08-07-2025
José Andrés: Chef, Humanitarian…Comic Book Hero
It turns out Superman knows who José Andrés is. On Monday, the chef and founder of the non-profit World Central Kitchen announced he's teamed up with author Andrew Aydin on a new 'episode' in the DC series Taste of Justice, which features comic book heroes learning to cook. The comic, illustrated by Domo Stanton, will be published on July 16, but Andrés posted a panel from it, in which Superman says he's written a story on Andrés in the past. 'I'm lucky enough to work with [Aydin] on a story about feeding people during a disaster,' Andrés wrote on Instagram.
Aydin is best known for teaming up with the late Rep. John Lewis on the comic series March, which depicts Lewis's coming of age during the civil rights movement. But Andrés is no stranger to comics — Andrés writes in his Substack, A Longer Table, that 'Andrew and I recently connected through our mutual friend Steve Orlando, who wrote Feeding Dangerously with me, a graphic novel about the work of World Central Kitchen.'
Aydin tells Eater that during Hurricane Helene, he helped connect Andrés and World Central Kitchen to local officials in North Carolina. 'We were almost trauma bonded through this, so it made so much sense to write a story about José helping in a disaster,' he says. Andrés's episode, 'Taste of Hope,' is one of 26 in a series that will be available on the DC Universe Infinite app, which even features recipes. 'When we look at these dramatic happenings in superhero comics and movies, you always see heroes fight, but you never think about the ramifications of all the other people living in that world,' says Aydin. 'This allowed us to flip the script a bit and talk about what everyday people were going through, and have José inform and lead that part of the effort.'
Aydin says Andrés's episode takes place amid a natural disaster in the tropics, and involves Andrés and Aquaman cooking 'a recipe you can use in a disaster because it doesn't require heat.' And Aydin, who is also writing a graphic memoir with Gullah chef Sallie Ann Robinson, hopes that the vertical scrolling format of the comic will make cooking simpler for some readers. 'You learn with the heroes how to make recipes, at the same time you get to see another side of these heroes,' he says. 'We want to see how many episodes I can go to see without a character punching someone.'
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