♪ [dramatic superhero music] ♪ - Hello, and welcome to Comic Culture.

I'm Terrence Dollard, a professor in the Department of Mass Communication at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke.

My guests today are Henry Barajas and Rachel Merrill, the creative team behind the new graphic novel, Death to Pachuco.

Henry, Rachel, welcome to Comic Culture.

Thanks for having us.

It's good to be back.

Henry, you've been on Comic Culture before.

You've been talking about your various projects.

And what you do so well in your writing is combine historical and fiction.

And I'm just wondering if you could talk a little bit about how that led to Death to Pachuco.

- I was researching a biographical comic about Dolores Huerta for the Department of Education, Social Studies Department, the Civics for All-- Civics Comics for All group.

And while I was doing research on her, she talked about how her brother was a pachuco in Stockton, California, and how he was assaulted for wearing a zoot suit.

And that led me into a rabbit hole of the zoot suit riots that happened in East LA.

And also, that was happening around the country.

I was first introduced to them via '90s swing revival band, Cherry Poppin' Daddies.

And I remember reading about it in Malcolm X's biography.

So it just was the most rewarding experience to go down to East LA where it happened, to go to the LA County Library and to the LA libraries to do so much research.

I already felt like a detective trying to piece together something that has been mentioned, but it's not really as mainstream as other events.

So I feel very lucky that I was able to piece together this crime noir, something I've always wanted to do, and to work with Rachel as a co-creator on this five issue series.

- And Rachel, you are the artist tasked with bringing to life 1940s Los Angeles.

So as you're working with Henry, how does this collaboration work where you're part of the character design, but also building the city that is both real, but also fictionalized in a character?

How do you craft all of this together, as well as coming up with these great story elements?

- Henry and I have the same point of view of how we wanted to tell it.

We both wanted it to obviously be very visually striking, but very rooted in reality as well.

So he was really great at finding me specific references for backgrounds of historical Los Angeles.

There was also a really great Instagram account called Forgotten LA that takes footage and archival photos and shares them online, especially ones from the late '30s, '40s.

That was invaluable.

And then as far as the designs themselves go, there's pretty good documentation of the Pachuco's.

But also my own grandfather was a young man in the 1940s and a photographer all his life.

I have thousands of photos of him and my grandmother at that same time period.

So that was really helpful, along with-- I'm just a nut.

Henry and I work great together because we're both absolute history nuts.

So research is one of my favorite parts of this gig.

So it was going through my grandfather's photos and then pulling out a photographer that I've always been a big admirer of, Mike Disfarmer.

He worked as a portrait photographer in Arkansas from the 1920s until the early 1950s.

Almost all his sitters were either poor or working class.

And most of them were from the World War II era.

So it was really helpful to see what actual people looked like who came from a working background.

A lot of them are family portraits or couples portraits of the man in uniform with either his girlfriend or his wife.

And they're all in their Sunday best.

They don't come in looking like the grapes of wrath, even though this is a very working class area that Disfarmer operated in.

And I just wanted to give a lot of sense of dignity to the characters.

Sometimes I think in-- we think of archival newsreels from that time period and movies, of course.

They can tend to give a very like shirtcloth and sacks for poor people and working people of that time period.

- You're talking about going through actual photographs from that era.

And we take so many photos now on our phones, and they just sit there.

And they're even talking about how there'll be sort of a record lost, because there's no physical media of these photos that were taken.

So when you're doing this research, is this something that's completely online?

Or are you maybe going through old books that you were able to find either thrifting or at the library?

- Disfarmer's book was one I had when I was an intern at Art Gallery in New York.

So that was a physical copy.

His work is not super widely available online.

There's some footage, but not even close to the amount of photos I have in this book.

And then my grandfather, I had like tubs of the photos.

So yeah, a lot of this research was out.

- And Henry, you are doing a lot of research that has to be correct.

Is this something where you're going to archives, you're going to libraries, you're going to collections?

