In the vein of DC and IDW’s co-produced Love Is Love anthology released last year, writer Edgardo Miranda-Rodriguez has assembled an all-star team of writers and artists from all walks of comic life to produce Ricanstruction: Reminiscing & Rebuilding Puerto Rico.
The nearly 200-page graphic novel will feature numerous stories teaming Miranda-Rodriguez’s Puerto Rican heroine La Borinqueña with a number of DC superheroes, ranging from Batman and Wonder Woman to Chronos and Metamorpho.
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The project came to life at last year’s New York Comic Con, just weeks after Hurricane Maria pummeled Puerto Rico.
“I was dealing with a line before I got to my table, and after the convention had closed I still had a line,” Miranda-Rodriguez told ComicBook.com. “The majority of people who were coming to my table, whether they were of Puerto Rican heritage or not, were asking me ‘How’s your family doing? Have you heard from them?’ And at that point, I had not heard from anybody. So it as verymuch this dark space that man of us were in, where we were trying to figure out what was going to happen.”
When DC co-publisher Dan DiDio came to see Miranda-Rodriguez at his table, the writer asked DiDio, “What are you going to do for Puerto Rico?”
DiDio heard him out and, by the time they were done with their conversation, said that he wanted to work with Miranda-Rodriguez to bring some hope and some aid to the region. He asked the writer, who self-publishes La Borinqueña, to write up a proposal.
“Here are these characters that are sixty to seventy years old, teaming up with a character who’s not even two,” Miranda Rodriguez joked. “I remember as a kid seeing the covers of Superman and Spider-Man teaming up….I’ve never seen my character in any kind of way as an icon like that, but I did see her as the only character in the comic book industry who was directly tied to what was going on in Puerto Rico.”
By the time the weekend was out, Miranda-Rodriguez had numerous contributors lined up, including Greg Pak, Tony Daniel, and Michael Allred.
Actress Rosario Dawson, singer Rubén Blades, and numerous other Latinx celebrities and writers came on board as the project ballooned to include the talents of Reginald Hudlin, Denys Cowan, Gail Simone, and more.
You can pre-order Ricanstruction: Reminiscing & Rebuilding Puerto Rico at Amazon. The book will be released to the public on May 23, although may make its debut at convention appearances with Miranda-Rodriguez before then.
