Comics don’t just happen. Artists will them from nothing. As you’ll hear from Henry Barajas and Rachel Merrill in this week’s podcast, comics arrive at your local comic book shop through tremendous persistence and imagination. The next time you cross your shop’s threshold, possibly to grab a copy of Barajas and Merrill’s Death to Pachuco, out now in trade paperback from Image Comics, take a moment to thank the makers. Each book on the rack is a tiny miracle.

In Death to Pachuco, Barajas and Merrill tap into history, detailing the 1943 Sleepy Lagoon Murder Trial and the Zoot Suit Riots. It’s a Chicano noir, heavily inspired by classic Hollywood tales, but springing from a perspective frequently silenced or ignored. Their private eye, Ricardo “Ricky” Tellez, fancies himself a Sherlock Holmes type, complete with a nearly debilitating drug addiction. He’s caught in the racial tensions boiling over during wartime Los Angeles, hunting for a killer, while navigating a femme fatale.

This week on the podcast, we chat with Barajas and Merrill about balancing fact and fiction, style and reality, and why humanity frequently allows fear steer its actions. We discuss the magnificent amount of will and persistence it took to materialize Death to Pachuco and how it feels to see it collected in trade paperback, finally.

Death to Pachuco is written and lettered by Henry Barajas, illustrated by Rachel Merrill, and colored by Lee Loughridge. The book featured several variant covers from folks like Sarah Gordon (see episode art), Tula Lotay, Ben Passmore, David Lapham, and others.

Make sure you're following Henry Barajas on BlueSky and Instagram, and Rachel Merrill on BlueSky and Instagram.

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