The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao - Literary Allusions - Comic Books

Comic Books

The novel opens with the epigraph: “Of what import are brief, nameless lives…to Galactus?” Diaz has said that this question can be read as being directed at the reader, "because in some ways, depending on how you answer that question, it really decides whether you're Galactus or not." In the Fantastic Four comic book however, Galactus is asking the question of Uatu the Watcher, whose role is played out in Diaz's novel by the narrator Yunior, indicating to Diaz that the question is both a "question to the reader but also a question to writers in general."

Early in the novel, Diaz aligns Oscar with comic book superheroes: "You want to know what being an X-man feels like? Just be a smart bookish boy of color in a contemporary U.S. ghetto...Like having bat wings or a pair of tentacles growing out of your chest." Diaz hints at possible latent abilities or qualities Oscar may possess that will reveal themselves or develop later in the novel.

The novel describes the history of relationships between dictators and journalists in terms of comic book rivalries as well: “Since before the infamous Caesar-Ovid war they’ve had beef. Like the Fantastic Four and Galactus, like the X-Men and the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, like the Teen Titans and Deathstroke”

There is also a strong suggestion that the fantastical element of Oscar’s life is a powerful method for him to relate to other people and to the world around him. When he examines his own body in the mirror he feels "straight out of a Daniel Clowes book. Or like the fat blackish kid in Beto Hernández's Palomar." Oscar's vast memory of comic books and Fantasy/Science-fiction is recalled whenever he is involved in the text, and his identity is multiform, composed of scraps of comic book marginalia.

Diaz creates a distinct link between human beings' performative nature and the masks required to express it, and the masks worn by superheroes. When Oscar meets Ana, one of the many women with whom he falls in love, he notices different aspects of her life and "there was something in the seamlessness with which she switched between these aspects that convinced him that both were masks". Diaz connects the removal of masks with both the intimacy that springs from vulnerability and the concept of identity, hidden or otherwise. Oscar's infinite capacity for empathy and connection with other human beings is a superpower in its own right. Contemporary masculinity and contemporary power structures leave no room for vulnerability, but for Diaz, "the only way to encounter a human is by being vulnerable." The 'man with no face' who reoccurs in several parts of the novel can also be read as a sort of mask embodying the fukú.