New comic SAINTS AND SINNERS available for pre-order!

*Pre-order campaign for this comic is over, but copies are now available in my webshop as of 9/24/17*

Kind of a spontaneous scheduling thing here, but I have a new comic book in the works that you can pre-order via my webshop....

SAINTS AND SINNERS is being produced to debut at the upcoming ALPHA OMEGA CON. It's a Christian comics & pop culture convention taking place on September 23 in Artesia, CA.I attended last year and was invited to return, so for this year I got the idea to do a collection of some of my characters who's supernatual themes would have a particular appeal to this audience.

The four previous stories that are being reprinted are the supernatural vigilante Maniac Priest, the possessed exorcist Demoniak, the demon-fighting duo of Jacob & Joaquin: The Wandering Jew and Catholic Boy and the hippie Jesus freak superhero Godson (who previously appeared in a Poster Comic, so this marks the character's first time in a printed book). 

And acting as host to these stories is a brand-new character of mine Ann Hellika, Hell's Belle! The newly created pages will introduce the other stories and give you a glimpse into her world.

 I'm running the pre-order campaign until Labor Day. This comic will actually be printed in a new size for me, a hefty 9" x 12" format! 20 pages, full color, and in addition to those comics there will be a gallery of production & promotional artwork, similar to some of the pieces seen here.

In addition to pre-ordering the comic (which will come with a free mystery print!), I'm also offering the original cover art as well as the back cover artwork. So if you want to get your hands on some original hand-crafted comic book art, now's the time to jump in.  

So if you're interested, I'd appreciate your support! Thanks.

Memories of two Dia de Los Muertos events Pt 2

On Sunday, October 28, I attended the MUERTOMANIA 2 event held by Solidarity Ink, a print shop & gallery in the Lincoln Heights area of Los Angeles.

The event was held in their parking lot, with an art exhibit, dedicated to deceased wrestlers, taking place inside their gallery space. What made this event extra special was that they had live Lucha Libre, with a group of masked wrestlers performing several matches to an enthusiastic crowd. First time I ever had a booth with live wrestling occurring a few feet away!

 I contributed a piece to the art show, dedicated to one of my favorites, the late, great Macho Man Randy Savage!

This painting of El Rayo de Jalisco, was created by an artist who works at a car wash, and who's trying to organize a union for his fellow workers. It's a beautiful piece created by a true man of the people:

 And of course no Lucha Libre art show would be complete without EL SANTO, the most famous masked Mexican wrestler of all:

Throughout the day I had many great encounters with people . For some reason (but perhaps not surprising considering the demographics), my print and Poster Comic of THE WANDERING JEW & CATHOLIC BOY caught people's attention. One lady mentioned her son was making his First Communion, so that was the appeal for her. (I later realized I could launch a whole line of CATHOLIC BOY products for First Communion celebrants!) And another woman stopped by and bought the BATICALACA Poster Comic. She told me that her and her brother used to watch the BATMAN ANIMATED SERIES when growing up, and the Poster Comic reminded her of those good times with her brother. Later it crossed my mind that I didn't ask her if her brother was alive, but regardless, it's a nice feeling that something I created sparked a positive memory in someone. 

 Like the NUVEIN DIA DE LOS MUERTOS (which I wrote about in Pt 1), this event was free to the public and promoted as an all-ages event. There were plenty of families visiting that day, with parents encouraging their children to celebrate this uniquely Mexican festival. I'm always glad to participate in events like these as I believe an appreciation of one's culture only adds to a person's character and outlook on life.

A rare break in the day for Ernesto Vasquez, whose group, SOLIDARITY INK, organized the entire event. 

I met Ernesto some years ago at a comic book convention, and it's great to see him running this organization in addition to his own work as an artist. We talked about the struggles and rewards of running community arts organizations and also about the work involved in putting on events such as these Dia de Los Muertos festivals.

These friendly gals hosted a table where people could decorate their own sugar skulls:

Me with a group of gents dresses as the trio of legendary luchadores: Mil Mascaras, Blue Demon & El Santo!

 (Photo by Karla Saucedo)

This event, with it's dual focus on Dia de Los Muertos and Lucha Libre, is one of the more unique ones I've had the pleasure of participating in. The staff, the other vendors, and especially the visitors, were all great people to meet. One of the kids (Abraham) who picked up a copy of DEAD DINOSAURIO would stop by once in a while to talk, he even came by to tell me he was leaving. What a class act! Later he came back to the booth, to my surprise. "I thought you were leaving", I told him. He said that he wanted to get another copy of DINOSAURIO, as he wanted to give one to his best friend! Abraham even stopped by once to show me part of his Halloween costume, NERD BOY!

He said that maybe one day I could put that character in one of my comics, and I told him that he should make the comic himself. He liked that idea, and I encouraged him to work on it when he could.

Like I've mentioned, I had a great time at these two events. This coming weekend, November 3 & 4, I'll be at the Long Beach Comic Con. You can find me in the Small Press area at table #1400. And I'll also be conducting a free "Let's Make Comics" workshop on Saturday from 12-12:45 in the Kid's Area. 

Thanks for reading. And if you'd like to buy your own copy of DEAD DINOSAURIO, please visit my Los Comex Web Shop.

Behind-the-Scenes of the Jacob & Joaquin poster comic

I hope you all had a Merry Christmas! In the spirit of this gift-giving season, I'd like to share with you today a little behind-the-scenes look at my recent poster comic featuring a pair of brand new characters I created, Jacob & Joaquin.

Promotional image for the Jacob & Joaquin poster comic.

