 Tonight, we get a chance to talk about kind of like the origins of Latino comic. Some of the underground artists and themes that are prevalent in comic book, comic strip art from a long time ago that a lot of the artists working nowadays have used as an influence and as a theme. There's a lot of people, another reason for the Latino comics expo is that people still are not aware that this is kind of like a golden age of Latino comic book creation. When we first did our first expo five years ago at the Cartoon Art Museum, we had about 12 artists at tables showing their work. When we have our expo this year in Los Angeles, we expect to have almost 75 to 80 artists, 100 artists in only five years. So there's this tremendous growth and interest in comic book, art, comic book images that reflect a more diverse vision of America and people's surroundings and stuff like that. We consider it to be very important because visual narrative is something that affects young people so strongly. I forget which psychiatrist or psychologist said that when you're young, there's no limit to the amount of visual images that a young person can create or intake. It's the same thing with languages. There's an infinite amount of images that they can take in and we kind of see it as our purpose to give young people, especially Latino youth, a wide variety of images to be inspired by. So that's why our themes are to try to expose young people to comic book art. We also see the importance of comics as a bridge to literacy. A lot of people that do comics that love comics, that's kind of what started their interest in reading. And plus it's fun so you can't knock comic books. Before, I guess when we were young in the 1970s or 60s, there weren't very many Latino images in comic books. Everybody remembers Gordo by Gasarriola, some early works maybe that Theos and Diaz and relatives would bring in from Mexico. Sometimes Disney would do the Donald Duck in Spanish or something like that but very few characters in traditional comic books. And then the 60s, 70s came and there was a whole underground comics movement. Other people got involved, a lot of them because they were self-published, independent creators and you started to see a lot more different voices being able to be heard. And that's where we come in. We're going to talk about those influences today. And I'm honored to be able to have kind of an informal discussion, question and answer with probably one of the most important Latino independent comic book creators that we have. He definitely was present at a lot of the stuff that we're going to talk about in the beginning. From the early days of Comic-Con, early days of Bay Area, underground comics. He knows a lot of the stories, a lot of where the people are buried and stuff like that. And plus he's an amazing artist. If you ever get a chance to see his graphic novel series, Tortilla, it's amazing. Kind of like slice of life, remembrances of him growing up as a young Latino youth and the challenges and struggles that he kind of overcame. And plus we're all waiting his latest work too. He's been working on a tremendous idea called Turk Street Serenade, which kind of traces and reflects on his life when he was working down in an SRO hotel down on Turk Street in the San Francisco of the 80s. So we know he's got stories. So please welcome up to the stage so we can start our conversation, Latino comic book artist Jaime Crespo. Hola, Jaime. How are you doing? Nice to see you. Nice to see you. Excellent. Thank you for having me. No, no. Thank you for the work release. You've done your time. You deserve a chance. That's right. Let's just talk about, first of all, your involvement in comics. I mean, people always want to start out. How did you get started? You know, what first got you going in Latino comics? And maybe give us a time frame too. Like how old were you? What year did you really first start? You know, doing it. Doing it. First, watch it. I first started drawing. I guess you could just start just period. I was a little kid. Probably about three years old. The running joke in the house was as I had it. My first art show was in the family Bible. I somehow got a hold. Yeah. I somehow got a hold of a ballpoint pen. I'm about three years old. And I guess there was a couple of blank pages, the leaf, whatever. I drew a cat in my dad's car or something like that. Of course, the reviewers, being my parents, the show was panned. And yeah. So it started probably right around then. And it has gone unabated since then. Not in Bible, so. And what about actual comics? Which are the first ones that you remember that had an impact on you that made you say, like, wow, this is cool. This is cool. Sunday funnies. I remember the funny papers. We moved around. We started in Sacramento and we moved here. We lived in San Francisco for a few years in Southern California. And so the Sunday paper, my mom couldn't afford the paper all the time, but some of us just get the weekend. So I remember the Nancy, of course, peanuts was the first ones. Then maybe a few years later, Mad Magazine was the beginning, I think, of where stuff really took off. Speaking of Latino comics, like Antonio Projiz was Spy versus Spy. And Sergio Arrigones, you know, the little margin drawings and the margins and stuff that was pretty influential. One thing we also noticed, especially among younger artists, it's been cool to see is just this rebirth in the interest of different Aztec, Mayan themes. You know, that's always been kind of like a standard in the barrio. A lot of people would put it on their low riders, t-shirts. You know, those images, you kind of like peep, didn't popularity lately. My question to you is, were you influenced at all by different Mayan or Aztec images? Oh, certainly. Do you remember seeing them when you were young? Excuse me. Yeah, I remember, I don't know, it was probably the third or fourth time in Mexico, but I was of older ages, probably seven or eight years old. And my mother is a Yaqui, believe it or not. I live with my dad. She's from northern Mexico. And some of her family moved to Mexico City. So I remember we went there for the first time. And I can't, you know, this is, you know, I was seven. So that was at least 10 years ago. That, you