Latino Cartoonists Team Up for Hispanic Heritage Month

    /24-7PressRelease/ - DALLAS, TX, September 14, 2005 - Creators of the nationally-syndicated comic strip "Baldo" and a well-known Latino comic book illustrator are turning out a special crime-fighting superhero during Hispanic Heritage Month.

The 11-day series, which runs from Sept. 19-29, has the comic strip's main character, 15-year-old Baldo Bermudez, exchanging his dreams about cars and girls for a new activity: finding adventure and fighting crime alongside famed comic book hero El Gato Negro (The Black Cat).

It's a collaboration of three of America's best known Latino cartoonists: Richard Dominguez, author and creator of El Gato Negro, Baldo's writer, Hector Cantú, and the strip's illustrator, Carlos Castellanos. Dominguez' version of Baldo will be chasing villains under the guise of a superhero. He'll drive a special souped-up Baldo-mobile and will even get his own costume.

The storyline begins in an everyday manner: While browsing through comics with his friend Cruz, Baldo wonders what it would be like to be a superhero. At that point the comic enters a fantasy sequence, with a transformed Baldo suddenly swept into the crime-fighting underworld of El Gato Negro.

Baldo is written by Cantú, an editor at Quick, The Dallas Morning News tabloid for younger readers, and drawn by Castellanos, an illustrator living in West Palm Beach, Fla. The idea for collaboration was hatched after Dominguez and Cantú befriended one another in Texas.

Dominguez began sketching "El Gato Negro" in college, founding Azteca Productions in 1993 to help launch the series. At a time when retailers were shunning independent comics in favor of majors, the first edition of "El Gato Negro" sold all 5,000 copies within two months, a feat one usually associates with comics giants like Marvel's X-Men comics. El Gato Negro returned this January after a seven-year hiatus.

Baldo, the first nationally syndicated comic strip featuring a Latino American family, is seen in more than 200 newspapers around the nation, including The Washington Post, The Miami Herald and The Philadelphia Inquirer. It is syndicated by Universal Press Syndicate, which also features editorial cartoons and a comic strip, "La Cucaracha," by Lalo Alcaraz and an advice column by three bilingual young professionals called "Consejos." More features are at: www.ucomics.com.

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