Or is this something that you're able to do a lot of this research online?

- I'm that millennial that loves physical artifacts.

I am lucky that I live where this event took place.

So I was very much, if I can go and be in those places, if I can go and be in those physical places, the library is the LA County Library has binders of news papers and reference books that can't leave the Chicano library.

So I was sitting there for hours.

I got to watch the Zoot Suit movie, thanks to the library.

So I do make a special thanks to both libraries in the book because without those institutions, I wouldn't have been able to tell the kind of story that I wanted to tell.

But because it's a noir, and that's really what it is first and foremost, I really wanted to have to also take creative liberties and have fun with it.

- You mentioned noir, it's one of those great, it's a style rather than a genre, many people will say, but there's always the heroic antihero, the loner, the person who's deeply flawed and yet is trying to do the right thing.

And you've got a detective who is trying to find somebody who's responsible for a murder.

I don't think I'm giving too much away.

And it's set during this real life event.

So, first off, you mentioned the Zoot Suit riots.

Can you kind of tell us a little bit what that was and then how you were able to craft this narrative through it that feels like it's just a great story?

- The story takes place right after the Sleepy Lagoon murder, that's still considered an unsolved mystery.

One of the fascinating things about this murder in particular is the defense, the city, was trying to just kind of pin this on anybody.

So there was like a group of kids that lived on the street.

They just so happened to live on 36th Street.

So they were called like that street, a gang.

And all the men, boys and young men that were 18 and early 20s were facing harsh prison sentences in San Quentin and death sentences.

So Orson Welles, Rita Hayworth were a few of the celebrities that were raising money, raising awareness for these men.

Unfortunately, the women who also were taking the rap for this got zero help and awareness.

So in our story, one of the mothers of the girls hires this investigator, Ricky Talez, to help find the killer.

And it just so happens that this killer also ignites the five-day war in East LA between the Mexican-American community and the US Navy.

So it's his, he has to get this guy to confess and to jail before the sailors find him and kill him.

And if it weren't for the African-American community stepping in and fighting alongside the Mexican-Americans, who knows how long that war would have started or if there would have been any casualties.

Thankfully, no one was killed.

Only the Mexican men were jailed.

So it just felt like one of those moments.

And I wrote this three years ago, not knowing that we'd have Gestapo, ICE agents in unmarked cars and masks doing something similar, profiling and finding Mexican men and women just based on how they looked and the kind of jobs they were doing.

So it just felt, it is very serendipitous in the most unfortunate way.

But unfortunately, the tagline of the book is, "Now's not a good time to be a Mexican."

And I really hope that that rings true through the book and you could pick this comic up and there will always be something happening to the Mexican-American community, whether it be deportations, whether it be finding ICE agents at the airport.

So I feel very lucky that Rachel and Lee Louridge and Will Dennis and all our amazing cover artists lended so much of their artistic abilities to help tell this story.

- The one thing about Ricky, the protagonist, the anti-hero, I guess, in this story is that he's got a real sense of right and wrong, even though he has the skeletons, the darkness on him.

In particular, again, I don't think I'm giving too much away, he's got a substance abuse problem.

- Please give it all the way, Terrence.

We need people to buy this book.

- Well, I mean, one of the things about it was that this feels like this would have been one of those great noir films.

It could have been "Lady from Shanghai" by Orson Welles.

It could have been "The Maltese Falcon."

It could have been any one of those great stories.

"Chinatown," something along those lines, very cinematic.

And this character comes across as one of those great flawed detectives trying to do the right thing.

And Rachel, you are tasked with bringing this detective to life.

So how do you kind of create a look for somebody?

He's gotta look the right part, but at the same time, he's gotta have a certain physicality that only you as the, I guess, the camera person can create for this character.

- It's so funny you mentioned those movies because that was my research.

I was already a huge fan of "Lady from Shanghai."

"Double Indemnity" was another massive influence for this project along with "Chinatown."