know, I can't remember exactly where I saw it all. But yeah, I saw a lot of, you know, Calaveras and Calacas and stuff. It was a little weird little bookstore that was, I don't know what neighborhood in Mexico City, but, and I remember just standing there transfixed. And they had all these different books. It was some kind of, I guess something on Azteca culture. And I kind of took that with me. And then I'd see stuff, you know, you know, families have certain things, you know, you'd see whatever in, you know, books or somebody's house. And you know, always the calendar. Oh, that's gone. Okay. But anyway, that's all right, Sophie. Yeah. You know, so yeah, yeah, it was big time, big time. And then later, yeah, you see it on, you know, Mahitos and things like that. So. Oh yeah. Another interesting, just kind of like pioneer early comic book that I had a chance to discover. And I'll be honest about it. It's kind of like a last year. I believe or not we have these comic book creators come all the way from Chile in South America to our Latino Comics Expo. And, you know, we think we know everything about comics, you know, like, yeah, we know Spider-Man, we know Silver Surfer, whatever. And they would come out and they say, well, have you heard of it? Internato. Yeah. Or like, Internato, you know, what's that? And it turned out to be this amazing comic book. It started like in 1957 in Argentina. And the creepy thing is that it really was like ahead of its time. And like the guy is like time traveler or space traveler. But then part of the time he still lives in Buenos Aires. And like the thing he most worried about was like this deadly, like toxic snow that would come down and kill people. And I just thought it was kind of an interesting pioneer because it does touch on a lot of stuff that a lot of people are still doing like science fiction. There's, you know, a lot of what we call Latino Futurism, where they're adopting things like from Latin America, like Mexico City, but, you know, in the future. Or Mayans still around, but very like futuristic and like spaceships and stuff like that. Kind of like a Blade Runner. Yeah, exactly. And, you know, I know a lot of your work is more kind of a slice of life and kind of like growing up stuff. But I was just going to touch on maybe what science fiction themes do you really admire or kind of maybe influenced your work at all? Blade Runner. Go right off the bat. I just got the Ford disc set in the mail too. Yeah, I like a lot of sci-fi. Though I don't really write a lot of it and rarely draw it, but I've always been fixated with... Francis will tell you, I've always been fixated with robots and aliens for some reason. I don't know. It's always been kind of a thing. Yeah, I mean, it's an eternal theme. But I just thought that it was interesting that, you know, something from Latin America was already touching on these themes, you know, back in the 50s. And this gentleman too, he has an interesting story because at first his comics were like very, very like science fiction. And then as Argentina kind of fell into dictatorship and the whole Juan Perón, you know, junta thing, he started getting a little bit more political. And then, believe it or not, once a day, once one day he got arrested, got thrown into some camp and he was never seen again. Wow, wow. So it was kind of like, you know, another theme in like Latin America, politics, art, interweave. And just I thought it was very moving that even a comic book artist, you know, was caught up in that. Well, that's been going on anyway, you know, with the Muslims that shot the people. Sorry? Yeah. So it's, you know, but, you know, yeah, people were, you know, cartoonists have already been persecuted and killed in France, you know, the humor magazine for, and then there was somebody down in Texas, was it last year? I guess that I had a contest which I found was fueled. This woman wanted to incite the Muslim community by having a cartooning contest. You draw Allah, you know, which is just like, come on, man, it's just disrespectful, flat out, you know, when those guys showed up and they were killed. You know, so it's, and these are all, this is just comics. Yeah, yeah. It just reminds me just the power of, like I said, the visual form and just different ways that comics can reach people and the fear that puts into different, like, governments or regimes and stuff like that. Comics have been there since the beginning of time when you think about a caveman and so forth and on, and comics along with propaganda and so forth and through the ages has been used as a tool, you know, for teaching, for fear, for dogma, for whatever. So it's always been there. Exactly. And for people that are interested in this, I heard that this finally got an English translation out. So if you do get a chance to see Internauto, it's a really amazing piece. Kind of predates Moibus and stuff that Joe Roski was doing, but very interesting. The stuff I have looked through there, it did remind me a little bit of Will Eisner and the spirit in that kind of sense. Exactly, because there's some noir little touches mixed in with science fiction and stuff. Interesting pioneer. Another big influence for sure is, go back, yeah, go back. Is El Santo. Santo. And I have to admit this is kind of one of the first things, like sometimes, my uncle would be visiting from Mexico or maybe somebody had to swap me would have these for sale and that would be, oh my god, Santo. Like if my mom would see me trying to buy this, she would be like shocked or something like that. She would try to be. But I would have to like try to sneak it and keep it under my mattress and stuff like that. Because it's Santo. I mean, you would see some crazy stuff in a Santo comic book. Like the early gangster rap in comics. Yeah. And it was like the first comic where you would see like voluptuous women. Oh, I never noticed. Really? Yeah. I read it for the article. They'd be wrestling or fighting vampires or actually be a voluptuous woman wrestling with a voluptuous vampire. Right. But it was art. And the El Santo comic book too was like just an early example for a lot of people. It ran for like 30 years as well. So it was a long time comic book that hit a couple different generations