Return to the Tiger

I'm back to writing one of my favorite Marvel characters

Thrilled to be helming a very special Marvel one-shot featuring the legendary White Tiger! (if you’ve been wondering why I had to once again delay the webcomic I’ve been talking about, this is one of the reasons why!) The issue features art by Bruno Abdias, making his Marvel debut, and even his thumbnails are already blowing my mind. So so fantastic. Additionally, there’s a story by the great Cynthia Pelayo with art by Moises Hidalgo. Mike Hawthorne created this excellent cover and there are several variants and special team up covers.

Art by Mike Hawthorne

Originally created back in the seventies by Bill Mantlo and George Perez (memorialized in the graffiti in Mike’s cover), White Tiger is widely considered the first Latino superhero in US comics. Hector Ayala is a character firmly rooted in the Nuyorican community. His arc is complex and tragic — his family is murdered by a villain named Gideon Mace and, much later, Hector himself is killed by cops after being wrongly convicted of murdering a police officer — and the two White Tigers that carry on his legacy, Hector’s much younger sister Ava and niece Angela, struggle to contend with who Hector was and what this mystical power means. And a point that many of you will know is close to my heart, those OG White Tiger comics did not italicize Hector’s Spanish as he switched freely back and forth between that and English.

I got to write a very short comic about Hector in one of the Marvel Voces anthologies a few years ago. It connected his story to the Young Lords and their famous trash uprising in Spanish Harlem. That was a dream come true in its own right. But writing a whole issue with room to stretch out and expand on the mythos and grapple with that difficult legacy — I’m beyond over the moon. This, though, is Ava Ayala’s story. She’s bold and brilliant and has been in and out of the Avengers for years, and she brings a whole new young and modern energy to this saga, which reaches a turning point on October 1 with the release of WHITE TIGER: REBORN.

Check out the full announcement here.

A panel from the original White Tiger comic. Words by Bill Mantlo, art by George Pérez.

If you aren’t up for the paid tier but do want to support my work with a small donation, now you can buy me a cafecito here:

Thanks!

Finally, entire families in Gaza are starving to death right now because of the US funded Israeli genocide. Please consider donating to any of these fundraisers, all of which are verified, via Gaza Funds: https://gazafunds.com/

Jehan is a poet in Gaza I've been in touch with over these many months. Her father is ill and her family is now starving along with everyone else. Please consider donating to their survival here: https://chuffed.org/project/122168-help-palestinian-family-rebuild-from-destructive-war