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Art of the Dead, Tales of Tlalocan
from A Work of Art
by LASA Ezine
How Popular are Studio Ghibli
Movies?
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Graphics by Alannah Martinez
Amount of money made since release
Studio Ghibli is a Japanese animation studio that creates fictional animated movies. The movies cater to a variety of audiences around the world. It’s most popular movies are Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle, and Ponyo.
Spirited Away Howl’s Moving Castle Ponyo Castle in the Sky The Cat Returns
Kiki’s Service Totoro
395.8 Mil. 236 Mil. 204.8 Mil. 157 Mil. 65 Mil. 41.8 Mil. 41 Mil.
Art of the Dead, Tales of Tlālōcān.
By Nikolas Ueber Javier Hernandez himself.
Comic books have been around for ages, and with movies from Marvel and DC, they have found their way into mainstream media. However, many argue that they lack representation, and that the cast of superheroes needs to be more diverse. Javier Hernandez, a Latino comic book artist from Los Angeles, decided to take matters into his own hands by creating El Muerto: The Aztec Zombie. The story follows Diego through his adventures beyond death.
Hernandez got into comics at a very young age when his brother, Albert, gave him his old comic book collection, and he immediately fell in love with comics. The thing that pulled him into the medium at first was the art, which would get more into the actual story of the comic and get interested in the characters and the storyline. Hernandez said it is impossible to say which is more important, the art or the story. “The truth for me is there is no separating the two,” Hernandez said. “The writing and drawing are both part of the storytelling process. One doesn’t exist without the other.”
As Hernandez grew up, he got more and more of his friends into comics, and he never lost interest. Even into his adult years, he wanted to The first book in the El Muerto Series, Daze of The Dead. Art by Javier Hernandez
Wilmer Valderama
Javier Hernandez
Wilmer Valderama. He plays Diego in the El Muerto movie, The Dead One.
work on comics. However, Hernandez saw the lack of representation in the comic book industry, and he wanted to see this change. “Back in 1998 when I started I wanted to see more Latino characters represented in comics, so that led me to create El Muerto.” - Said Hernandez
El Muerto wasn’t his first idea, however. Initially, Hernandez had the idea of a group of Hispanic super In these images, you might notice Hernandez’s art style in the comic can be pretty surreal at times. Many panels have a lot going on and make you look at each detail to figure out what is happening. Hernandez is influenced by surreal artists such as Sal-
Diego De La Muerte
heroes. This was no easy task though, and as he developed his idea more and more, he realized that he just wanted to focus on one character. This also made it easier to create since this was his first comic. Over time, he revised his character, made the storyline, developed the other characters in the story, and in February of 1998, his comic was complete, and he published it under his own publishing company, Los Comex.
vador Dali. “Their strange and dreamlike imagery makes us look at things in different ways. We may not even fully understand what we’re looking at but we know the artist has a very clear intent with the imagery they picked.”
The reader can really see this inspiration in Hernan-
