S8 EP23: Omar Morales : Major Thomás and comic book recs

[00:00:00] What's going on Primos, Primas, and Primas? Welcome to My Primos Podcast. Welcome to the My Primos Podcast. My name is Freddy. My name is Kevin Garcia. My name is Elia Maria Matriz. My name is John Abina. This is Chikuma. Whenever I can make it. My Primos Podcast discusses all things fandom and pop culture. From comic books, movies, to whatever obsession we have this week. But with the Latine, Latine, Latine perspective. Remember, we're all Primos. We're all Primas. Primas. Primos.

[00:00:29] No matter what part of the world we're from. Que ondas, Primos, Primas y Primes. And welcome back to My Primos Podcast. My name is Freddy. And with me tonight is my primo and yours, Mr. Kevin Garcia.com. Say what's up, Kevin. What's up, Kevin? How we doing? There you go. That's how you do it. Man, I have to fumble over the words. Like, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. Look, if I'm not constantly interrupting you, I'm not doing my job.

[00:00:56] You know what? That's right. Kevin's always filling that hole. You know, he's always filling that gap. You know, Kevin Garcia. Kevin Garcia. You know, we have a special guest today. I'm really excited because we got a sneak peek at some of his work. And you actually met up with him at San Diego Comic Con. I've known this guy for years. And by that, I mean, I met him about a month ago. That's right. Feels like years. So, Omar Morales, welcome to the Primos Podcast. Could you tell us a little bit about your history in comics before we get started?

[00:01:24] Because I met you at a, I guess, a networking event for other comic professionals. And you were one of the professionals that was kind of like, I don't know if hosting, but I guess you were invited to be one of the key professionals there. So, yeah. Tell us about your career. Yeah, man. I've been making comics for, I think, a little over 12 years. I did my very first Kickstarter back in 2013. And that was for a book called Crusader, Engine of the Vatican.

[00:01:51] And that was my kind of first learning experience about comics. And, you know, made a lot of mistakes and messed up the pagination of the book and had to go back and fix a bunch of stuff. And, you know, I was flying by the seat of my pants. And one of the crazy things I did to kind of put myself on the map with that book is I went out and broke a Guinness World Record for the largest comic book ever published. It's a giant size two feet by three foot version of Crusader. Oh, wow.

[00:02:18] And, you know, overnight, all of a sudden my name's out there internationally as a comics creator. So that, I guess it worked because I'm still here, you know, a dozen years later still making books. You know, it's funny to me. You mentioned, you know, messing up the page thingy. I'm also a comic book professional, but I teach a publication class in high school. And that's one of the big things that always gets the kids tripped up. It's like page numbers. They lose track of it and it screws everything up. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:02:45] The second you learn in your head, even odd, even odd, even odd. That's the key. Page two, three. It's always page two, three, no matter what. Right? And so you learn to think in spreads and page turns and, you know, you get better at this stuff as time goes on. There's Eric Larson. I'm sure he's not the first to say it, but he makes a big deal when he's talking online about people using left handed pages. And it's the idea that like when the reader turns the page, they don't know what's going to happen yet. So it's a left handed page. Yeah, yeah. I don't know my left. I'm all right.

[00:03:15] Anyway, but but yeah, it's one of those key things that people will kind of develop as they as they work in comics. So I love that idea. Yeah, that's exactly right. So after that, I did a book called Lunar Ladies with Scout Comics. That was like a fun little retro throwback book, you know, whereas Crusader was rated R. This thing was PG, you know, very clean, very pulpy sci fi. It was like a 1940s throwback using a public domain character called Moon Girl. Mm hmm.

[00:03:43] And then, you know, in between projects, I do a lot of like little stuff anthology work. I love fan fictions. If you go on my website, I have a Mandalorian fan fiction. I have two Metroid fan fictions. I have this little Christmas alternative reality story, which features Mulder and Scully from the X-Files. And these are things that I just kind of do for fun just to keep keep the juices flowing. I'm actually working on a couple of more of these types of fan fictions that I put out for free.

[00:04:12] You know, obviously I can't charge for them because I can't. I get sued. Right. But and so that brings us up to current times with Major Tomas. This is my new book that I have out with Amazon Comixology Originals. It's only $699 for 128 pages, which I think is just like a steal of a price. That's a steal, man. What I've been telling everybody is, is if I was selling it to myself off the back of my truck, you know, it'd be 20, $25 because you have to.

[00:04:42] Yeah. Cause I have to. Right. And so for $7, you're getting a complete story arc. Right. And you guys can attest to it. You guys have read it. It's a full story. It doesn't, you know, give you just like the first 20 pages and that's it. It's it's there's a lot there. I love that. You said the Amazon Originals because there's that, that, that membership kind of like Marvel is Marvel unlimited. Um, if you sign up with, with Amazon, you know, the unlimited there. Yep. It's part of that package. It is.

[00:05:09] It's a, that package is five 99 a month and includes all kinds of books from all kinds of publishers. Well, good. Now that you're subscribed, you can leave me a rating. You know what? Kevin Garcia. I'll get out on that. I have to do that now. Yeah. I literally, I've seen that little thing saying, if you subscribe, blah, blah, blah for years. And finally, like a few weeks ago, after I met you, actually, I was like, you know, why am I not doing this already? And so I did. And sure enough, it's been really helpful.

[00:05:36] So yeah, for six bucks a month, it's the best deal in comics, especially for guys like myself that have run out of space here in the man cave, you know, when there's just more room for physical books. You know, the digital deal with, with comiXology is amazing. And it does include the entire lineup of originals as part of that. You know, it's just like when you subscribe to Netflix, all the Netflix stuff comes with it, you know, as part of the price. So yeah, it's major Tomas is a science fiction action adventure.

[00:06:05] You know, it starts off as like a coming of age slice of life, and then it goes into an adventure heroes journey type of story. And I really wanted to write something that's very timeless, you know, like this story could have taken place in the fifties. It could have taken place a hundred years from now. I think, you know, it still works, right? It's very classic archetype characters and the hero's journey. And, you know, it's got robots and aliens and spaceships and laser guns and explosions, but it also has a very human element, you know, romance.