and that's another thing you see with like early, I mean, with some of the younger comic book creators too. It's wrestling is a huge thing in our community. Yeah. Even now with on TV, Lucha Vivoom, you know, the whole wrestling thing. But El Santo is definitely an early pioneer in that and just the fact that they had El Santo comic book. They had the movies. They had the wrestler too, you know, Lucha Daughter. He was the king. He was the early king of all media for sure. Yeah, he really was. He covered the whole thing. And just maybe just talk about just like your relationship to wrestling, Latino wrestling. I watched both, actually. I watched on a camera with Chandler with the Spanish language channel and they would have El Santo and they would show old clips. I remember they always had them on there and he would talk about his past and because I guess that was my generation. He was already towards the end of his. And then where I grew up, they had a thing called Big Time Wrestling and I used to watch that too with Rocky Johnson and, you know, Pat Patterson. I just found out a few years ago, and now this is how ignorant I am, that what's his name? The Rock? Dwayne Johnson. Oh, you didn't know he was the son? Yeah, I didn't know. He married Peter Movia's daughter and Rocky Johnson did it. I'm sorry. I just had to say that. It's all in the family. I thought that was cool, man. It's cool. So yeah, it was an influence. I don't know so much on my cartooning, but just as a rambunctious, hyperactive kid. Yeah, you know, my buddies and I would, you know, do stupid stuff and jump off of fences onto each other and break arms and things and, you know. Yeah, I mean, the thing that's interesting to us as an expose, because like I said, like maybe our generation, we grew up, you know, seeing stuff like El Santo and seeing stuff like, you know, the Aztec calendar on low riders and stuff like that. The amazing thing is just how this kind of thing is just exploding. Like, you know, now Day of the Dead is becoming like Sinclair Mio or St. Patrick's Day. Yeah. And now even like Luchador wrestling is becoming like a huge, you know, you can buy bottle openers with the Luchador on it. Yeah, it's the flavor of the month, you know. I hear Filipinos are next. I don't know. So maybe we'll have lumpia on t-shirts. I don't know, but. In fact, I don't know what you're taking on this, but I've even read like an essay saying that, you know, Luchador is such an important icon in the Latino community because it's that whole thing where like somebody that doesn't reveal their identity has more power, has more strength to like enact change and to fight crime is, is that kind of like the Spider-Man thing or do you think that's a Latino thing where we were able to do more action if we don't reveal our identity? I don't know. I think that's, I don't know. I don't think so. I don't think so. I think we can do just enough action as we want showing our identity. But yeah, it's, again, it was an influence on me, but a small part as, again, our generation was probably more monsters and sci-fi mixed with the hot rod culture and lowrider culture and that kind of thing. Then when I got to be a teenager, that was the first, well, the second actually, generation of skateboarding, the Z-Boys Dogtown thing. So that also kind of, for me anyway, personally went into all my thinking because back then, you were like on the football team, you were a cholo or you were, there wasn't much, sorry, there wasn't many menu categories as there are now. So I don't know. Skating to me seemed like something free and another form of expression just like cartooning or painting or writing or music or whatever. And I noticed a lot of the guys I skated with, I'm still in touch with a lot of them, but they did become renowned painters, some musicians and so forth. So I find that. And now a days, I'm starting to bring up the skating thing. It's really amazing to me how I used to get picked on by some of my Latino friends because me and my friend Art Artoro would skate and it was mostly white kids. And, ah, you're doing the wet old thing, ah, white boy, whatever. And now I've traveled half around the world, and I see skaters everywhere. Every socioeconomic background, every race, ethnicity, you know, body odor, whatever. I mean, everybody's, it's great, you know, that it's become an individual thing. No, exactly. That's kind of what we feel with, you know, the Latino Comics Expo is that, you know, it shows that we are part of this American culture. It shows that, you know, we'll embrace something like comics and put our own flavor to it and, you know, embrace it as well. Well, somebody I got to interrupt. Keith Knight, I was on the phone with him recently and I was telling him, I was, you know, wondering why he missed the soul con. And he said bitterly that he wasn't invited, which shocked me because he's pretty damn well known, you know. And then he was kind of trying to get me into a debate as he often does with certain things. Why do we need a Latino and African-American comic con? You know, and, you know, he goes, you're still American, right? And I go, yeah, so are you, but it's just different tacos. That's just the way I put it, you know. And hopefully he'll be there this year. So I told Freddie, you know, get on it. Yeah, that's always a debate that we get. It's like, we always get people that say, why do you want to separate yourself? Why do you want to, you know, do a convention where it's just Latino comic book creators? You know, why? You know, I don't consider myself a Latino artist. I just consider myself an artist. And it's, you know, philosophically, we kind of come at it like we want to give choices to people. You know, when you go to a restaurant, it doesn't always have to be Chinese, it could be Italian, it could be a taqueria. You know, the more choices out there for the public, you know, the better. I always tell the story that, you know, the reason we started the expo is because I had two small children and, you know, every year we would go to Comic Con. You know, everybody would be lined up, you know, for Twilight or, you know, Hunger Games or something like that. And maybe you would see a Latino artist all alone and forgotten, but very talented