There's actually a couple of shots I stole, quote unquote, from "The Third Man," which is a Carol Reid film.

But I just, all of that era, I just find just so, not cinematic, but just timeless in terms of trauma and storytelling.

As far as Ricky specifically, Henry was really helpful in that he sent me some ideas of real people that he thought would be a good model for Ricky.

And he knew my propensity for really needing to focus on the fashion and the stylishness.

And so that kind of combined of some specific examples, I think, worked really well to create this character.

A lot of the work is just, if the writing is good, you're just spoiled for choice.

But if the writing is not there, it's a lot more of a struggle.

But with all of Henry's writing, it's fantastic.

So it was just a pleasure to develop him.

- One of the things about the sequential art medium is that you are able to combine great action with those quiet moments.

And I'm thinking of some of those scenes in the diner where it's Ricky the next day having breakfast.

So as you are approaching those quiet moments, what sort of thought goes into those versus the exciting scenes that might involve a fist fight or a gun fight?

- Well, one of the other things I really like working with Henry is that on certain stuff, he lets me just do what you wanna do.

And then others, he's very specific of like, I was thinking of this scene from this movie, you don't have to do it.

And I was like, no, I love that idea.

And that was another one where he told me a specific scene.

And he's like, I'm not sure if you don't like it.

I'm like, no, I think we need it because there was such a big dramatic moment right before.

We need that moment of calm, I guess, to let the audience sit with what they've just witnessed.

So I guess, not to like ping pong it back to Henry, but it really is a collaboration.

It's not me just doing all the visuals just by myself.

And it's not him telling me exactly what to do.

It's a lot of a back and forth.

I've worked in film and commercials and my best relationships have always been with the director or the writer, wanting input and then we have a back and forth.

- And Henry, one of the things that is unique about your book is that you are, and you make a point of mentioning this in the forward, is that you're going to use language that was of the time that we would now find somewhat, heck, we would just find it offensive.

You're using slang slurs, racism, sexism.

And as you are doing this to build this character, is there ever that thought, well, maybe I should pull back and use, the typical comic book close enough, but we know what he's talking about, but without saying it, or is it something where because the story is so meaningful, we need to treat it with the respect and get it the period correct?

- As long as I've known you, Terrence, and thankfully I've been on this show many times to talk about comics that are like for all ages that live in schools and museums.

And I feel very grateful for that.

But this was the first time I got to do a rated R comic, where I wanted it to be a little touchy.

And I really wanted to let loose in a way I never had before.

So, this is the first time I've ever made something with cinema in mind.

It's always been comics.

It's always been, how can I maximize the medium in his fullest potential?

But this is the first time where I'm like, how can I marry the two?

Because the film noir, aside from the Philip Marlowe series and the Parker, Darwin Cook stuff, and all the stray bullets, torso, criminal, it was really much, it was like, how do I mix all this together?

A lot of my favorite creators, like Brian Michael Bendis and Kelly Sue DeConnick, they get to have the, take those liberties.

And I really wanted to have that kind of respect.

- Again, it adds to the authenticity of the piece.

And I think if you were to pull back that language, it would take away from the story, because this is an ugly chapter in our history that this murder is taking place in.

And I think it's important that, as the audience, we respect the fact that we need to hear these offensive terms sometimes, because it shows the inhumanity that was going on at that period of time.

One of the things about this book, again, there are these great quiet moments, and Rachel, I'm gonna turn back to you.

You have this great ability to take a scene and elevate it through lighting.

Noir is supposed to be dark.

I mean, that's what film noir is.

It's this dark cinema.

But as you are sort of creating these scenes, how are you sort of approaching where to put these shadows, where to put the light, and how to focus the eye in a certain direction on panels that could be at a nightclub or in a crowded street?

- It's not a very sexy answer, but I studied oil painting all throughout art college.

We were always taught to think in terms of light, and I think that imprint of thinking in that way, not everything, in fact, most things don't need to be articulated.