I had recently gotten the idea to create a one-page comic, to be printed up as an 11" x 17" poster comic. First step, obviously, was that I needed an idea. For a moment I thought about using one of my existing characters, but then decided that I wanted to feature characters that somewhat tied into the spirit of the holiday season.

For some time now, the names 'The Wandering Jew and Catholic Boy' had been floating around in my mind. (In my EL MUERTO comic book series, Diego de La Muerte, aka El Muerto, has a best friend, Isaac Silver, played in the film by Wilmer Valderrama and Joel David Moore of AVATAR fame. I'd long since given the comic book characters the nicknames of 'The Wandering Jew and Catholic Boy', just as a personal in-joke for myself. But those names always suggested to me an idea for a monster hunting duo, a pair of demonologists/exorcist types.

So when it came time to flesh them out, I fashioned them along the line of the old-school Batman and Robin archetype, with Jacob being the older of the two, and Catholic Boy the younger, brasher member. I dressed up Wandering Jew to evoke the look of a Rabbi, with a slight WWII-era look to his wardrobe. For Joaquin I went with a modified Catholic schoolboy look, the idea being to make both characters instantly recognizable as to their identities. I tend to create my characters in that mode, so their names, appearances and purposes all reflect one another.

For the story, I figured a quick hunt-and-destroy mission would work for what I wanted to accomplish. With a one-page story, you have to instantly introduce the characters (especially if they've never been seen before) and show them doing what they do best. My plot was simple: Jacob and Joaquin get called by the LAPD's monster investigation unit to assist on a case, but soon realize their spiritual-based powers won't work on this particular menace. A quick improvisational maneuver saves the day, and we've got a story!

In creating the comic, I decided to draw the original panels larger than their finished size. So instead of drawing the whole story on an 11" x 17" sheet of paper, I broke up the panels into three sections, drawing each section on a horizontal 11" x 17" sheet, using 3 sheets in total. I then scanned each page and shrank them down and put them together in Photoshop, ending up with an 11" x 17" single page.

The story was set in the Boyle Heights area of East Los Angeles, a neighborhood with a shared Jewish/Mexican heritage. Not only was Boyle Heights a thematic reflection of the two heroes, but back in 2005 we had filmed a week of the EL MUERTO movie at the Evergreen Memorial Park and Crematory, located in the same area. I actually filmed my cameo with star Wilmer Valderrama at the very front gates shown in the first panel of the story.

 A screenshot of the front gates using Google Maps. My cameo was filmed at the gate on the left, as El Muerto was walking into the cemetery and I was leaving!

It was quite fun setting a story at the same place we filmed the EL MUERTO movie, as the experience of making the film (some of it in East Los Angeles, where I was born) are among the most memorable moments I've had. Other than that though, the cemetery was a perfect location for my story.

 
Before starting the story, I took a look at the work of Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez, a comic book artist whose created the majority of his work 
for DC Comics since the 1970s. Garcia-Lopez always had strong, vibrant pages, drawing figures overlapping into other panels, adding an extra dimension to the flow of the panels. I thought a technique like the one he uses would help me maximize the limited amount of panels I would have to tell my story. To the right is a page from Jose's SUPERMAN VS WONDER WOMAN comic book (1978).

Another element I wanted to experiment with was the coloring of the comic. In the late 50s/early 60s, Marvel Comics published numerous comics featuring monsters and sci-fi stories. What really impressed me was the coloring on many of those stories, often depicting a very expressionistic use of color. I love the bold patch of colors used, such as a yellow or blue background, with the characters painted in a monochromatic color, seemingly random in nature. It creates an unforgettable page, one where the rules of coloring flow with the story. Since I was doing the comic as a poster, it had to function as a story, but also I wanted it to stand on it's own as a whole, complete image, with a vibrant color scheme dancing across the panels.

"The Man Who Captured Death" from AMAZING ADULT FANTASY #9 (1962), written by Stan Lee, art by Steve Ditko.

My plot for the one-page comic came fairly quick, the challenge was pacing out the action over the limited number of panels I had. Like with any comic, regardless of length, the initial storytelling goal for me is determining each composition for each panel, and finding the best combination of narrative action from one panel to the next. And because I was conscious of how I wanted to approach the eventual coloring of the piece, I composed each panel with a possible color scheme in mind, such as leaving empty space in the background where I wanted to try a large, bright color.

Once I patched the 3 separate pages together into one 11" x 17" document, I spent time doing various touch-ups to the artwork. Then I was able to start playing with my color palette. This was actually the first comic book that I was coloring. Sure, I had colored some previous stories of mine in gray-tones, and I've had plenty of experience coloring single-piece illustrations, but this was my first full color comic to be colored from start to finish.

As you can see by the colored page in the right, for the background I tried to use colors that appeared elsewhere in the strip, such as the magenta from Catholic Boy's mask, or the orange from the monster. That was done to tie the panels together, as I wanted the viewer's eye to move around the whole page in various directions when taking in the complete poster image. From a story point of view, I need the reader to start at the first panel and proceed to the next, but as a single image, I wanted the colors to bounce across the page.  


There's definitely more stories to tell with Jacob & Joaquin, as well as Inspector Claye and the LAPD's 'Gravedigger' squad. I've thought up a rough idea for the origin of The Wandering Jew and Catholic Boy, but for now we leave them to their first comic book appearance, HAUNTED HOLIDAYS. You can read the comic here (click the image to enlarge it) and if you want to order a printed, signed copy, visit my earlier blog post when I first debuted the poster comic.