with something original, with something unique. And, you know, it always bothered me that people weren't at that table, you know. People were at the Walking Dead. And, you know, Walking Dead is fine, but everybody at Walking Dead, it's like, and after years of complaining, you know, a lot of my comic book friends said, well, you know, instead of complaining, why don't you do your own expo? Why don't you stop complaining and, you know, try to do something five years later, you know, here we are. Another thing different about our generation is, you know, I'm from the generation, too, that my dad would give me money to buy his cigarettes. When I was, like, eight years old, he would do that in those days. But, you know, before I would get his, you know, pack of salons and stuff like that, I would stop at the comic book spin rack and, you know, look around and start picking my favorites. And I'm just wondering if that happened with you as well. Did you have your favorites going to the comic book? Well, I'd send my mom down to get my cigarettes. You know, I'd have to write her a note, which, you know, was pretty bad. No, yeah, I would go down to the store and spin through the rack and see what I wanted. I have to confess, I tried to get into superheroes a couple of times and I just way over my head, man. I just, you know, wow, that's a lot of words. Why is he wearing his underpants on the outside of, you know, what does that mean? What is a mammotrome on my mind? It's so laborious. So I got left to me by a cousin, a distant cousin, who was going to Vietnam and he left me all his comics. No, they weren't EC, I only wish. But he left me a bunch of Disney comics and a ton of, like, sad sack and Casper the Friendly Ghost and hot stuff, a lot of Harvey comics. But all the Disney ones were in Spanish and the other ones were in English, but I mean, I'm talking, you know. I was a little kid, so I was like, ha ha ha. So I spent a lot of time reading those. And that, I think, also helped me in my drawing style because I could draw a bunch of different styles, but I prefer that real cartoony, bendy arm kind of style. I don't know why it just appeals to me. But that was a big influence. That guy right there who didn't die in Vietnam died much years later, but I can almost credit him single-handedly starting me off to, like, where I started drawing. I wouldn't copy him, but I'd look at, I don't know, I'd pick up, like, oh, how that toaster was drawn, especially the Disney comics because they were really good at that. Like realistic. Yeah, yeah. Or just to get an idea of, like, putting telephone poles in the background and, you know, and TV antennas off the houses. These little details just, I liked it. You know, so. Speaking of little details, that kind of brings us, I don't know if we should call them pioneers, but they definitely, you know, blew up the archetype and went on a different direction. I remember that they didn't have them on the comic flip racks, but they were kind of more like with the other adult, like, magazines. But I definitely remember the first time I saw Eleven Rockets. Oh, that's later. Yeah, yeah, Mario, Jaime and Beto, yeah. Yeah, and I was like, oh my god, they're like, you know, making comics about my neighborhood or, like, you know, people that kind of look like me or, you know, the drive-load writers and stuff like that. Look at a neighborhood that looks like me. And that was, like, the first time, emotional thing once, you know, I discovered Eleven Rockets and, you know, I'm just wondering, you know, when you discovered them and what kind of effect they might have had on you. Oh, pretty much the same. I mean, I was already drawing at the time, but not on the level they were. But when I saw it, I think I'm more reaffirmed that, yeah, see, see, you know, that we could do this, too, and those guys did it and it was really cool. I mean, it opened up a lot more for me and the fact, I mean, I've talked to Mario countless times, and I, you know, we were always stuck in my truck going somewhere far and how that all that really opened up also other Latinos to the fact, like, the skateboard or anything, or anything that you don't have to just be this one cookie cutter, like, enchilada plate number five. You know what I mean? You don't have to be a cholo. You don't have to be a maid. You don't have to do this. I mean, if you like punk rock, go be punk rock. You want to skate, go skate. Do it. As long as you're not hurting anybody, you know, don't let anybody tell you what to do. You know, you do it. And loving rockets are filled in a small way. That covers awesome, by the way, is, uh, did that for a lot of people, you know, open a lot of eyes and minds. No, your style is very, like, autobiographical and and biographical and biographical. And you touching a lot of stuff that happened when you were growing up. Is that something that was maybe sparked by loving rockets, or were you doing that already? I was doing it already. I never really thought about has anybody done this before. It might have just been more of an exercise at the very beginning. Um, but as time went on, you know, it probably was more cathartic, you know, in some ways, just getting stories out. Some were about me. I notice now I'm doing more about my youth. I think it's because of my age now, I'm kind of reflecting more. A lot of my stories were. I always use the joke as I was like, like the Chicano Rod Serling in this Twilight Southern and I'd come up there going, oh, yeah, witness for your approval. You know, check out this bottle over here that has a heroin problem. You know, whatever, and you would follow that, you know, and then I'd kind of step out and let that story go. And that's kind of what that Turk Street Serenade is all about. It does. I do wind through it as everybody winds through everything, but anyway, and then I discovered Harvey P. Carr and said, oh, look at this guy. You know, I love what he does and Chrome was drawing for him and Gary Drum. And so I remember writing to him and he wrote right back to me and I sent him some stuff and he says, this is great, you know, and then before I knew within a year, we were having like monthly phone calls, you know, like, hey, because we talk about, you know, three things we love jazz comics and books, sometimes sports to get in there too. But yeah, Harvey was a great guy. I owe him a big, big debt of gratitude. So he was a good friend and a mentor. Well, now that I think of it, since most of your stuff is biographical, did you ever do stuff that was totally different than what you're doing now? I guess is my question. Did you ever go into different other genres or? