No bones about it, this book looks great. Meet Calavera, P.I., a new four-part series from Oni Press and cartoonist Marco Finnegan, which gives you the skeleton detective you never knew you wanted.
“Calavera, P.I. came about for two reasons,” said Finnegan via a press release provided to Comic Book Club. ”One, I love film noir/pulp novels and comic strips from the 1930’s & ’50s. Those set in LA I love even more. There’s something about seeing the underside of a town you’re familiar with reflected back at you in black and white or written about in newsprint.
“The second reason is that as I learned more about the history of Chicanos in Los Angeles, the more it nagged at me how none of this history was reflected in those noirs I loved. Occasionally [Raymond] Chandler would have a Mexican driver give Marlowe some hot tip, or the Continental Op would chase a Latino hood in a [Dashiell] Hammett novel, but for the most part, we were erased. So I thought, if I lived during the thirties, what kind of hero would I want to represent me? Thus: Calavera, P.I.”
As Finnegan teases, the book is about a private investigator who died a hero, and then on Dia de los Muertos, is resurrected to solve a mysterious kidnapping… And his own murder.
“Originally I wanted to do a straight P.I. story until I saw the drawings of José Guadalupe Posada,” Finnegan continued. “One in particular showed a Calavera in a hat having a drink. It was such a noir cliché that I started riffing on that, imagining a Calavera that could be the hero of the ignored and the erased during a time where Chicanos were being deported en masse, blamed for the country’s problems, and being treated as less than their white neighbors. Not much has changed. Calavera was made to be a pulp hero that reinstates the Chicano presence in LA and hopefully honors the pulp/noir heroes of the time in a fresh way.”
The first issue features covers by Finnegan, Ramón K. Pérez, Esteban Sánchez, and J. Gonzo. It hits comic book stores on November 6, 2024, but you can get a first look at the covers and interior pages, below. Click for larger versions!
Calavera, P.I. #1 Covers And Interior Pages: First Look
