward satire, reflective and celebratory stories as well as pieces publisher and artist Josh Blaylock has called “absurd.”
“I don’t know if someone can give me a better example of someone in politics to make a comic about. Whether she intended to or not, she’s bringing a heroic energy into Congress,” Blaylock told FIERCE.
For the owner of the Chicago-based independent publishing company, Ocasio-Cortez is sparking new life into Washington.
“Beyond just the current insanity of the polarized left and right politics, AOC, and some of the new members of Congress, are going in there and calling out important issues that both sides have been ignoring for far too long. It’s almost like a family intervention: we’re coming in, the younger kids, and shutting the establishment down,” he said.
This isn’t the first time Blaylock’s comics have gotten political. In 2009, he worked on the mini-series Barack the Barbarian, a four-issue comic about former President Barack Obama, and also published comics on the Armenian Genocide and cryptocurrency.
“I’m creating supernatural, fantastical stories of action, and every now and then there’s something of the real world that grabs you and won’t let you go,” he said.
Blaylock is intrigued by the way Ocasio-Cortez refuses to tiptoe around issues that are devastating our country, and world, and cutting through the establishment’s “BS” to actually solve problems, all while also ensuring that Latinxs are no longer represented as a one-issue monolith.
Her story — fresh, energetic, inspiring and historic — makes it ideal for a comic book, he said.
“There’s something specific about the comic book medium that can communicate like no other book can. It’s not just prose. It’s not just looking at a piece of art. The piecing isn’t controlled the same as a film is. There’s something about a sequential art medium, something that happens between the panels as you are reading it that the arts, word, can’t give you,” Blaylock said. “Also, in a lot of ways, we’re just having fun here. It’s a way for people to vent and get their expression out, and capture this lightning in the bottle moment into a nice package that people can resonate with right now and years from now look back on it and how it captures what the world was feeling at this time.”
The comic will have two different covers. The first shows Ocasio-Cortez donning a suffragette white suit while holding her cellphone on top of a defeated GOP red elephant while a blue Democrat donkey stares anxiously behind her. In the second, she’s wearing a Wonder Woman–inspired “Washington Warrior” costume.
News of the comic has also made its way to the star, who shared her appreciation.
“It’s certainly an honor that people would put so much of their time and talent into that all on their own, and I’m especially honored that they’re donating the proceeds,” the Bronx Boricua told TMZ.
Partial proceeds will go to RAICES, an advocacy group in Texas fighting for the protection and civil rights of immigrants, as well as a charity for military veterans.
The comic book, releasing May 15, is available for preorder for $5.99.
Read: Democrats Are Turning Their Backs On Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
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