[00:06:35] And Tomas is a Mexican American kid who's striving for more and has to struggle in life. And, you know, when he finally gets his dreams, it all kind of starts falling apart. He's got to figure out a way out of it and try to find his way back. So I hope you guys enjoyed it, man. It's no, I want to I want to commend you, man. I mean, the book was great. And I really love the touches. You talk about Metroid. There's so many nods to Metroid in this in this in this book, like everything from villains

[00:07:02] to even, you know, not to give anything away, because it'd be a great get for anybody as a fan to just discover it on their own. But there's so many nods to it. So if I see an arm cannon, I'm in. I'm like, hey, you know what? I'm all in, dude. Seriously. I love, you know, I follow on social media as well. So you do Metroid Mondays. So I see you kind of put stuff out there. Yeah. So it's a blast to see that in the book. But also, you know, selling Kevin just offline that it touches on a lot of different things. Like you said, it's not just like a very basic story.

[00:07:32] There's a lot of layers to this. Right. You know, it's a coming of age story. It's a sci fi story. I'm a sucker for anything with time travel. I'm a sucker for space. I'm a sucker for robots. So like this kind of touches on all that and it has a lot of heart to it. There's a journey, like I said, a hero's journey. But there's a journey, like an emotional journey too. Right? Like, maybe Tomas and everything he has to go through before we kind of move along in his path to the stars, if you will. Yeah.

[00:07:58] One thing we brought up on the show a lot in the past, even we've used it in conversations that Latinos have always been kind of like told to look towards the ground, you know, like go, you know, go sit chat and go pick up, but never towards the stars. Yeah. With Professor Latinx before. Exactly. Exactly. And we always said that whenever we're told to keep looking at the ground, because that's what we were supposed to do. Right? Work from work with our hands, work on the earth. But we don't look to the stars. Right? When we can do that, when I can meet another Latino, that's like minded and can kind of put that.

[00:08:28] Major Tomas into space. I look at it. Oh, Major Thomas. I forget that, you know? That's right. That's right. And so I love that you put that in the space and really embracing all of those elements and still keeping it close. And say, como dice, como los pies en la tierra, right? Because you still get that reality there. You still get that heart of the Latino comunidad and everybody around Tomas. Can you talk about, you know, what really sparked this one to take off how it did? I mean, you worked on it, you've been working on books for a while. Yeah.

[00:08:57] But what made this one kind of just spark, you know what, this is a story I have to tell and this is how I'm going to do it. So it was really like two things that were like lightning and thunder. They both happened in 2009, right? I went to this rock concert to see one of my favorite bands and one of the warm up acts was this band called shiny toy guns. Oh, I love shiny toy guns. Yeah. And they do a cover of Major Tom by Peter Schilling. That's a 1981 song.

[00:09:24] And by the way, his record company gave me permission to use 10 words from his, his song, uh, major Tom. And I did the quasi sequel to, you know, space oddity. Yeah. Yes. And so, um, I bet you, you'll see some of the lyrics just on one page and it's just a select few lyrics that they allowed me to use in toward the end of the book. But anyway, so they did this cover about this astronaut who gets lost in space and the lead singer.

[00:09:50] Um, she just tore the roof off of the venue in San Francisco and she sung it with so much emotion and so much heart that I felt something in my heart. Like, damn, this dude is out in space. He's trying to get back. And I, and I just wanted to know more about him. Like, where did he come from? Why does he dream of being an astronaut? Who's the woman he loves? What, who's he trying to get back to? Like, what's he going to encounter out in space? And I just kind of started filling in the gaps in my head of like who this dude is.

[00:10:17] And, you know, me being, you know, Chicano, I was like, all right, I want to write a story, but I'm going to make it about a Chicano boy that becomes an astronaut and gets lost. And right around that same time in 2009, I was watching TV and they were showing like a NASA shuttle out in space. And they showed, um, Jose M Hernandez, who is just a legend. Right. And he's from here from the East Bay. And they showed him the video of him out in space and he's floating, you know, in his astronaut suit and he pulls out a Raiders flag, starts waving his Raiders flag.

[00:10:46] And I was like, yeah, you stole my heart right there. I was like, who is this guy? Life long hero now. Life long hero. And there's a movie about him and his life called a million miles away. That's streaming. Michael Peña movie. Yeah. I was going to say a big Peña fan. I haven't seen it yet. I want to see that. Oh man. You got to get on. You'll be in tears, dude. Like four or five times in that movie. Like you do, you get in tears. Like I'm thinking about it right now. I'm here for it. It's fun, man. Crazy. Did you know that he's a guitar player for Nico Vega as well? Michael Peña. He's the guitar player for Nico Vega. Oh, wow.

[00:11:16] That's crazy. Check that out. Yeah, I will. Yeah. I love that you're doing the story about space. You're talking about you were inspired by, you know, among other things, this astronaut. And lo and behold, I look at the forward of your book and there is Jose M Hernandez. How did that come about? Um, like I've been telling everybody, I feel like it's, it was written in the stars that he and I were meant to cross over and do this together because a he's a farm boy who became

[00:11:44] an astronaut, but B he's from the same hometown as my dad, La Piedad Michoacan Mexico. They're both from the same place. Right. And he happens to live here in the East Bay. He, he worked at Livermore labs. He has a winery here in Lodi. I think he has an office in Stockton and he actually has done some charity work with one of my cousins here locally in the area for like senior citizens. And so I just started writing to him over the years. And just like in the movie, how he applies to NASA, like 10, 11 times and gets rejected. And then he finally gets in.

[00:12:15] I emailed him like 10 or 11 times over the years until finally, once that, the book was done and I think he could tell that I was for real and I wasn't going to go away. And I sent them the book. He's like, Oh wow, this looks great. And so the very next day, election day, November 6th, he wrote the forward to my book. And that's the date that's reflected there in the forward. The forward. And he's a great dude, man. He's a, he's a legend. There's actually a mural of him here in Livermore. And I took a picture of it the other day. I haven't posted it yet, but there's a mural of several astronauts and he's one of them on this

[00:12:44] mural and a hometown hero, not just here in the Bay, but also going all the way back to La Piedad Michoacan, man. It's a. Yeah. Where his family and your family are both actually from. So are you guys related? No, not that I know of. You never know. You never know. We never know where Primo comes from. I was going to say, there's Primos everywhere. I was going to say, he's a Primo in my heart and that's good enough. That's the way to do it, man. But talking about, you know, just like the journey, man, like you said, you've been working on comics forever.

