DEAD DINOSAURIO sketch cards

The Pre-order campaign for DEAD DINOSAURIO has ended, so thanks to everyone who participated. The comic is currently at the printer, and they should be shipping out to me by the end of this week. Once I get the books, I'll start putting together the various sets and shipping those out to customers.

As a 'thank you' to the folks who pre-ordered, I'm including one of these hand-drawn sketch cards in each order.  

And another trio I finished last night:

These sketch cards measure 2.5" x 3.5", about the same size as trading cards. Kind of makes me want to include a stick of bubble gum with each order!

Coming this week: DEAD DINOSAURIO Pre-Order campaign!

I'm finishing up the production of the DEAD DINOSAURIO comic book this week, and I'll be taking pre-orders in a few days. This edition is magazine-sized, 28 pages with color cardstock covers. The pages are all colored in gray tones, and there are extra features such as a behind-the-scenes of creating the comic, my original thumbnails of the story and a guest artist gallery.

Check back in a few days for all the details and lots of preview images. In the meantime, heed Eztli's advice! And yeah, we take Paypal!

Digging up a DEAD DINOSAURIO...

My next comic book project to be published will feature these new characters of mine...

DEAD DINOSAURIO & EZTLI, The First Calaca. (Calacas are the various interpretations of skeletons created for the Day of the Dead). The story takes place during the Conquest of Mexico and features a young Aztec boy named Eztli ('Blood' in the language of the ancient Mexicans). During the brutal invasion, the boy calls upon the gods for help and finds it in the form of a strange and unknown creature.... a Tyrannosaurus Rex!

The story is going to debut in a limited run mini-comic. Several copies of the book are going to be traded with a group of artists I've met online as part of a mini-comics 'swap'. The remainder of the copies will be sold at an upcoming event I'll be exhibiting at on September 15, down in the San Diego area. Hispanic Literacy Day at the South Chula Vista Branch Library.

Here's the cover of the mini-comic...

And the back cover:

 A few pages from the book, without the lettering:

This limited run mini-comic, THE PRE-HISTORIC EDITION, is the precursor to what will be the magazine-sized edition, complete with extra features, such as production sketches and the entire thumbnails to the story. For this magazine-sized edition, all the artwork will be colored in gray tones, similar to my WEAPON TEX-MEX Vs EL MUERTO comic book:

 The magazine-sized comic will also feature a wraparound cover, the first one I've ever done for one of my books:

I'll have this image available as an 11x17 poster once I release the mini-comic in a few weeks. I'm currently organizing my Fall schedule, but I will definitely be at the Long Beach Comic Con on November 3 & 4, as well as several Dia de Los Muertos events throughout Los Angeles (dates and times to be announced).

If you've read my Poster Comics featuring Spider-Calaca & BatiCalaca, I can tell you that Dead Dinosaurio fits right in with those two. I have several more Super Calacas to debut, then eventually they'll all get teamed-up together in a new comic book, THE CALACAS OF JUSTICE!

More updates to come. And thanks for reading

Mini-comic in progress: DEAD DINOSAURIO

The above work-in-progress logo is for the project I'm currently working on, a mini-comic: DEAD DINOSAURIO & EZTLI: The First Calaca.

You may be aware of my Calacas of Justice project? Where I'm creating a team of Day of the Dead superheroes, based in part on classic superhero archetypes (or cliches). I've done two Poster Comics featuring The Spider-Calaca and the BatiCalaca. Calacas is Spanish for the skeletal figures you often see during Dia de Los Muertos, the Mexican holiday celebrating the life of deceased loved ones, friends and family members. 

Add to that growing roster of characters Dead Dinosaurio, and his young sidekick Eztli (that's 'Blood' in  Nahuatl, the native language of the Aztecs).  A boy and his dinosaur. Whether it's Moon Boy & Devil Dinosaur or that kid hanging out with the giant turtle, Gamera, there's a whole genre of a fiction teaming up a kid with a giant creature. That's something I definitely wanted to explore in a comic. 

 The boy who rode a giant, nuclear turtle!

As a way of introducing these two, I had to conceive an origin story for them. Who was the boy? And why did he have a T-Rex for a pet? Originally I thought of them as having a prehistoric origin (even though we're told that humans and dinosaurs were separated by millions of years). Then I came up with the idea of making the boy a young Aztec. But then I had to come up with a reason for him running around with a dinosaur! Well, that was easy...

During the Spanish Conquest of Mexico, I figured, young Eztli had come across a huge chunk of amber embedded into the side of a mountain. While not recognizing what was inside (perhaps it was Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent diety?) he began to slowly scrape away as much rock from the amber tomb as he could, returning every day to start anew. Once the Spaniards launched their siege of the Aztec city-state Tenochtitlan, Eztli runs back into the mountains and tries desperately to free the thing within the amber, praying that it will somehow be able to help his people....

  Thumbnails to a three page sequence.

This shouldn't be a spoiler, but, as seen in the above, it wasn't a god that was encased in the amber....

 So, before there can be a skeletal version of Eztli and the dinosaur, there has to be flesh & blood versions of them. That's what this story is about. The artwork for the book will be colored in gray tones, which still need to be added, with the final, printed book available by July. I'll keep you updated here as well as on my Twitter, DeviantArt and Facebook pages.

In researching dinosaurs, and Mexico and the Conquest, I discovered that about 15 years ago there was a movie about a Tyrannosaurus Rex running rampant during the Conquest of Mexico! Tyrannosaurus Azteca !? To say I was surprised was an understatement. A little bruised ego never stopped me, though.... You can watch the film on YouTube. It's quite....something else. So, if there was a precedent for the niche genre of dinosaurs and the Conquest, well then, I'm happy to add my own unique take on it!