An exhibit at the New York Public Library, ¡Wepa! Puerto Ricans in the World of Comics | ¡Wepa! Puertorriqueños en el mundo de los cómics showcases Puerto Rican comics, offering a range of stories from the past, present, and future. To power the exhibit, librarian Manuel Martinez Nazario collected comics by Puerto Rican creators for three decades, ensuring their stories and art did not disappear. He donated them to the library, creating the Manuel Martinez Nazario Collection of Puerto Ricans in the World of Comics, which ¡Wepa! proudly showcases. I attended the opening and spoke with co-curators Paloma Celis Carbajal and Charles Cuykendall Carter, and here’s what I found out:

¡Wepa! at New York Public Library is Personal AND Broad

The exhibition consists of four sections, beginning with “La Isla.” For Nuyoricans like me, The Island section feels familiar, yet also mysterious, because many of us do not have the opportunity to experience the source of our culture. For me, connecting with Puerto Rico itself feels out of reach, whether my family and I were in New York or not. “There is often a barrier in terms of a connection,” Charles points out. “In many cases, it’s not where they were born.” “La Isla” section bridges that disconnect, allowing attendees to experience storytelling like Stephany Moyano Ayala’s Criolla and 00773: Luquillo, Puerto Rico, which focuses on the island’s food and its importance.

¡Wepa! Covers the Spectrum

In the Nueva York section, ¡Wepa! showcases the convergence of Puerto Rico and New York in Nuyoricans with images like the poster for the animated Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. This section also features comics like U.S. Avengers #1, which features White Tiger, aka the Puerto Rican Avenger. And it highlights comic illustrators like George Pérez, who worked on iconic characters like 1987’s Wonder Woman #1. He drew on his personal experience of coming to New York to depict the superheroine, adjusting to life in a U.S. city.

I grew up with this culture, listening to songs like “Amores Como el Nuestro” blaring in the summer heat, celebrating the Puerto Rican Day, and attending the parade. But the history and its ties to the island remained elusive. That’s what makes ¡Wepa! so pivotal. It not only taps into that past but highlights how prevalent Puerto Ricans were and continue to be in the comics industry. As a kid, my queer Boricua identity felt rigid and trapped in forced conformity with no place to land or connect. But ¡Wepa! provides another path, showing me that I could have been reading Tales of the Closet #1-2, one of the earliest comics showing a positive LGBTQ+ story in my community.

The Past Informs Our Present

“El Pasado,” the third part of the exhibit, tackles how Puerto Rico’s history affects it today. The graphic novel 1898, Vol 2, #5 (Muere la esperanza), written by Manuel Otero Portela, illustrated by José A. Gutiérrez-Rivera, and inked by Manuel G. Aquino Quilichini, illustrates the toll the Spanish-American War had on Puerto Rico and its people. Caught in the middle of that conflict, the Island is still struggling to achieve self-determination and freedom. “El Pasado” shows Puerto Rico’s “relationship with the United States and before that with Spain,” Paloma says, “showing the history of Puerto Rico, but also the history of comics.”

There is still, to this day, confusion over what Puerto Rico is to the United States. The idea of feeling apart yet present comes from our history. The Puerto Rican War by John Vasquez Mejias explores the tense relationship between the U.S. and its colony as resentment built in the 1950s when it was illegal “to promote a sense of nationalism,” on the island, as Charles highlights. Back then, you couldn’t even wave the Puerto Rican flag. You may have heard that this resistance ended when two Puerto Rican secessionists attempted to assassinate President Truman, but the truth is more complicated with the U.S. bombing the two towns where the resistance began, Utuado and Jayuya.

These are stories you do not learn in history books. In fact, as a kid, I cannot recall a single history lesson that dealt with any aspect of Puerto Rico. I have family from Ponce, but I hadn’t heard about these historical events – and learning them from the homegrown artists featured in ¡Wepa! added texture to my world.

And Beyond

The final section, “Otros Mundos,” includes comics from “imagined futures” and “alternative worlds” as Paloma describes them. I appreciated the fantastical comics like the one about a gang of street dogs fighting to survive, NonPack #13 (Tres pasitos), co-written by Rangely García Colón and Samuel Figueroa Vázquez, and illustrated by Colón. As an Afro-Latina, I grew up with the running joke about how being left out of stories that take place in the future hits twice. But we can write ourselves into the worlds we wish to see.

Which is exactly what ¡Wepa! does – showcasing, as Paloma puts it, the “breadth and diversity of stories” from Puerto Rican artists, highlighting the vastness of our cultural contribution, and reflecting both those born on the island and  “the Puerto Rican diaspora in New York City.” The exhibit makes room for it all, in our varied glory, because we are not a monolith, not even in the same city.

There are a lot of connections, not just among Puerto Ricans on the island or in a U.S. metropolitan area, but among different Hispanic communities. Paloma, who is Mexican, identifies and connects with the stories because both Puerto Rico and Mexico experienced the “full force of the United States” and the comics give us more ways to talk about the harm.

“We want to get them hooked on Latinx comics,” Paloma adds about the exhibit’s goals. With this vast collection of comics, people can do general research on the collection. You cannot check them out, but you can read them there. So perhaps after visiting the exhibition, stay awhile and read some of the history, the present, and the future that artists in our community imagine.

¡Wepa! will run in the Wachenheim Gallery at the New York Public Library in the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building from October 4, 2025 until March 8, 2026.