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I went through, jeez, Francis, you know this better than I can't remember anything. He's got a big collection of my stuff. Well, those surreal, the El Brujo things that were wordless panels that were, again, you know, I would kind of touch on subjects like meat law and, you know, the four years of the underworld and things like that and real, but wordless and just drawing exercises and, yeah, you know, not saying I did acid or anything. So. Okay. Let's see. Oh, then our friend Spain Rodriguez Bay Area Legend as well and we always tell the story that we were fortunate to have Spain Rodriguez attend our second annual Latino Comics Expo and, you know, we were totally low budget at that point. Luckily my mom made burritos for everybody, so that was they were awesome, too. That's how we got artists to show up. But I remember when we went to Spain and we wanted him to attend because, you know, we love his work and he was such an influence on everybody. We kind of told him, you know, we're low budget, just starting off Expo, you know, Pura Raza and, you know, no budget and he's like, I'm there. So it was great, but his work, you know, for those unfamiliar very, you know, revolutionary Spain was always trying to tear down, you know, injustice and, you know, what was not fair in society flash a light on it and put like and blow it up for sure, you know, and that's another thing I also noticed. I was a big influence on Latinos doing comics today. It's just that, you know, whole thing against injustice, blowing up, you know, the oppressors and, you know, whether by revolutionary ways or flamethrowing and stuff like that and he definitely had the whole revolutionary socialist ban going because there's a lot of stuff that isn't out there that I saw that he did through with other friends and stuff. And now it's definitely his. He's that old line 60s, you know, kind of a Spain, Nevada kind of thing, you know. No, the cool thing too is I think he also said an example too about just not being censored in any way and especially like politically correct, like I think the next panel's probably that was one of his characters right there, you know. What do you mean? But just that fearlessness in terms of his comics not being afraid, taking chances and, you know, not censoring himself in any way and, you know, that's some for sure that I see in your work and what's your philosophy in terms of censoring yourself or is there anything you wouldn't do? Is there things you tried not to do or? I don't think about it really, you know, I just just do the story. I mean, the only time I've ever been censored was we did a of that time we did. I did five years of work. I had displayed at was the Fort like Chrissy Field there. What is it? No, but to help me out here with Fort Mason. Thank you. That's right. She's the brains. So yeah, Fort Mason, I had a five-year retrospective and in the book Throb, that 24 page nine panels per page, wordless Throb, if you're familiar with the book Zoom by Istho on Banyan or whatever, that it zooms all the drawings zoom into each other they needed a second book called ReZoom and I just thought, wow, it's a phenomenal idea. So I did Throb where you go into the drawing and then you kind of come back out and it's a different drawing and you go to that and it goes into a different, you get the idea and at one point it goes in and there's you see a man performing a certain act on a woman anyway and then it goes out and you see it's a guy in a porno bookstore looking at the cover and then it goes out away. Anyway, at the Fort Mason they said we would love to hang this but we can't hang this one particular page, this one panel and I said well then it's 23 it's supposed to be 24 and I can't do that so the compromise well no, first I said just leave it it was a case of the right hand not when the left hand was doing and they said alright, we'll leave it so then when I came back for the opening I must have been in like an hour and I'm sitting there I'm going to drink and chatting and somebody points out hey, why is there tape over one of your pieces and I'm like what? so I walk over and sure enough somebody took some gaffer tape that I haven't seen so of course I'm immediately going you're taking that right off and then there was a big brouhaha they didn't want kids to come and get the wrong idea which I don't know what the wrong idea would be but I guess that was talking about censorship with you so that was it, that was it pretty much though everything else people just let me run free with it I don't think I get too radical though do you remember the first time you met Spain or when you saw his work here in San Francisco? well the first time I saw his work was in the 70s in high school but the first time I met him was like the early 80s in San Francisco he just kind of dismissed me then and then I met him a handful of years later when I was already I was around enough I was seen enough and then he'd chat with me so we were acquainted he was a nice guy though the other thing that I always loved about him is that he was influential in mission culture in terms of starting the whole mural projects in the mission and stuff like that he was one of the first ones to really get behind that him and Mike Rios teaching young people how to do that then you look over to Tommy's joint up there on Van Ness that's him ah there is the Ron Fluff and then we get to Sergio Aragonis for the uninitiated Sergio's living legend Mad Magazine I don't know how to describe all the stuff he does but it was a grew you turned me on to him, grew the what was it? oh thank you grew the one year I didn't do too well in school I guess you can see but you've had a chance to meet Sergio Aragonis too at different conventions do you? yeah nice guy just Zany and he's like his drawings in a way he's