MANGA MUERTO, COMIC POP & WEAPON TEX-MEX comics back in stock with new printings!

For those of you browsing my webshop here, you may have noticed that a few of my comics were out of stock. Well, they're back!

Yes, MANGA MUERTO Vol 1, COMIC POP! & WEAPON TEX-MEX Vs EL MUERTO are back with all-new printings, now now featuring cardstock covers, giving you a beefed-up book. AND, the prices are now actually lower than on the previous editions! I have a new printer I'm using, and their pricing is so good, I've been able to share the savings with new retail prices.

For those who have ordered these books in the past, thank you for supporting me with your purchases. I do appreciate everyone's patronage. If you've been thinking of getting some of these books, then now's the time to order! Follow this link to my webshop.... 

If you're looking for stories for younger readers (grade school/middle school), then MANGA MUERTO Vol 1 is a great way to go. It features a more kid-friendly version of my comic book character El Muerto, here recast as a foreign exchange student in Japan who comes into possession of a giant mega robot, Skeletron! (Think GIGANTOR or JOHNNY SOKKO & HIS FLYING ROBOT, cause I sure was!) There are three stories in this jam-packed 48 page book, enough for a weekend of fun. Giant robots, towering monsters and thrills for fans of...well, giant monsters and towering robots! Shown here is a page from MUERTO & SKYMAN, the second story in the collection. Pencils by me, inks by Ted Seko.

COMIC POP! features a cornucopia of work, such as pin-ups I've done for other publications, pin-ups other artists have done of my characters, stories I've written and drawn for other creators, comics I've collaborated on, etc. I even reprint, for the first time in a comic book format, El Muerto's multi-part appearance in the BALDO newspaper strip from 2008! At a 40 whopping pages, this book delivers plenty of art and story. 

 From COMIC POP!, the El Muerto story originally included as a mini-comic inside the package of the EL MUERTO DVD release. Story and pencils by me, finished art by Mort Todd.


WEAPON TEX-MEX vs EL MUERTO brings together two of my characters in a classic superhero street brawl. What strange forces bring together the Aztec Zombie and the Toro Terminator in the haunted ghost town of Santa Sangre?

Also featured in the WEAPON TEX-MEX Vs EL MUERTO book are two other Tex-Mex short stories, and that ain't no bull!


3 books, back in stock. And each one has a minimum of three stories per book! If that ain't a bargain in this day and age of multi-issue storylines the big companies try to keep you roped in with, I don't know what is...

Shop the JAVZILLA WebShop today. You'll get some exciting books packed with a variety of comic book stories, and you're supporting creator-owned work, the most exciting work being produced in comics today!

LATINO COMICS EXPO Exclusive TEX-MEX Vs. MUERTO Pack

This weekend, Saturday and Sunday, May 7 & 8, is the first ever LATINO COMICS EXPO!

This is a show I organized with co-founder Ricardo Padilla, and it's bringing together over a dozen writers and artists that highlight the influence of Latino culture and experience in their works. The Expo will be held at the Cartoon Art Museum, and admission to the Museum grants you access to the Expo and all the panels and presentations. 

I'll be moderating and participating in a panel on Sunday, SELF-PUBLISHING YOUR COMICS. But as an artist, I'm bringing along my brand new comic book, WEAPON TEX-MEX Vs. EL MUERTO. And to really celebrate the uniqueness of this historic event, I'm putting together a very limited LATINO COMICS EXPO Pack! Here's what's included:

The new WEAPON TEX-MEX Vs. EL MUERTO comic book, the ROUGH CUT SPECIAL EDITION book, a color print, and an original penciled page I created when working on the rough draft of the comic. All 18 pages are being included in the LCE Pack, including the cover and back cover thumbnail pages.

20 packs in total, and once they're gone, that's it! 

I'll also have a brand-new metallic EL MUERTO/LATINO COMICS EXPO button, plus my usual catalog of comics, buttons and DVD. But mostly, let's meet up at the first ever LATINO COMICS EXPO and have a really great time!

Weapon Tex-Mex vs El Muerto: Coloring the pages

Maybe 'gray-toning the pages' might be more accurate...

This is the 4th part in my series of posts chronicling my process in creating my latest comic book, WEAPON TEX-MEX Vs. EL MUERTO: THE BATTLE OF SANTA MUERTE!! This one is about the gray-tone coloring on the book. The previous posts cover:

1) The Inspiration
2) Creating the Story
3) Inking the Pages

The page above, which I showed the uncolored version of in the previous post about inking, provides a good representation of my overall coloring in this book.