[00:13:14] Right. And you've done work here and there. This one. And I just look reading it and kind of the enthusiasm you've had behind it. Like it has to be that, like, this is your story at this point. This is me. Like, guys, this is like that crescendo of where I come from, my geekdom, my craft and everything just to going together. Isn't it? Yeah, absolutely, dude. You nailed it.

[00:13:39] And what I've been telling people is if you don't really know me after you read this book and you get to the last page, you will know me because every bit of me is in that book. And there's some characters in there that like resemble my parents. Some of the names are, you know, names of my ancestors on my mom's side. There's a scene in there where they talk about the Huichol natives from Tepic. And that's where my mom's from. Right.

[00:14:04] So I wanted to give her a little shout out with what the Huichol is because that was like the community of natives that she grew up with in her city. So, yeah, there's a lot of personal touches in there. Like you mentioned, there's lots of Easter eggs. There's there's even one Easter egg of Alf, you know, the little brown furry alien, which was the TV show I watched growing up. I mean, I was freaking out because I was like, I kept reading and I'm like, oh, shit, like there's like not just Metroid, but just in general. Like I got interstellar vibes. I got like I got stuff from a lot of different sci fi.

[00:14:33] I even like just watching like this on I'm thinking myself watching it, like reading it. I'm like, oh, man, this could fucking be an animated. I can see this being an animated series or something because it just lends itself to it. It's so well done or an animated video. I'm looking at the trailer on your website and it has this nice eight bit Nintendo feel to it with little meaty, midi sound to it. And I'm like, you know what? I could see this. I could see this as a game or a series.

[00:15:00] Is that like in the plans? Like that's what you'd want to do. So why not both guys? But honestly, right. The stars. One of those that are like, let comics be comics. Like, you know, there's there's a whole movement for that, too, you know, but I expand it. I you know, if it only is a comic for the rest of time, that's fine with me. I'll die happy. But one of the beautiful things about working with Amazon and by the way, working with Comixology and the people there has been phenomenal. I mean, they are wonderful people to work with.

[00:15:31] One of the beauties is as they're vetting projects for the originals program is that Amazon Studios has a seat at the table and they help. They're one of the voices that gives the thumbs up or the thumbs down on what what content they want for their exclusive program. So there has been eyes on it in terms of, you know, a studio. And so I think they have like first right of refusal if if if it becomes anything. But, you know, nothing's guaranteed. I have no idea.

[00:15:59] I'm not part of those conversations. But listen, if it happened, great. I agree with you guys. It should be an animated thing. Live action would be cool, but it just feels more animated to me. It's good to have those inroads. Plus, I mean, you have a, you know, robot animal sidekick. So you're ready to go for any animated movie. I mean, Speed Racer, it's been Speed Racer to me like, oh, shit, like chim chim chim chim. Yeah, like it's all right. It's all there. So it's like it's tying in all like the geekdom from when I was a kid. And that's what you said. Like, if you read this book, you'll know you. Right.

[00:16:28] And like we talk about it here, how, you know, we were not gatekeepers. We're all about bringing everybody in inclusion. Right. Especially in a community Latina, there's always been a fascination for sci-fi, fascination for, you know, anime and animation. And as long as it has a great story, that's what we're about. Right. You can't go to a carne asada and not hear a fucking good story being told. You know what I mean? Like, you're going to hear a good story. You know, it's I think that that's that's visible in what you're doing. And I love your energy and vibe for it.

[00:16:57] I mean, what was your geekdom for you? Like, what was your thing growing up? And was it just I see some Star Wars back there. Is that your thing? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I got Star Wars. I got Metroid and some other Nintendo stuff over here. I got all my Raiders up here. I got my Michigan over here. So, yeah, Captain America is my guy. If you could see up, there's this whole shelf of Captain America stuff. But listen, I all I learned English by watching cartoons and reading comics. Right. I went to Catholic school.

[00:17:27] I went to kindergarten and the nuns there were like telling my parents, like, no more Spanish. If he's going to survive, it's got to be put on English from here on in and inundate him with English. What does he like? Well, he likes comics and Spider-Man and cartoons. OK, only English from now on. So I learned by reading like toy packaging and, you know, coloring books. And that's what the gaming manuals. Remember the manuals? I miss manuals. Yes. Kevin Garcia is better at it than I am as far as like collecting physical media. I have a lot of games.

[00:17:57] Yeah, like I need my manual and I love, I still get excited when I bought the, what was it, Capcom Fighting Collection? Because I love Street Fighter. I love all that. Yeah. And inside of it came the comic book to kind of tell you why these different Marvel characters or Capcom characters were all mashing and fighting. And that's, that's fun. You don't get that same feel when you download the game. You know what I mean? I love vintage stuff. I just played the demo for the new game from the makers of Shovel Knight, Mina the Horror.

[00:18:24] And like Shovel Knight, it has a digital player's manual. Like it's designed to look like it's an old, you know, player's manual. And like, it's good to have those physical aspects to them. It's so cool. You were mentioning to Albert three, the little monkey robot who reminded you of Chim Chim. The beauty of this book is I mashed together real actual history from NASA with things like Chim Chim and animate Chim Chim and animation because.

[00:18:53] NASA sent two monkeys into space to test it to see if it was safe before they sent an actual human. Right. Because they were chasing the Russians, the space race. And so the first one was Albert one. The second one was Albert two. And so when I had to name my little robot, I named them Albert three or L three for short. So subconsciously, I think the reader will get yes, the pop culture vibes, but it's grounded in history and reality. Right. And then a little twist.

[00:19:20] I didn't even know, like the patches, man, like that, that whole emblem, when you start off, like, and not to get into the beginning of the book, but yeah, like the design of the patch and what that means, you know, like that, that whole feel. And, and I started kind of digging on my own, like, man, like there's something to this. Like, there is a whole, like, yeah, I don't know. There's a mythology behind it. Yeah. Thank you. Yes. The mythology behind the patch. And like, the way you, you went about yours, man. Like, I don't know. I'm just seeing that there's so many layers in this book guys.

