Visual Semiotics and Cultural Hybridity in Orión, el Atlante: Negotiating Global Comic Codes and Mexican Identity

This article examines the 1980s Mexican comic series Orión, el Atlante through the lens of visual semiotics and cultural hybridity, drawing on Roland Barthes’s theory of polysemy and Néstor García Canclini’s concept of hybridization. While Mexican historietas have long been understudied, Orión offers a compelling case for understanding how Latin American comics negotiate global superhero tropes and local cultural imaginaries. The analysis foregrounds the historieta’s layered visual codes and narrative strategies, revealing how its retrofuturistic Atlantis blends Greco-Roman aesthetics, advanced technology, and indigenous symbolism to construct a mythic space that evokes both precolonial grandeur and modern aspiration. Orión’s characterization—rooted in discipline, honor, and communal responsibility—contrasts with the supernatural origins typical of U.S. superheroes, situating him within a Mexican moral universe. At the same time, the series reworks Superman’s cataclysmic origin story, reframing planetary destruction as an allegory for colonial rupture and cultural resilience. Attention to racial representation, material production, and serialized form further situates Orión within a genealogy of Mexican popular media that spans folletines, comic strips, and nation-building narratives. Ultimately, this study argues that Orión, el Atlante exemplifies a hybrid superhero imaginary, projecting a distinctly Mexican vision of heroism while participating in transnational comic discourse.