Overcoming Narratives of Race and Disability

This chapter presents Pérez as working to overcome persistent narratives regarding race and disability in comics. Though plot and dialogue often fell into these narratives, Pérez’s art can be shown to at times resist them. Regarding race, the chapter examines Pérez’s work on the Sons of the Tiger, White Tiger, and Triathlon at Marvel and Cyborg at DC revealing the ways in which his representation imbued these characters with a kineticism and power that elevated them beyond problematic narratives of multiculturalism that these comics might also have tread in. Regarding disability, the chapter examines Cyborg and Jericho of the New Teen Titans for how with both—but especially the latter—Pérez can be seen as resisting the trope of the “supercrip” as well as striving towards depicting something close to the lived experience of disability.