[00:19:48] I mean, major Tomas is like the book to get your hands. I mean, as of recording though, this is August 19th. When is this available for, is it already out for other primos to get their hands on it? It's out. It's out, man. It's been out for some months since WonderCon actually. And it's, it's ranking very high in the Amazon. Like they have different categories, right? It's like number one in the young adult Latino category. It's like number two in the young adult science fiction category.

[00:20:16] And it's like in the top 10 for like young adult action adventure. And it's holding its own, right? It's, it's still consistently ranking pretty, pretty well. So what I've been telling everybody like Kevin, please, when you're done with the book and you get to the last page, leave a rating, please. Even if you don't leave a comment, just, you know, one to five stars, whatever you think it deserves. And that helps out a lot. Challenge primos. Go up there. Seriously. Do it, right? If you have comiXology, I know some of you do. Kevin's saying it's good. It's a good product. Go on there. If you read the book, no, don't you.

[00:20:45] If read the book, read it and then rate it. Primos, make it happen. But on the note of the end of the book, it has notes for teachers. I saw there about like key characters. There's like suggested lessons. There's suggested like continued thinking process prompts. Is this something that you came up with? You want to make sure to have that educational aspect. Is this something maybe an editor threw in or? It was my idea that was hatched in collaboration with creators assemble, which is a great nonprofit.

[00:21:15] They're the one who put on a networking event. That's where we met. Yeah, where we met Kevin and they've been putting on that networking event for years now. And so I've been partnered with them for a while and they offered me this and hey, do you want an educator's guide? You know, and I said, yeah, heck yeah. Because this book I intend for, you know, junior high, high school, even college kids.

[00:21:35] And the thought of giving teachers and librarians extra content where they could go to the kids and say, now that you've read this, let's try to understand what you've learned. One of the little lessons is put together a playlist for this book. And I was like, God, I love that. You know, I would love to hear some kids playlist of what inspires them with music from us.

[00:21:58] Man, you know, if only we knew a librarian that's a primo, which, you know, with really puffy hair, that, you know, is always looking for programs for his library. You know, I'm not going to name names, you know, at Kamazot's comics, but, you know, that'd be something that he can definitely look into since the library is always looking for programs. This is awesome. That's such a great, great idea. When I used to teach English, because right now I teach it more of a journalism and graphic design kind of course.

[00:22:22] But when I teach English classes, and especially when I was working with English language learners, it was really helpful to have graphic novels to kind of like have the visuals along with the reading, but also more so when the kids connect with the characters. And here there's a lot to connect with. You know, I really love that. Yeah. Yeah, man, I appreciate it. I really am very in sync with libraries and classrooms.

[00:22:47] And I really intended this to inspire young people, you know, for it to be a fun read, but also, like you were saying, Primo Freddy, just like, look up, man. Look to the novels that are up here, right? Don't settle for something here or here. You know, really, really reach for the stars, figuratively speaking, right? Well, I mean, we talked about looking up and reaching for the stars and making it educational. It opens up with a very real thing. Kepler 452b.

[00:23:18] Usually when people are going to set things in the future, they're going to go far in the future and just fictional planets. You've got a reachable headline, a reachable technology that people are working on right now and a real place. What brought all this real science into your sci-fi? Yeah. So one of my kind of picadillos as a creator is I don't put that much stock into world building because I think you can overdo it. I think you can overcomplicate things and you can lose people, right? I've done that.

[00:23:49] I think it's a little complicated in my own stories. I'd be like, ah, I need to start over again writing this because I went too far into people. Yeah, I started worrying about the fauna and the fucking currency and the languages. Oh, I've done that. Literally, there was a book I was working on. I started getting into the currency. I was like, I've gotten too deep. I need to step back. I need to step back. So what I wanted to do is use real places that exist in our galaxy. And that's what I did with Kepler 452b, the planet Wolf 1061c, which is a real place. It's stuck in tidal lock.

[00:24:17] So one side's burning hot 24-7, 365. The other side's freezing dark cold. And there are planets like this that exist in our galaxy. And that's a real one that I use. And then the black hole, the giant annihilator, that's a real black hole. It's the real name of a real place in our galaxy. Some scientists really know how to name things. Yeah, that's pretty cool name. I mean, to be the guy to name it, the annihilator? Some people are like the annihilator. Other people are like, Kepler 452. Yeah.

[00:24:44] So like, one of the reasons I loved Marvel as a kid is they were using real places, right? It was like New York, San Francisco, LA. And then you read the DC books and it's all like made up places, right? And so I wanted to go the Marvel route and let's use real places, real planets, real systems of planets, real black holes. And that made the lift a lot less for me. I didn't have to invent new things from scratch, right? I just used real places.

[00:25:12] And so, yeah, that's kind of my MO when I make books. I don't want to... You know, when you're talking about making your book, right? I'm curious. We ask a lot of creators, you know, they're kind of sometimes we have other creators that listen to the show, right? And I love the fact that we get some of these questions. But, you know, when you've hit like... Let's say you hit a wall, right? Or you hit like, man, I can't fucking think of the next thing to do. What is your thing to kind of spark that next movement or that like, oh shit, break the writer's block. Or like that helps you motivate you to get something going.

[00:25:42] Like, what is your thing to get you going? Is it music? Is it watching a movie? Some people say they go exercise. What's your thing that pops you off and gets you going again? I tend not to write the thing until I've marinated it in my head for like years. And usually by then I have got it pretty well figured out. But even then, even after I've got it locked in and I like, I actually started writing something the other day. I know that as I write, I'm going to get more inspirations when I'm out running and jogging.

[00:26:11] And that's kind of like my meditation, right? Ideas will come in. I might have a dream that might have something in it that inspires me. But yes, music is a huge, like a muse or a guide subconsciously. So when I'm writing, I put my cans on. And for the volume one, I listened to a lot of interstellar, like a lot. And subconsciously, right? That kind of seeped into the story. And so, yeah, music's a big thing.

[00:26:40] But like you said, even just going out and running and just clearing my mind, it allows things to come in because there's no clutter, right? It's quiet, it's peaceful, and things can come in. I could get a Daft Punk vibe from it. I could see that. Oh, yeah. I love Daft Punk. Amazing. Amazing. I mean, Omar, I know I want to just thank you, man, because like I know, no chagrin here. No, no, no, no, not pushing that, not just kind of blowing you up. I really enjoyed the book. I think there's a lot to it.