I colored the book in Photoshop, after scanning in the inked pages at 400 dpi. I colored in gray tones, which is basically shades of black. I tried to limit myself to about 6 or 7 shades, which means in my color palette I would have 100% Black, 85% Black, 65% Black, 50% Black, 35% Black and 20% Black (as an example). 


I'd have to make notes to myself (and in the Layers palette in Photoshop) to keep the colors consistent on the characters. So the 65% Black would be, let's just say,  for Tex-Mex's pants and the Cadillac body. 35% would be for the shading on Muerto's skin and the beard stubble on Tex-Mex. 


The reason for the limited amount of gray tones? It's my preference for coloring my own work. When I use actual colors, I try to keep the amount of colors I use limited as well. Aesthetically, since I draw my figures and environments with limited detail, or at least what we all call 'cartoony',  I also like to keep the coloring on a somewhat consistent approach. My gray tones are meant to first of all fill in the line art, giving it volume and variety from other parts of the art. Some of the grays, like the beard stubble, are meant to provide an indication of texture.

Here's a sample of panels from the book. They're not presented in the chronological order they actually appear in:

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In the bottom, right hand panel, the dark gray compliments the lines on the door to illustrate the appearance of wood. While the black is used to show a stark shadow from the light outdoors. It also adds to the mood of the panel (it's the interior of an abandoned church), heightening a sense of foreboding....


Basically I want my coloring to 'get to the point' of what I'm trying to convey in the art. Colored pants, ominous shadows, medium colored door, tanned skin tones, etc. Part of that comes from trusting the reader's judgement to see it how I hope they will, and part of it comes from wanting to keep the process somewhat quick for me to work through. The third reason, and my first concern as an artist, is just the way I want my work to look. My approach to all the art I create (drawing, comics, painting) comes from an internal, emotional gut feeling. There's universal precepts and fundamentals of art that inform my creative process, but at the same time, telling a story comes from such an intuitive mindset, at least the way I see my role as the maker of these stories.

The background on this page was colored to provide an interesting alternate to a plain white background. Also, the textured pattern somewhat reminded me of blood splattering, underscoring the brutality of the fight without resorting to showing the blood spraying patterns all over the page. (Although I've done that in the origin issue of El Muerto....).

Here's an image I colored in gray tones before I started coloring the actual story. This appears in the interior front cover of the book.

 

Mr. Smith, the instigator of the tale...

I spent more time on this that I would have if it was an interior page of the story. I knew this was going to be a promotional piece of art used outside the actual confines of the story, so I didn't mind making this a much more detailed piece. It was also more meticulously inked, again, because I knew this wasn't going to part of the story.
If I spent this much time and detail on every panel of the book, it would have taken me a lot longer to get it done, and as I've mentioned in previous posts, I had a deadline by when I wanted to ship this book off to the printer. 


Even as I get quicker in using Photoshop to color, I still think I'd
maintain my more simplified approach to coloring. Perhaps in a few years, that would change...

A favorite creator of mine is Go Nagai, a Japanese cartoonist whose prolific output includes Mazinger Z, Devilman and Cutey Honey, to name some of his most famous properties. His work, which like most manga is printed in B&W, really provides me with a lot of inspiration on how to approach coloring in gray scales. Here are 3 examples:

Above, a page from MAZINGER Z. Followed by pages from MAO DANTE:

In the DANTE page above, I love variety and balance of white, black and gray shapes throughout the page. When you add in the variety of textures that are inked in, the whole page just crackles with a lively panorama of imagery and tones.


I don't show these to say that my own coloring choices are meant to match the work done by Nagai, but rather to illustrate that by looking at other work we admire, we artists can often feel emboldened to go beyond the work we're normally satisfied in producing. What they call 'outside your comfort zone'.

As for working in actual color, here's the back cover of my book:

The 'Wanted poster' piece was relatively simple, as El Muerto is basically three colors (four if you count his Superman-inspired blue hair highlights!). I put in a Photoshop texture on the wall, complimenting the cracks I drew in the illustration. Overall a relatively quick color job, but very effective in showing exactly what it needs to. 


The bottom strip was more of a graphic design piece, picking some limited colors to tie the various elements together. Again, no fancy tricks, just creating something that looks good, and delivers a simple message.


In the next post in this series I'll share with you my writing process.

Weapon Tex-Mex vs El Muerto: Creating the Story

Sorry for the long delay, but here's Part 2 in my series chronicling the behind-the-scenes process of my upcoming comic book, WEAPON TEX-MEX Vs. EL MUERTO: THE BATTLE OF SANTA MUERTE!!