quieter obviously but he's a very nice man and he's one of the fastest cartoonist I've ever seen and you said as a young person you did kind of see his work in Mad Magazine I had no idea who he was though at that point I mean for years I had no idea he was a Latino just some dude you know Joe Schmengi and he's drawing these things on the side that are hilarious right? but yeah when I found out I was like so a little bit yeah no my funny story is one time I got to moderate a panel that he was on I just tried to give like a little gift after the panel so that they'll remember me someday so when I was done interviewing him I gave him it was a Mexican postcard where they have like the Mexican poster of a film and he saw it and he got really moved by it and I didn't know that when I guess he's immigrant from Spain that had a leave during the Spanish Civil War so he moved to Mexico where his dad opened a film studio and got to work with like Luis Benuel and all these other people Delores Del Rio and stuff like that all my mom's favorites yeah and I'd give him a postcard of a Delores Del Rio and he was like oh my god my father produced that movie back in the day oh wow and then he'll tell you stories about how he took Mime from Joe Delosky, because Joe Delosky was like giving Mime classes in Mexico City why not awesome so he's definitely a big pioneer or influence in that because that's for sure another theme in Latino comics is humor you know we could definitely see it in your work as well and maybe talk a little bit about how important humor has been to you and your work is really important I feel I'm more of a funnier guy in person than what I draw so it kind of balances out but yeah I notice in the Latino culture is all you humor sometimes in really I guess for the lack of a better term more down situations or things that are a little more serious but I try to flip humor in there and at least through my family and other Latino families I notice that is kind of a trend too it's vastly important but it's just as important as pathos and anything else well I always go back to the story you did about your troubles with math as a young person if you guys get a chance to get that issue of it's in tortilla right? number 3 I'm almost done with number 4 actually it's an incredible story of Jaime and his troubles with math it's like at one turn heartbreaking and hilarious because I'm pointing out the absurdity of the situation where I didn't know math and I was kept after school in junior high every day for a school year and I still didn't know math I don't know whose wisdom was like oh I know we'll keep them after school for an hour every day in this room and no behind-stein by the end of the year but I just read a lot of comics and drew a lot so I got a lot of reading done and then of course we get to lowrider magazine I always consider it a huge influence because I grew up in East LA during the 70's and I always tell people that was kind of like a golden age just for chicanos and latinos I think it was the last year that there was the last decade there was a lot of government programs to do to get after school jobs and cruising to Whittier Boulevard those were like the golden ages and I remember lowrider was a big influencer just the art that they showed in their pages the lowrider magazines I mean a lot of this stuff has become ubiquitous I mean on t-shirts, on art and stuff like that but I remember it first kind of showed itself in the pages of lowrider magazine and a lot of these images and calacas latino women and stuff like that and was lowrider magazine an influence on you do you remember enormous I was in car clubs I had a couple cars myself high school out of 68 Riviera two doors slammed all the way down and in those days kids they didn't have the independent hydraulics we just had the front and the booty that was it I did my own primer grave I had a trucker magazine the lights you have like you see semis on the freeway and I have all the different lights and some guys get carried away I found blue lights I bought two blue lights mounted under my front wheel well with a switch so when I hit the juice in the front I'd flip those on this blue light would come down feeding my feet yeah it was and then I sold my friend Miguel he painted it midnight blue he did it and he bent the frame not my monkey not my circus so I said dude I got my money so oh yeah and now we come and like I said now we come to our Latino comics expo artists some of them who are here today some of them are felons indicted not convicted because like I said it seemed like a lot of these themes they have come and influenced the artists of today like I said some of the there's a lot of science fiction there's a lot of Mayan Aztec themes you know humor for sure and some of that work is reflected in the artists that participate in the expo if you guys get a chance to read my partner he's the co-founder of the Latino comics expo Avieri Hernandez his main character is el muerto and he kind of symbolizes even though he's been doing this character now for like about 15 longer now probably 20 years now so he's always mad when people say oh you just started this because of day of the dead he's like no he's been doing that he also started the twerking trend but el muerto he's known as the Aztec zombie he only awakes once a year on day of the dead to help his loved ones and families and whatever crisis and challenges may occur it was turned into a feature film starring Wilmer Valderrama check it out on Netflix or you could come to our first ever Latino comics expo fundraiser which will be on June 22nd at the new Mission Alamo Draft House Cinema check out our website latinocomicsexpo.com it'll be a rare big screening of el muerto some of the other work too Rody Montijo that guy he's incredibly talented he's an alien man that guy is just way too good he just recently returned from Japan where they were he was turning in his one of his creations Halloween kid into an animated feature as well so Pablo's Inferno is his main character as well I love that one El Sonambulo is an amazing work by Rafael Navarro from the comics Hot Bed of Whittier but El Sonambulo is also kind of envelopes a lot of the themes that have been passed and present you know wrestler