Like, you know, when you do large swaths of black, if you do them intelligently, the audience will fill that in, kind of like the way good horror movies work.

You know, if you don't show everything, that can make it even more scary, like the scene in "Cat People," where we don't see this woman being pursued, but we hear the noise in the background, and it just does such a better job of, like, you know, creeping you out.

So I think it's just those kind of things, like, you know, don't oversell something, or don't hold the audience's hand, I guess, is kind of the two ways I think about it, like in terms of realistic lighting and even dramatic lighting.

And, you know, I'm just never, you know, there was an illustration assignment I had to do in art college called "Every Hair in the Dog," and it was my least favorite assignment of all time.

I was like, I hate every moment of this assignment.

It's just not, you know, I've... It's just not how I work.

And then, you know, to go back a little bit further is, I have severe nearsightedness, so most of my childhood, I couldn't see anything but light and shadow.

Louisiana's got a very, very, very harsh, you know, it's right by the equator, so there's no pale people.

Everyone's either sunburned or various shades of tan and brown.

So, you know, things are very, almost black and white there.

Everything's like kind of either very heavy in shadow or it's blinding light.

And so, you know, that plus a painter background, plus just my own preference for, you know, I don't like extraneous detail.

I think that all kind of combines into this sort of way I approach dramatic scenes.

- Are you using the digital tools, or is this something where you're combining like just the paper and pen?

So what are your techniques?

- It's all in Clip Studio Paint.

It's all, all completely.

I love that program.

Took me years and years to get over my fear of it, and I had so many friends go, "Graciel, it's the program for you.

"Stop trying to fight Photoshop and go in and break."

And yeah, Clip Studio's just fantastic.

I do everything in Clip Studio.

I think with Chico, I don't think I really, I only did a few sets of roughs, and then Henry was like, "Just go straight to ink."

So it's just a great tool.

Basically, the big thing is that I work pretty large, and I work on a Cintiq, and my Cintiq is like, they don't make Cintiqs this big anymore.

It's so huge, but it comes from a painting background.

Like, I just don't work small at all.

And while I have worked traditionally up until about five or six years ago, photographing that stuff is an absolute nightmare, let alone finding a scanner big enough.

So it just became, you know, I just need to embrace the digital and focus on not going overboard and focusing on what I really like to do, which is, you know, manipulate light and shadow.

- I will say, as somebody who, in his free time, occasionally gets a chance to draw, I've been trying to work on a Huion tablet 'cause I can't afford a Cintiq.

And the struggle that I have is that I can't get a full 10 by 15 layout there.

So I would imagine the larger the screen that you're able to work on, the better it is 'cause you can see everything, and then of course you can zoom in and get a little bit more detail, which has got to really help because, you know, you do put a lot of thought and detail into what you are doing.

And that just brings us to the fact that the two of you collaborate every day on the syndicated newspaper strip, "Gilthorpe."

So how did that kind of come together?

'Cause I know, Henry, you were working on that strip for a few years beforehand.

So how does this new band come together?

- I got the news that Rod Wiggin was retiring and I already had Rachel on the top of my people I wanna work with list.

And my good friend Steens, who works on "Heart of the City," was like, "You should find someone you wanna work with "'cause this is going to be, you know, "every day for his foreseeable future."

So I reached out to Rachel and thankfully she was open to it.

And we, you know, had her do some test art and the Syndicate Tribune Content Agency approved it.

And we were off and running.

And while we were working on "Gil," I was like, you know, offhand, not actually thinking she would take it on I was like, "Well, actually, this is the thing "I was gonna ask you to work on originally."

And she was like, "I need to do this."

And I was scared because "Gil" comes out Monday through Saturday and it has never not come out.

So I didn't want us to be the first team that would have missed a day.

I feel very lucky that to this day, Rachel is still plugging away and we find a way to ruin Gil's weeks.

Six days out of the week.

- One of the things I really appreciate about your work on Gil Thorpe is that you are, you're making it a little bit more relevant to today's readers, a lot more current events based.