 (A sketch for an upcoming promotional piece of art)

The reason I haven't been posting for the last 3 weeks was that I've actually been busy drawing the actual comic book. As of today, I can say I've penciled and inked the entire story. Of course, I need to go back and finish details on most of the pages, a few panels here and there. The way I worked was to sweep through the 18 pages, making sure all the figures were inked, and most of the backgrounds. What I need to go back and finish are mostly drawings of cars and interiors of buildings. As those will take a little more time (such as the perspective involved with some of the shots) I didn't want to 'slow' down my inking pace. 


In the first part of this series (scroll down this blog or click here to read it) I talked about what inspired me to create a Tex-Mex Versus Muerto story. Here I'm going to talk about how I put the story together.

Once I came up with the idea of having my two characters duke it out in a comic book, the first thing I did was come up with a sketch, something I thought could be used as a cover. Well, the second I finished the sketch, I knew without a shadow of a doubt that this had to be the final cover. There was something about the outrageousness and sheer audacity of the image that made me both laugh out loud and tingle with that excitement you sometimes get as an artist when you've 'stumbled' across a gold nugget in your own mind. Often in these type of superhero crossover battles (again, see the images from the previous blog post) there's a strong desire, at least for the cover image, to make sure each hero has equal standing with the other, where one character isn't getting the upper-hand on the other. 

Well, these are both my characters, so I didn't have to worry about offending anyone. And since Tex-Mex is a rip-snorting, hulking brute of a man, why the heck wouldn't he be plowing the 5' 10", 160 lb El Muerto through a concrete wall?! Plus I like the fact that even though El Muerto is my signature character, with much wider recognition (the dude's got a movie made about him, for cripes sake!), he's on the receiving end of a good ol' Texan butt-whippin'!


This isn't actually the first time Muerto and Tex-Mex have been seen on the same cover. That milestone happened on my last book, COMIC POP, (with me thrown on there to further increase sales) :

 

They didn't actually appear in a story together, that comic was a collection of reprints featuring individual stories with them as well as some other rarities. But the idea putting them together really appealed to me.

 

My plan for the Versus story was that I wanted to make it a short story, primarily for the fact that the two previous Weapon Tex-Mex comics were short tales, really short. The first was 3 pages, the second a whopping 4. Since this is technically a Tex-Mex story, I wanted to keep to the shortened story format. Originally I thought I could do this story in about 8-10 pages. Eventually it clocked in at 18 pages, but it's the only way to have told the particular tale I came up with.

 

When I sat down to thumbnail the story, I didn't really have a definite idea where I was going, or at least how I was going to get there exactly. Just so you know, I don't actually write scripts for myself, I literally have to see the story in visual form, that's my 'script'. I prefer to deliver the story from my mind to the paper with the actual images of the story, unraveling the narrative through images, panel by panel, page by page. I knew the main story points I had to hit, but when I sketched out the first pages of thumbnails, it was almost like watching the story unfold right before my very eyes.

 

Here are the first three pages of my thumbnails (these are drawn on plain 8.5" x 11" sheets of white paper).  Page 1, first panel was going to have the title and credits, then followed by the first two panels, setting up the opening:

 

Page 2, a meeting between Tex-Mex and someone looking to hire a zombie hunter:

 

As you can see on Page 3, I stopped drawing when I got to the bottom of the page:

The reason I stopped was I realized that I was eating up 3 pages already, and I was hoping to tell this story in under 10 pages! So I knew right away I had to find a quicker way to start the story. I eventually got rid of the guy hiring Tex-Mex, or at least substituted another character for his role, and reworked the opening into a tighter narrative. So these pages go into the 'deleted scenes' folder...

 

Getting the tone of the story was something I always had to keep in mind as well. Tex-Mex is more of a satirical, humorous character, and his two previous stories reflect that, while El Muerto is much more along the lines of a tragic, cursed-hero figure. I don't want to give too much away here in regards to the final project, but I just crafted the story with the idea that these two have to meet in a story, and they have to be who they are, and the narrative has to tell their story. Obviously what they have in common is that I've drawn them before in their own stories, and even though they have their own distinct voices, I'm the one doing the 'talking'. So I think the way I confronted this issue was to simply just write them together in a story, keeping their unique identities intact, and make the story work. 

Another reason I wanted to bring these two characters together was I plan to debut this comic at the inaugural Latino Comics Expo, being held in San Francisco at the Cartoon Art Museum on May 7 & 8.  It seemed like such a natural idea to have a comic featuring Weapon Tex-Mex and El Muerto at such an event. In fact, I'm also aiming to produce a special limited edition of the comic exclusively for this event, with an entirely different cover and some extra added bonus item. More on that later...