he's a wrestler by Dave film noir detective by night he solves crimes but he knows all the choke holds as well he does yes he does eight elbows of death and Rafa's badass man he's just Rafa's the man incredibly talented one of the things we're proud of as well is that almost half of the artists that participate are Latinas as well we've seen this huge explosion in terms of Latina comic book artists doing their own things I do notice that a lot of them do science fiction and crazy stuff but a lot of them also do slice of life family oriented themes like that because she's great at that you know she can sum up a family vacation to Mexico and all the underlying themes but then go to a story about werewolves and then go to a story about werewolves oh this guy I don't know man this artist I'm proud to say is in our audience today let's give a hand to Daniel Daniel I'm proud to say was at our first Latina comics expo I always we always like to take credit that we inspired him to do his amazing comic book series Zotz where he kind of basically reshapes reconfigures the whole Mayan history culture and I mean the amount of research that he does the authenticity that he brings to costumes weapons storylines it's amazing what he's been able to do with his series I mean it gets deeper and more complex as it goes on and I won't put pressure on him I know he's working on book 3 we're hoping that it'll be ready by Latino Comics Expo in August and what did you describe his book as once because I use it all the time well he gets mad but I say it's kind of like the Mayan game of thrones but it's a lot better than that but imagine if the Spanish like never arrived like they just came up on the shore and just said keep moving you know and it just ended up I think it's excellent because he really goes into like what happens with all the Mayan empires and drives and the battles and the families and it's rich it's dense it's authentic it's one of the crowning achievements right now I think of the golden age of Latino comics and Rico and I being his biggest influence is I think you know Crystal Gonzales is another amazing Latina we always bust her out when we show that we do have diversity in Latino comics because she is we like to joke because she's like a real quiet you know self-effacing young lady but her art is just so wild and surrealistic and you can tell by the photos she's her art will cut a bitch it will he's amazing she's cool too and yeah Latino comics expo we kind of you know we pitch ourselves as the online content platform for the 21st century if you're interested in you know comic book hero stories themes that are totally outside of the mainstream that are totally different than you know where your spot you know we always try to do interesting events all over like I said June 22 we'll be at the Alamo Draft House we'll be showing some animated shorts and different fun stuff and then our big Latino comics expo convention will be down in Southern California at Long Beach right? Yeah Long Beach near the Queen Mary August 6th and 7th and this will be our biggest best one yet so please make plans to be there if you haven't already once again we'd like to thank everybody for coming the San Francisco Public Library this is kind of your your chance right now to ask any questions or comments about Latino comics like I said Crespo is quite an authority he's been there since the beginning I always tell people that Mario Hernandez are he's kind of like our fairy godfather of the Latino comics expo because he always tells us like you know I was there at the early days of Comic Con you guys are much better organized and you know you guys are doing it much more legit than they did in the beginning so I was there when Walt Disney first decided exactly so Jaime you've been there in the beginning as well I was there again early it was it was like I don't like a giant haul you know it looked like just I don't know it's I guess like if you've ever been to the San Francisco Zine Fist kind of like put that in half and it was about like that the early like the first 20 years 15-20 years of the Comic Con and now it's like forget about it you can't even get in and it's all about movies and everything else so in comparison how would you compare the Latino comics expo in our first five years because we've been very fortunate that Jaime has been there since the beginning as well and they don't make me clean up afterwards anymore which is awesome now it's great man bigger better and more organized it's really nice and I like the diversity we're having coming in it's quite encompassing now that's only going to get bigger you can just see it I can't believe 75 it feels like it was the other one the first one was just last year it feels like it was just a few of us yeah and the Latino comics expo like I said it's not an attempt to separate or anything like that it's just to bring different perspective give other artists an opportunity to show their work and like I said in a way it's also an opportunity to us to show that we are part of this American fabric and something as American as comic books is something that's important to us as a people and something that we actively participated in as well so like I said if anybody has a question or comment this is your chance this is your time anybody have a comment or question um yes sir right oh Isis I go way back with her she's down in Oaxaca though she's in San Miguel de Allende and we're proud that she table that are she's a friend of the expo she had my mom's burritos I had her at a couple art shows I had to her and I did together and then growing up in Sacramento I was fortunate to hang out with a lot with Jose Montoya and went to high school with a couple of his sons Malin, Vince, or good friends of Richard the actor so I know them guys and uh yeah the Royal Chicano Air Force yeah oh yeah I'm sure you mean that aren't like buffing the lobbies are oh okay yeah yeah yeah that's yeah that's that's another thing we're proud of the expo is that you know like a comic kind of so crowded you know you're lucky get an autograph or something like that but Latino Comics Expo is still a spot where you can come and talk to an artist because we've actually had an artist from Pixar Octavio Rodriguez