And I know that we've talked about it before.

You mentioned that the previous writer had done some things that were controversial in the day.

But a lot of times when I would read Gil, it would just be about three seconds left.

He shoots, it's in.

And that's great if I'm invested in the basketball storyline, but you've really touched on some subjects that are a little bit unexpected 'cause Gil runs in the sports page, a little less expected in sports.

And so, as you're doing this, what sort of feedback do you get from the syndicate or the editor as you're saying, we wanna do a story about Palestine, or we wanna do a story about X, Y, or Z?

- I mean, the only time, and since 2022, the only time I've ever been pushed in any direction was July 4th of last year.

And the editor was like, "Hey, maybe the kids should talk "about what's happening on July 4th."

And within the span of like 30 minutes, I wrote this strip about kids standing in front of us, the American flag, talking about school debt, lunch, trans athletes being banned, and just like all the things that they're dealing with right now, and the things that are in the paper, and the things like just last couple of days, Olympics have banned trans athletes.

So it was like 30 minutes of the day, sent it off to Rachel.

Rachel did an incredible job.

And then we have an in-house coloring team at Andrews McNeil.

They just colored the characters, left the American flag black and white, kind of like the "Stankonia" album of OutKast.

And I don't know, Rachel, I don't know if you were anticipating, I don't think either of us were anticipating that.

'Cause when these come out, these are like a month later, we're like completely different people by the time these strips run.

And it came out and it struck a nerve, with a lot of people, and it resonated with a lot of people, and it just thankfully gives us again another set of eyes on the strip.

And that's the only time.

And the syndicate is always super, they've always had our backs.

They've never been like, "Oh, don't do this, don't do that."

And I think we're pretty lucky.

- When you got that phone call saying that they wanted you on the strip, what was going through your head?

- Well, I didn't know it, to my shame, but my dad remembers reading it, so he knew what it was.

But then I ended up just like deep diving.

The community on "Gilthorpe" is pretty intense.

And so one of them has a blog that reviews every strip of "Gilthorpe," which ended up being incredibly invaluable for me to like go through and research as much as I could about Rod's style.

And that I was even almost more ashamed of not knowing about Rod, 'cause his work is absolutely incredible.

He's one of the best draftsmen I've ever seen.

And so I just really have this invaluable resource that I can go through 14 years of his work.

Like, I'm a little stuck on something, and I'm like, "What would Rod do?"

And I go back and I'm like, "Okay, all right, I'm gonna like pull that pose "and whatnot, or I'm gonna use that background."

And so, and then there's other stuff, like especially stuff that's a little bit off the field, like the prom or them, like any kind of big costume changes I always really get to enjoy.

I guess I was obsessed with "Daria" and the British television show "Skins" when I was younger.

And so like that type of stuff, it's like really sweet for me to like have fun and play with.

I really enjoy drawing Carrie Thorpe in particular.

- Well, I hate to say it, but they're telling us that we are out of time.

If the folks watching at home wanted to find out more about "Death to Pachuco," where can they find you on the web?

- They can find "Death to Pachuco" at their local comic shop.

- Well, thank you so much for taking time out of your schedule to talk with me today.

It's been a fun half hour.

- Thank you.

- Thanks for having us.

- And I'd like to thank everyone at home for watching Comic Culture.

We will see you again soon.

(dramatic superhero music) ♪ - "Comic Culture" is a production of the Department of Mass Communication at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke, giving broadcasting majors professional experience and onscreen credit before they graduate.

♪ and onscreen credit before they graduate.

♪ - Only at UNC Pembroke can you find what makes you special.

- We are mission-focused, service-minded, and grounded in our unique heritage.

- And most importantly, you would find who you are, what you love, and who you want to become.

- With the NC Promise tuition plan, it's all more affordable than you might think.

- Discover your passions.

- It's all at your fingertips to explore, and it starts right here at UNC Pembroke.

♪