Henry Barajas and Rachel Merrill on Death to Pachuco

About this episode

Henry Barajas and Rachel Merrill discuss their comic Death to Pachuco, exploring its historical context and creative process.

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…

People in this episode

Hosts: Brad Gullickson, Lisa Gullickson

Guests: Henry Barajas, Rachel Merrill

Topics covered

• comics
• Chicano noir
• history
• Sleepy Lagoon Murder Trial
• Zoot Suit Riots

Keywords

• Death to Pachuco
• Image Comics
• Ricardo Tellez
• drug addiction
• racial tensions

Mentioned in this episode

Products: Death to Pachuco

Books & works: Death to Pachuco, Sleepy Lagoon Murder Trial, CreatorxCreator, Superlatives, Beneath the Trees Where Nobody Sees at Meanwhile...Coffee, Comic Book Film Club, Paying For It

Places: Hollywood, Los Angeles, Herndon, Virginia, Winchester

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