[00:27:10] And the fact that you took the care, like, with it to really incorporate, you know, a wholehearted story with the sci-fi still being there. Very, very thick in sci-fi, by the way. There's still action in this book. There's still a lot of heart in this book. And it really gives you nods to all those things I grew up with as a kid. So I really appreciate it. And especially since I got a kid on my own, man, that is a hard time kind of just going through that. And hey, you got to check this out. He loves sci-fi. Let's give it a shot. And Primos, you know, I want to just guys to go support Omar. Go look up the book on Amazon.

[00:27:39] Major Tomas, it's out there. Go read it, review it, and share it, Primos. Definitely. Omar, where can everybody find you? Where can we support you and what you're doing, man, in your mission? All right. My handle's right there, omorales81. That's good for any platform, anywhere. You know, I'm on everything, you know, with that handle. Easy to find. I have a website, theforcemedia.com. So if there's Metroid or Star Wars fans out there, come get some free comics on my website.

[00:28:09] I'm going to be at Cape and Cowl Con this Sunday. That's a local shop here in Oakland. They're putting on an outdoor comic show in Alameda at a... I love when local shops do that. I love it. Yeah, yeah. I've done a few here in Austin. It's always fun. Yeah, they have Staple in Austin, don't they? Yeah, we have Staple. It's a big one for indie creators like yourself. You need to come by Austin sometime. I would love to come to Austin.

[00:28:33] In fact, Professor Latinx is getting me to come out there in March for his show, the BIPOC. BIPOC Pop. Yeah, BIPOC Pop. We've done that every year. Yep, we go to that too. It's a blast, man. Yeah, awesome. I'll look forward to seeing you guys there. And a little secret here.

[00:28:50] If, and it's not guaranteed, but if Major Tomas comes out in print, Professor Latinx wrote a four-page or three-page reflection on Latinx futurism that's going to appear in the back of the book along with the teacher's guide and some other extra stuff that you do not get in the digital version. There's no announcement on that. There's no timeline. So it's just a big if at this point. If it happens. So those of you guys listening right now, this was not technically an announcement. So get that idea out of here.

[00:29:19] This is a theory, a theory, in theory, if it happens. Well, I had to prepare two versions of the book. Hypothesize. And just in case that, you know, one of the print publishers picks it up, because what Comixologies does is they sublease their original titles to one of three publishers. So you've got a one in three chance of somebody picking it up and getting into stores. So anticipating that I had to prepare two different files. So for the print file, I put a lot of extra stuff in there, even beyond what's in there now.

[00:29:46] And one of them is this reflection on Latinx futurism by Professor Latinx, who did a fantastic job with it. It's an amazing read. But outside of Cape and Cowl Con this weekend, I'm going to be at New York Comic Con in October, right around my birthday. So that's going to be cool and fun to be on. Happy birthday. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So, yeah, if anyone happens to be listening, that's going to be at New York Comic Con, come by the Comixology booth.

[00:30:15] We're going to have creators there signing and giving posters and things away. I had a ton of fun at Comix Con, hanging out at the Comixology booth, and I did some panels. And so, yeah, man, I'm around. I'm not hard to find. No promises, but there could be Albert III cosplay out there. You never know, right? Oh, yeah. A mechanical chimp. You know, you never know. That would be amazing. You know, just don't hold your breath. You never know. We can't confirm or deny, Primos. But Primos, Omar, I want to thank you again for coming on the show. Definitely, man.

[00:30:43] Let's go give Omar a follow. Check out his work. Primos, we have Cinco Loro coming up here after the break. And of course, stay tuned. See you soon. And we're back. Primos, back. Thanks again for hanging with us here.

[00:31:11] Thanks again for Cinco Loro playing the greatest, greatest, greatest tunes. Primos, I've been reading a lot. I don't know if you've noticed, but I've been going to a lot of comic book shops. You can read. I've been reading sometimes, you know. All right, fair enough. It helps because they're comic books. They're more pictures than words, you know. Honestly. I can read BAM, Kablammo, Womp, Oop, Oop, I don't know, Oomph. I don't know how to... Okay, so if you're going to get into onomatopoeia, you need to check out the Incredible Hercules series by, I think it was Greg Pack?

[00:31:41] It was a while back. It is nuts. It has some of the best onomatopoeia ever. There's a point where Thor is fighting Hercules, grabs him by the nipples and turns, and literally the sound effect is purple nipple. I thought it would be like, squeak? Nope. There's a part where they hit a giant god right between the legs, and the sound effect is nutcrack. Nice. At a certain point, I guess you did that literally it sounds like what it is, right?

[00:32:09] That's what onomatopoeia is. Blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, Primos, you know, I wanted to talk about a comic book that I just got into here. Well, actually, to be fair, giving credit to the editor here, James the editor, he stumbled upon us at the comic book shop. And he bought a book, son, and this is where I've learned so far, right? Everybody gives me different advice on, hey, how do you pick your next comic book? How do you pick your next series? What have you. Some go, the cover grabs me, man.

[00:32:39] As soon as the cover, boom, that's it for me. Or some just, you know, they recognize the font they use or just something catches their eye about it, right? Point is, the art caught my son's eye. Picked it up. There was something that made you look into the eyes. Literally, look into the eyes, right? So the book is called Look Into My Eyes from Mad Cave. The reason I even, like, you know, there's tons of great stuff out there, right? Hands down, especially indie stuff.

[00:33:04] But my son took an hour, hour and a half reading this comic book. And then I said, why, hey, what's this so good? And he's like, there's a lot to it, he goes. And I go, what do you mean? He goes, I'll explain when I'm done. And I go, so you're not done yet? So point is, the next day, I tell you, so what was the book about? And he tells me that this book, and Kevin, I don't know how to call it, because he used the word gimmick. I like to look at it as it's a cool add-on maybe.

[00:33:34] Well, explain. So what it is, it's in the story itself, and I'll get into the actual plot. But what the story does is, there is a social media app called Knock Knock that is taking over this small town. That sounds vaguely like something else. Whatever, man. It's a unique thing, you know? Okay, fair enough. We don't borrow from the real world here. But point is, it's called Knock Knock, and it's social media. And you see all the teens are using it, like anybody would, right?

