Fast Times at Lucha Comics

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Greetings All!

The past year has been full of milestones as I began my first venture outside of entrepreneurship since my initial internship with Marvel Entertainment, Inc. ended (Dec. 2008). As Blank Komix neared its first full year as a legit company, I returned to the work force as an intern employed by Lucha Comics. This was not an easy decision to make, but one thing I try to ensure for myself is that I maintain some level of humility that is enough to open my mind to learning more and honing the skills I already have.

My partnership with Lucha Comics came about via the Steelkilt Media Festival. Lucha and Steelkilt founder, Rodolfo Martinez noticed my potential when I won the award for best Graphic Novel Script in the first Steelkilt Media Festival. During a workshop we are invited to as awardees of the festival, I asked Rodolfo if I could intern for Lucha. He was more than welcoming and after a routine interview, I was in.

A huge part of working in comic book editorial is that you need a number of skills to converge into one area of focus. This is where organization and time management come in handy. As a Lucha intern, I’ve been tasked with both assisting in the lettering of a graphic novel that was originally published in Italian and working as a writer/asst. editor on a short story for a horror anthology. I’m doing all of this as I complete my final semester as a graduate student in Wayne State’s MA program and meet the professional demands of a career as an illustrator. This requires some hard work prioritizing my various tasks and gauging the time required for me to spend on any task Rodolfo sends my way. Beginning during my study at Joe Kubert’s School for Cartooning and Graphic Art, I learned to juggle all of the demands of the life of a sequential artist all the way from pencilling/inking to writing/lettering and editing/proofreading. While Lucha is a smaller, independent publisher, it was my goal to maintain the same sense of urgency I had as an intern for larger companies, like Marvel, with a heavier stack of titles to manage. However, this also meant neglecting the Blank Komix line and prioritizing the goals of Lucha Comics in the interests of the sequential art field as a whole. Although I’m required to work a minimum of 8 hours a week as an intern, I often invested more time in my internship by studying the various software required to perform my duties as an intern.

Editing and proofreading comics is a bit different from prose. On one end, it requires some research and forward thinking. For instance, in the project that shall not be named…yet, I was working with three different languages- Italian, English and German. While the book had been translated to English, I still needed to lean on my Spanish speaking skills to properly letter the English translation of the title. The strong similarities between Spanish and Italian made this task a lot easier. However, the real challenge came with German, which wasn’t translated. There came a slew of pages in which I had to find the correct character of the German alphabet to keep the lettering of the book consistent and easy to read. Each page had to be formatted to fit the industry standard, something Blank Komix strayed away from in its early days as an avant-garde comic book publisher. Having an editor to check my work motivated me to perform the task until it was done correctly and consistently. There were many errors I’d have missed had the editor not sent the pages back to me with the suggested corrections noted. I also functioned as an asst. editor on the other project that shall not be named…yet. Not only was I required to write the script, but also find the reference photos for our chosen artist and maintain a line of communication to make sure the artist understood exactly what I was looking for in the pencils/inks he’d eventually deliver. The comic book editor is not just there to edit words, we must also edit the composition of a page of visual material rhetoric, being sure that the story flows in the most dynamic way possible.

If I can’t approach a project with originality and creativity, I almost never take it on. With the other project that shall not be named…yet, I wanted to write a horror story that hadn’t been written yet. I took a classic monster and gave it my own flavor. I drew on a real life setting, of a town I actually spent years living in. This gave me an understanding of the geography, which helped me better guide the artist. I also drew on my own knowledge of the monsters I’d created and put them into a story that was rooted in realism but also grounded with some fantastical element to take the reader into another world where these monsters could thrive. This is where I had to borrow from my own company, Blank Komix, and use a character I’d created for another title. Given the character’s history, I was able to adapt him to the Lucha Comics universe without taking him out of continuity from his own narrative.

None of my work could be done without research. I almost said “a little research”, but it’s far from “little”. Both the projects required years of research and reference gathering to execute. I’ve described that process throughout this post. Don’t worry, this isn’t a rant about the trials and tribulations of life as an intern, but moreover a requirement of the class I’m interning through. This gives you all a glimpse into the demands of my regular gig. It’s a bit different, more engaging than my internship with Marvel, but of course I would not have been prepared for Lucha without the Marvel term nor the Blank Komix era sandwiched between the two. The great thing about being a freelancer is that I can work for more than one company, which means the skills I gain with one publisher are transferable to another. This also means I can take characters I created independently and pull them out of my bag to use with another publisher…or not. I can also create entirely new characters to add to the pot.

Any way, that’s all for today. I have some studying to do, a couple of films to watch, a model to sketch, food to eat and all of the things I need to do to keep on pushin’.

STAY TOON’D!