5 Must-Read Latine Word & Image Stories

1.     Home by Julio Anta

A story of a Guatemalan boy and his mother seeking asylum in the U.S only to be separated. We follow Juan and his journey into a foreign country with dangerous people looking to harm him. It is a story that happens every day to families just looking for safety and freedom to live their lives. It is representation for those families and informative to others who are lucky enough to not have to face this hardship. Available for purchase here and also available at libraries and through the Libby App. For ages 10 and up!

The writer, Julio Anta, is a Cuban and Colombian American from Miami Florida. His first comic, Home, was published in 2021 and he has gone on to publish many more like This Land is Our Land: A Blue Beetle Story (2024), Frontera: A Graphic Novel (2023) and is even a writer in Marvel Comics’ Marvel’s Voices: Community (2023) as well as DC Comics’ DC’s Legion of Bloom (2023).

2.     Juliet Takes a Breath: A Graphic Novel by Gabby Rivera

A coming-of-age story. We follow 19-year-old Juliet Milagro Palante while she goes from scared to be herself, idolizing a white feminist, dating a white girl and not seeing how it is problematic to embracing herself and immersing herself in the QTPOC (Queer and Trans People of Color) community. She grows into herself and accepts that people aren’t always what they seem in two short months. The story is beautifully written, drawn and colored. Available for purchase here and at public libraries and the Libby App. For ages 18 and up.

Gabby Rivera is a queer Latinx writer from the Bronx. She is of Puerto Rican descent. She is an editor at Autostraddle and a mento through GLSEN. Rivera also wrote Marvel’s first Latine, lesbian hero America Chavez in America (2017-2018). She also wrote a novel with the same title as the comic above as well as B.B Free (2023).

3.     Sci-Fu by Yehudi Mercado

Set in 1980’s Brooklyn and the faraway land of Discopia. Hip-Hop meets science fiction meets King-fu. A Modernized reimagining of The Wizard of Oz. Wax and his friends and family get whisked away to another world where they have to fight to get back to Brooklyn. There are callbacks to real Hip-Hop artists in the story like The Five Deadly Dangers being The Furious Five and Old Dirty Laundry being Ol’ Dirty Bastard of the Wu-Tang Clan. A mixture of vibrant art, blasts from the past and love of rhyming, telling a fun and inspiring story. Available for purchase here and at public libraries and the Libby App. For ages 9 and up!

Yehudi Mercado is a Mexican-Jew from Mexico City, who was raised in Texas. He is a screenwriter, cartoonist, and animation director and has directed 4-D attractions from Japan’s Universal Studios. He has also written and illustrated Shazam (2022) and Barkham Asylum (2024) for DC Comics, as well as Cat Ninja (2020) and Hero Hotel (2016).

4.     The Me You Love in the Dark by Skottie Young

Artist Ro finds herself in an art slump and looking for ways out of it. Her plan is to isolate herself in a house and take the time to get her spark back. A specific house draws her in, and she moves in. At first, she is still struggling until she meets what she thinks is a ghost. It turns into a haunting love story, as the viewer you can see more of just what she is dealing with, but she loves him regardless. Things take a gruesome turn, and Ro is left with one option: try to get away from this ancient being. Every line laid onto the page created the eerie feeling that makes the story as captivating as it is. Available for purchase here and from public libraries as well as through the Libby App. For ages 18 and up!

The artist, Jorge Corona, is a Venezuelan comic who has worked on DC Comics’ We are… Robin (2015-2016), Nightwing (2016), and The Flash as well as others like Transformers (2024-2025) and the Adventure Time Comics. He received the Russ Manning Award in 2015.

5.     Baldo by Hector Cantu

A comic strip that has been going on daily since April 17th, 2000, to present. It shows funny snippets of Baldo’s life. From changing fashions that just so happen to be the way his immigrant father dresses to the cultural difference between his father and the world around him in the U.S. Baldo is just a regular teenager who struggles to talk to girls he likes, pretends he has the car of his dreams and bothering his younger sister. Baldo is accessible here. For all ages!

Hector Cantú, the writer of the comic Baldo, is from Texas and is the founding chair of Texas Cartoonists, the Texas chapter of the National Cartoonists Society. This comic has shown up in over 350 newspapers over its 25 years. Carlos Castellanos is the artist behind Baldo. He is Cuban and has been doing freelance work since the 1980s.