he's working on the big Coco the day of the dead movie that Pixar's trying to put out later on this year next year just don't ask Lalo about it so we do it is a good chance for a young artist to mentor with other artists and ask questions and we've had the artists that work for like Warner Brothers and stuff like that so it's well Rafa didn't he work for Rafa Ello works for somebody traveling with the form varies which one he worked on Nickelodeon yeah that's right that's right yeah so it you know it's an opportunity for like people to come to Expo they can talk to us like hey how'd you wind up at Pixar hey how'd you wind up you know doing animation so that's another thing we pride ourselves that and that our panels too we have incredible panels and workshops kids you don't get a chance to work with artists and and our panels are just amazing I mean we have like one year we had all three Lovin' Rockets Brothers which is very rare not even Comic-Con does that we had Gilbert and Mario the whole trifecta I heard they didn't fight once no they actually sent me notes like thank you for getting our family back together this year Jaime Hernandez you know we'll be at our Expo again this year he's considered the probably I don't know the top you know Latino cartoonists you know he's the groucho of the Hernandez Brothers where Mario always feels like Zeppo for those here that get that okay like for example we've been pride ourselves the last five years we always have like a Latina power panel where they talk about the issues and the concerns and their challenges you know they you know so it's kind of a nice it's a convention but it's also a chance where people can get together and talk about you know what what are the major concerns how can we improve how can we get our art out there because it's an exciting time like I told you like we know that the culture is just you know saturated with like Spider-Man X-Man you know Captain America which we all love you know but people forget that these characters have been around like 50 or 60 years you know it's you know the dads are sharing it with their kids and it's just becoming saturated so a lot of these Latino images we tell people this is your chance to get in on the ground floor you know 30 or 40 years from now when all the movies or a lot of the movies are going to be Latino characters and based on high-meds comic books you could say that you were there at the beginning of the Latino comics expo explosion so and all kidding aside about the Latino comics expo one thing I have found is that I feel like we're family I mean like all the other cons I mean the you know like my friends there you know but I occasionally meet somebody new like we're like a big amoeba that just rolls around you know and we're all like got each other's back and hey how you doing how's your oh here comes Carlos hide the beer you know kind of everybody it's really nice I really like there's a lot of support and it's important a lot of artists you know they work you know by themselves in their room and their drawing table so it's kind of good nice to get that community support that just other artists support that you know that hey I'm not in a vacuum I'm not right by myself so you know that's another important you know function of the Latino comics expo enjoy that yes sir well you'll see it up here I've seen it around but through friends I guess you know what the one thing I have heard is because you know just to drop some insider knowledge our friend Rafael Navarro who does it so down below he's been working on an amazing version of Santa in animated form to modernize it for young audiences here in America or even on Telemundo or Univision if they would do it but you know there's something weird about the rights to stuff in Mexico like you know it's its own differently or stuff like that so it's very hard to get stuff that has copyright in Mexico and very few things have copyright in Mexico but when it does it's like it's very hard to get it over into the US market like that's something you haven't seen El Santo or a Mil Máscaras or something that would be big among the kids you know today here in the US you would think it'd be a natural so that that's my only idea on that it's hard because you're right it's more like us trying to get the copyright from there because you don't go to Mexico you'll see a million ceramic Bart Simpsons you know for sale you know our people they see some ah that's gonna be a pinata I mean you know they already had the Donald Trump pinata a couple years ago you know there's no shame I do notice it's kind of hard coming that way here you know yeah it's the flip although I guess maybe macho is not politically correct anymore no is it man masculine I don't know affirmative I don't know my daughter says it represents the ruling patriarchy so yeah okay there you go and speaking to my daughter I'd like to give a big shout out to Sophie you did a wonderful job on the PowerPoint thank you she's an official staff member of Latino Comics Expo you'll find her on LinkedIn anything else thank you once again like I said Latino Comics Expo com like us on Facebook June 22nd is our fundraiser at the Alamo Draft House and August 6th and 7th in Long Beach if you're there and once again I'd like to thank Jaime Crespo please support him put pressure on him to finish his latest doing a web page again a website so I was just on KPFA and I was really embarrassed to say that nah I don't have a website anymore I kind of let that one go so right now this week we're putting one together so you could see what kind of absurd life I live sorry oh yeah I have a radio show at another station I work at a station in West Marin KWMR I'm just one of the office monkeys there but I have two shows or I have a music show I'm on Wednesday evenings now at 6.30 to 8.30 and it's random music randomly then every other Saturday I do a sports show with this guy Steve S and it's sports but it's not baseball football and basketball we just covered the national lawnmower championships there's underwater hockey in Colorado I kid you not so we're doing competitive eating and all the important sports so every other Saturday on KWMR thank you for your time Edwin appreciate it thank you sounds like auxiliary hungry?