In my next post for this series, I'll share some of the actual inked pages and how I approached that stage of production.

Weapon Tex-Mex vs El Muerto: The Inspiration

So the other day my mind was struck with a stimulating bolt of creative lightning. Once it hit, my brain was sizzling from the primal energy of the idea. So I made an executive decision and immediately put my current comic book project on 'Stand By' status, as I want to get this new book produced and sent to the printer by the end of March.

There's a couple of reasons I'm doing this. One is that I have a couple of upcoming conventions in a few months, and I want to release a new book at these specific shows. But what really gave me the actual idea for the story was the influence of some old favorites of mine growing up.

 As a kid, watching this on TV, I thought it was the coolest idea ever. Having watched the original KING KONG numerous times, and my fair share of GODZILLA flicks, it as a real kick to see the two of them going at it. I'm not going to say I was real media savy, but I knew it was a rare treat to be able to see the two of them in the same movie, as Godzilla was a Japanese property and King Kong was a homegrown movie monster.

  

Even the superheroes got into the act:

I actually had this comic in a collection my older brother had given me in the early 70s. Not only was the Jack Kirby cover just screaming to me to read it, but the whole idea of Captain America fighting with Daredevil was a thrill. (Spoiler alert: Daredevil had a fever, causing him to recklessly attack Cap who was performing some exhibition fighting matches for charity!).

By the mid-70s, when I was buying my own comics, the greatest cataclysmic event in my young comics-reading career happened, right before my very eyes!

SUPERMAN VS SPIDER-MAN (1976), the first-ever superhero crossover comic between DC Comics and Marvel. And the really sweet thing about this was that it was printed up in the giant-size Treasury Edition format both companies were using at the time for special projects. This is truly one of my favorite comics of all time. The Treasuries measure about 10" x 13", and the size of the book really added to the impact of the historical nature of the story. In 1981 they followed up with this whopper:

As a comic fan, there is such a special excitement about seeing superhero characters from rival companies battle it out. It's not something that's going to be done frequently (if ever again), and they each bring their own extensive histories to the battleground. (If you want to read more about these books and Treasury Comics in general, check out my friend Rob Kelly's entertaining and informative site, TREASURY COMICS.COM)

In the mid 90's I became a fan of Go Nagai, the Japanese cartoonist who created both MAZINGER Z and DEVILMAN, two very famous properties of his that debuted in their own mangas (Japanese comics) in the early 70s. Amazingly, within a few months of launching each title, there were animated series for both characters. And within a year of that, there was the MAZINGER Z Versus DEVILMAN animated movie!

Here we actually have a crossover between one creator's characters. Such a smart move, because this way any profits (outside of whatever arrangement he made with the animation studio) go into Go Nagai's production company, Dynamic Productions. Plus he's getting two of his fan bases to watch one of his productions. And don't discount the merchandising possibilities, either...!

Just a few short weeks ago I learned that Go Nagai had published a brand-new team-up in manga called DEVILMAN Versus GETTER ROBO (another of his creations). I actually ordered it from a Japanese bookstore in Little Tokyo, and while I can't read Japanese, I was able to follow along somewhat with the story.

I really think this book is what really got me thinking about matching up two of my characters in one story. El Muerto and Weapon Tex-Mex seemed like an interesting fit. While the Tex-Mex stories (two short stories to date) are done much more in a humorous light, the El Muerto comics are created with a more melodramatic tone, with the gothic elements and human interest aspects blended in with the supernatural/superhero tropes.  


They're actually the first two comic characters I created that saw print (Tex-Mex in 1997, Muerto in 1998). So it's been a battle 14 years in the making! (Hey, gotta use that in the PR!)

I've already finished drawing the rough draft of the comic (the thumbnails, as we sometimes call them) and you can see the cover at the top of this post. (By the way, this is slightly revised from my first attempt at the cover. If you want to compare, check it out at my DeviantArt page).  

I'll be sharing some behind-the-scenes progress reports here for the next several weeks. Next post in this series will be how I came up with the actual story and the struggle I had in creating the rough draft. Taking two different types of characters, and putting them in a brand new story was an interesting exercise in creativity. Plus more insight into why these two characters actually work very well for what I have in mind.

And if you haven't seen it yet, my first ever WEAPON TEX-MEX comic is available to read, for free, right here on this very site, just click here, or scroll up to the top green tabs.