[00:34:03] And in the comic book, the first few ads you get, you know how you get ad pages? Yeah. Are for the Knock Knock app. And there's a QR code you have to copy with your phone, and it'll shoot you over to a web-based version of Knock Knock. And you can actually basically just like creep on people's profiles. You're literally everybody, like you're literally going to like the main character, RJ. She, like her profile, she didn't want to start one, but she started one because all the kids are on it.

[00:34:33] And I assume all pictures are like drawn and stuff like by the artists and everything. Yes, all the social media is drawn by them. Everything from their conversations. It's like you're reading all their interactions, all their likes. It's all text-based, kind of like X or Twitter, you know, or Blue Sky, but there's images as well. And what ends up happening plot-wise, this small town exists on an island. And this island is really removed from like the rest of the world, and there's no real internet, no real apps like this.

[00:35:00] Because our main character actually wrote zines and handed them out at school. But as soon as this application started and this corporation came in and gave them free internet, and this social media app, everybody jumped in on it to where she had to basically start a podcast. Okay? You know, that's what you do. She started a podcast and started putting her stuff out there. Wait, time out, time out. Do people even listen to podcasts anymore? They watch them now. Okay, fair enough. Okay.

[00:35:27] So you're basically, you haven't even gotten to much of the plot yet, but you've already got immersed. Not yet. You've already got me the idea that there's an immersive world for a comic book. And I want to pause on that for a second because I know nothing about this book. I've not read it yet. This makes me think, surface level right now, of Watchmen. And the reason I say that is because Alan Moore, when he put that book together with, you know, the idea was, what they've given us, the idea was that it was going to be something that you could only do as a comic book.

[00:35:55] So like each chapter is a comic book, but then at the end of each chapter, there'd be stuff like magazine clippings, or there'd be like a file for the police department or whatever. And the idea here is like, yeah, there's been this kind of like social media thing since before the word social media existed with like Blair Witch Project, for example. Yeah. But the idea that you could take this comic book and then have other layers for it that you can only get because it's a comic book where the artists can, you know, draw the characters doing other things. They can write the inner thoughts.

[00:36:24] The writers can write the inner thoughts of the characters online. It does give this kind of meta-textuality to it. So I kind of like this. So, all right. So, okay. Got the premise. Got this world. What is it? We have this cool mechanic, I guess is the best way to say it, right? Where you can dive into the social media world online. The girls, RJ, her main character is her zine. She published it online at a certain point. She basically scans images, gets them online so you can keep up with that.

[00:36:53] So, and even within the zine, there's a link that you can go to another page. Like there's so many layers to this world building as we talked about with Omar. Like, you know, maybe it's something that's a little lost in the weeds, if you will. But it lends itself to where you can't just sit down and go through this book, this 15 minutes and you're done. You are literally have your phone with you and you have to go through it. Like it's a tool to help kind of just supplement the main story. And here's the plot.

[00:37:22] The plot is that a young lady goes missing at a high school party. And she, the last time she was seen was inside a restroom with no windows. Oh, restroom. When the doors open. For some reason I heard of a restroom. It's like a very small, maybe a restroom. Very small, like at a party, like a club, what have you. Yeah. She was in this room.

[00:37:44] And people were basically spamming her like hate stuff online because there was like some social media backlash between her and some other girls drama. But as soon as like the party was over, she was nowhere to be found. And all that was found in that restroom was like this black, like sludge. And slowly this like black sludge is actually also all over the town. And the town started to start like kind of like we see that this creeping tar thing is kind of slowly seeping through the town.

[00:38:14] And at first, when I started reading the book, I'm thinking, oh, this is just a symbolic item, like a machine to move the story forward. But the actual residents of the town noticed this sludge and the sludge itself is kind of almost like moving. So there's something there like horror, something kind of like grimy and scary. But RJ is becomes the town's first like podcast investigator of this girl missing.

[00:38:43] So because there are no podcasts, she makes a podcast about finding out what happened to this girl. And then she starts airing people's dirty laundry, if you will, via social media. And the artwork's really good. The character is really quippy, really smart. She's really anti technology. But someone just literally gives her like an old cell phone say, hey, this is this is the most basic thing you can use to get online. This is how you can get your zines read.

[00:39:10] And because you follow along as a reader with your phone, you see a lot more in depth to her personal journals online that she puts up there, like her Tumblr, her thoughts from her artwork. And everybody in town is connected somehow. Somebody knows something or I should say everybody knows something, yet she has to piece them all together. So it's called Look Into My Eyes. And it's from Mad Cave. Issue one is out. I spoke with the creator, Rubina, he's from Spain.

[00:39:39] And I asked him, hey, your first issue came out in July. Issue two doesn't come out till September. And he's like, it takes a lot to get this done how I want it to get done. So there's a lot of thought that goes into this. And I'm really excited to see where it takes us because I didn't expect to get sucked in as I have. So I really recommend Look Into My Eyes. I give Kevin the link there and we'll share some images on screen.

[00:40:02] Honestly, you are drawing me in with the description because I was just saying the other day, I've been reading a lot of Marvel lately, but I need to read more indie. I miss it. I used to read a lot of indie every month and I just haven't had the time lately, honestly. And I kind of started doing that. This one looks really good. Indie is fun for me, man. But don't get me wrong. I'm excited for future events coming out. I mean, DC KO is coming out November. They're doing their all-in initiative with DC. So I'm excited for that. But I've been really gravitating towards Indies.

[00:40:30] And so it's cool that me and my son can kind of like bond with this one. And it's a teenage story and it kind of touches on stuff that he's dealing with, you know, as other kids and what nowadays, right? You're a teacher. You see this kind of thing happen here and there. Rumors are spread and gossip and, you know, whatever. But the fact that it also is scary because this is an island. Remember, never had this before. As soon as it was introduced, it was weaponized, you know? And so I dig the energy behind it. It's dark. It's like horror.

[00:41:01] I went to Matt Kibbs website. I have a question for you, Mr. Kevin Garcia, and you probably know the answer. Genres for this labeled crime and mystery, horror, and something I've never read or I've seen. Saddle Stitch. What is Saddle Stitch? It's how you print a comic. Like, this is square bound. Okay. This is Saddle Stitch. That's what that is.

[00:41:30] As a genre? I don't know. It literally says horror, crime, and Saddle Stitch. I don't know if that's just a thing now? Are you sure it doesn't mean that's how it was printed? Horror, crime and mystery, Saddle Stitch, and then it says general. Look at the link I gave you. Yeah, yeah. Okay.

[00:41:57] Because that is a printing term. So what's the difference, Mr. Garcia? Well, I mean, again, Saddle Stitch is what you were just talking with our guests a minute ago about making sure you have the correct number of pages. And that's a big thing that trips up a lot of first time creators. If you don't have a multiple of four or multiple of eight, depending on how you're printing, you can't have something like this. You know, and that's the Saddle Stitch. Oh. It's cheaper for printing.

[00:42:24] This is perfect bound or square bound, and that is more expensive for printing, but good for a trade. So I think they just meant to say that is how it is printed, but it's weird that they would throw it in with the genres. Interesting. I don't know. I thought it was some weird new term that I'm like, I've never heard that. Let's make it that. Okay. What's the Saddle Stitch genre? So Saddle Stitch is going to be when you have cosmic horror, but you put it within the same world as teenage angst. Done. Put a, put a, coin it.

[00:42:55] Aster, coin it. There you go. Put a staple in the middle. It's ready to go. There you go. Kevin Garcia, everybody. KevinGarcia.com. Well, look, since you're talking about a book you read recently, I would like to talk about some books that I need to read. Does that count? Okay. Okay. Cause I've been to, I've been to a bunch of events lately and I've been talking to creators and yet I have not had a chance to pick up and read their books. For example, I talked with Sean Chen a while back at a greater Austin comic-con and we did a little bit of a book exchange and he gave me wingman here, which is, you know, we were

[00:43:25] talking about how you can't really do, you know, fanfic. Like this is essentially a fanfic of Ingvar Bergman's seventh seal, which is, if you ever see, you know, the idea of somebody playing chess with death in order to get out of it, that was from the movie. And he basically has those characters in the modern day with smartphones. I know from Bill and Ted's bogus adventure, but hey. But the point is, it's like, I, as soon as he told me about it, I was like, I need to read this. This is just amazing. Oh, it's cool. Art's awesome.

[00:43:54] Yeah, of course. Well, I mean, obviously those guys who don't know Sean Chen, he basically, he's done a lot of stuff in comics for, for since the nineties. The biggest, biggest thing that as I first really discovered him was when Marvel did the heroes reborn and then started over again with heroes return and kind of did this renaissance of Marvel. He was the one who kind of did the visuals for Iron Man. He basically set Iron Man on his course before the movie came out. Wow. Yeah. He's also done a lot of stuff with Wolverine and other characters. Let's see. Also this guy, you may have heard of, uh, Mickey Ramirez.

[00:44:25] I finally have a copy of Mega Jaguar. Which we've talked about and the really cool logo, but I finally have a copy. So I finally get a chance to read it with all the Kaiju madness and I'm really looking forward to it. Uh, what else I got here? Somebody else you may have heard of, um, David Bowles. Hey, I know that guy. Yeah. This is a book. It is the tales of feathered serpent. It is. It's a graphic novel made by David and his daughter together. She does the art.

[00:44:50] He does the writing and they're all inspired by real legends and stories from Mesoamerica. This one I think is focused around the hero twins of the Pope of a, I have been wanting to read this forever. I got to see him at the Texas Latino comic-con recently. And so I picked that up. Same with Mickey. Um, also got a chance to see a friend of mine, Roberto, uh, Rivera Padro, who has not been on our show yet, but needs to be on. Let's talk about Roberto. Roberto, man, he is so busy.

[00:45:20] He is so busy. As soon as I met the guy, I was like, you are going to be blowing up soon. And he's like, ah, no, no. And then now he's everywhere. Uh, yeah, he's so busy. But then we did talk. Rx. I know we talked and we were like, Hey man, I'm going to come on the show. And I did email his, uh, his, uh, manager. So we're hoping to get back soon. His handler, you know? And then, uh, this past weekend, I was at comic, uh, sorry, at Colossal Con here in the Austin area, Round Rock. And I met a guy, Isaac Lee Edwards Jr.

[00:45:48] Who I'd been just started following on Tik Tok. Cause I, I like his stuff. Uh, I don't really, I don't know the comic yet. It basically premises alien lands on earth, a super strong flies, all that kind of good stuff. Um, and in the description I saw online, it said, and happens to be black. And that's the thing is like, I had this conversation with somebody the other day about, you know, Mexican Superman we're talking about the other day. And in one of the stories DC put out the, the ship from Krypton lands across the border.

[00:46:16] And you have these, this migrant family racing and somebody asked me, yeah, but did he look Mexican? And I'm like, a, what does that mean? Um, but B in my head cannon, I'm like, if Kal-El landed in Japan, I feel like people would just think he was Japanese. They would not have come up, but like, why does the default for aliens have to be a white guy? And so this guy has his own issues with, you know, humans. Oh, those guys. So yeah, exactly. Exactly. Those people in their hoods. Um, it's a trip, but.

[00:46:44] I got a stack that I need to read. You need to read. It is where it's at. It is where it's at. It is where it's at. It is where it's at. Don't get me wrong. There's a place for the big ones. Right. But there's, there's, there's something about the indie that's just so punk rock, you know, that's being used a lot now. Right. But not only is it being used a lot, but it's being used appropriately. Cause I feel like that term punk got co-opted for a long time and it's become more to actually standing up for people and believing what you believe in, despite what others tell you to believe. Yeah, definitely.

[00:47:14] Primo's cause I don't know. I feel like without the indie creators we know, um, and it would just be like a hypocrite for me to just go back and go, Oh, I only read DC and Marvel. I'm sorry. I don't know. Like, dude, I, I eat this stuff. I consume it because I feel I get like we talked about Omar, right? Like I get to see him in that book and I get to see people in their work. Everybody you mentioned and people on the show, I see them in their work.

[00:47:42] We should have all these people on the show either for the first time or again. Um, you know, when you say that, you know, giving indies a chance, it's reminding me, um, when I started, um, I was gonna say reading comics, but I guess buying my own comics and ordering them from the comic book store myself. Um, they used to be the previews book, which is this big square bound, this big perfect bound, uh, book, uh, which was all the comics that were coming out in the next three months. Right. And, uh, you know, there was the Marvel section and there was the DC section, the dark horse section and the image section, depending on what year you were looking at it, whatever.

[00:48:12] But the back of the book was the green indie section. And so every month I would order, you know, mostly Marvel and maybe one or two image books, uh, maybe one or two DC books, but I would always make an effort of buying at least one book from the green section every time. And if it hooked me, I'd keep getting it, you know? Um, and, and I had a lot of good gems that way. Some that, you know, didn't really last. Some that I loved, uh, there's one called, uh, gun foo, which is exactly what it sounds like.

[00:48:45] I see that one. Yeah. Um, the, uh, one that I, I cannot talk highly enough about, uh, that I, I, I've, I've found almost all the copies that I had. I think I'm still missing a couple of issues that I in storage somewhere. It's called the seven guys of justice. And it's, it's basically just the tick mentality, but on the justice league, you know, as the main character, but it's so good. Like I keep cracking up about it. Like every issue I was laughing out loud reading it.

[00:49:12] And, and yet, you know, it's from an era where it's pre web comics. So like, I mean, there were some web comics in the nineties, but they weren't what they were later on. It was the web tunes yet. Um, it was before indie could really take off and, and, and start, you know, marketing themselves. So like, I, it just kind of floundered there, which is ironic. Cause one of the characters is a fish. Um, but okay. I just, I want to describe a scene for you. Okay. Okay. So, uh, there's this, this sorcerer floating, you know, he's got his,

[00:49:42] he's got his legs crossed, he's got his hands up. He's doing his whole meditation pose floating in the air in this apartment. And he's like concentrating and concentrating. He's like, I still feel it. Move that box. And you see this woman looking really annoyed. She moves it still, still, um, that plant, it needs to be three feet to the left. Fine. She moves it. So this guy is Dr. Floor plan, the master of feng shui. Um, and I just love that concept. But she's looking at him. She's really annoyed.

[00:50:12] And his costume, by the way, looks like Dr. Strange's nineties costume. We had a full cost to mask, except instead of like these flaming symbols, it's a floor plan. And I love it. Um, and, uh, and she's talking to him. She's really annoyed. Like, are you going to leave my apartment? He's like, I sense death is coming here. Uh, move that mirror. It's aiming the wrong way. She's like, still death is coming to this room. I sense it. It is coming to this. Bam. There's a shot through the window. It's him in the head. He falls down dead. She's like, he was right.

[00:50:41] And I just, I was cracking up at that. Like, it's, it's so stupid. And I love it. It is such a, you can, you can do that in indie books, right? We love, we talk about our friends, you know, like there's a place for comedy in India is a place for horror and indie. And, and I love, that's where we can get our, our, our, our, the most out of it really when it comes to those stories, but nothing wrong with big books, right? The Kate books. I even have friends tell me, Hey, recommend a book. That's not the typical superhero book. And you kind of go down the path and mess around with the indie. Right. But it's where it's fun. I've actually been going to the dark side lately.

[00:51:11] I have been buying some DC comics on the regular for the first time. Hey, you should check out Primo's if you haven't resurrection man. There's a new run of resurrection man. He's like an older character. Yeah. Every, every run of that has been highly acclaimed, but I have been, when it comes to DC, I love their silver age stuff. So the, the main books I'm getting right now are the new versions of Supergirl and crypto. Oh yeah. Because they're in that, you're in that, you're in that love phase right now. Yeah.

[00:51:39] Well, I mean the Supergirl started coming out before the movie came out, but either way. Um, it's modern creators kind of putting this really heartfelt love letter to the sixties. Well, silver age really. Yeah. But while having a modern story and it's just really beautiful, beautiful comics. Although I will say with the Supergirl one, uh, the first issue and second issue got a lot of people really talking in that. The main antagonist is very thick. I'll put it that way.

[00:52:09] And, uh, people were loving her design a little bit too much for the villain. They were loving her way more than the main character for a bit. Um, but it's, it's, it's a really, really good book. It's really entertaining, very well done. And it has so many just nods and references to the, uh, my, somebody asked me earlier if I, if I know anything about DC comics and the area that I feel most confident about when it comes to DC is the silver age. So I bet, I bet, but Primos, you know, Kevin, it's a blast talking books with you. I've been doing some comic book visits. I've been visiting the local comic book shop here. Uh, I've started doing this whole idea. Like, you know what?

[00:52:39] I'm going to go shopping for comic books with comic book writers and creators. So Primos, if you're in the Dallas Fort Worth area and you want to go pick up some comic books on a $15 budget, hit me up. We'll make it happen. It'll be fun. Fun time. I did one with Rafael Flores recently at Camazos comics. Uh, it was a blast checking him out. He's checking out the store and what do you recommend it for the Primos. But, uh, Kevin Garcia, do you have anything coming up that you want to announce while we're on the here closing up the show? Um, I do have got some stuff coming up.

[00:53:08] We'll talk more about it later, but I've got Mexamerican coming up. Um, Casa is coming up soon in San Antonio. I probably won't be able to make it this year, but I know a lot of my friends are and they're gonna have some big creators there as well. So it's really cool. One thing I like about Casa is that a lot of the big conventions will have like celebrity actors and stuff like that, which is cool. Don't get me wrong. I love working with these guys. It's always fun. But Casa brings in celebrity comic book creators, which I think is really cool. So they've been bringing in.

[00:53:34] It's a smaller convention, but they always make sure to have some like big name people from the comic book industry there. So that's cool. And, and I got some more stuff coming up down the, down the pipe. I will say one I had coming up, which is called Mockingbird Lane was going to be in next month. And I was going to talk a lot about it. It's called Mockingbird Lane because it's being put on by the guy that played Eddie Munster back in the day, but factors out of their control and how to get moved. So now it's going to be probably in the spring, but either way, we're looking forward to it. Well, we'll keep an eye out.

[00:54:01] There's always stuff, you know, coming on the line, especially Primos. Just keep us in mind as well. Check out myprimospodcast.com. I want to thank all our listeners, all our viewers and always Primos. Remember, no matter where you're from, we're all Primos. Adios. Thank you for watching and listening to my Primos Podcast. My Primos Podcast is brought to you by My Primos Productions and Chicume.

[00:54:34] Our hosts this week were Kevin Garcia and Primo Freddy.

[00:54:41] Remember, follow us at My Primos Productions.