‘Baldo’ Invites ‘El Muerto’ to Day of the Dead Festivities

by Robert Greenberger on October 17th, 2008 at 3:41 am
Posted In: News

Starting October 27, Baldo will crossover with Javier Hernandez’s El Muerto for a week long event celebrating the Day of the Dead.

Baldo, a strip from Hector Cantu and Carlos Castellanos, features a Latin American middle class family living in America. The title character is a teenager who goes to school and works part-time at an auto parts store. He’s tormented by his brilliant activist younger sister and counseled by his loving father and grandmother.

Hernandez created El Muerto in 1998 and it features Diego de la Muerte, “who, while on his way to a Dia de los Muertos festival, is abducted by Aztec gods only to return to Earth a year later with supernatural powers.” Hernandez published the comic book erratically through the last decade only to suspend print in 2003 and has promised a digital incarnation. It ahs a devoted following and was featured in an award winning independent film starring Wilmer Valderrama.

According to Editor & Publisher, this is the third time Baldo, distributed to 225 papers across America, has featured a Latin American comic book character.  In 2005, the strip was visited by Richard Dominguez’s El Gato Negro, another independent comic book. Lela Lee’s Angry Little Girls! paid a visit the following year.

"The Day of the Dead is a special holiday for lots of Latinos and we thought this was a unique way for Baldo and his family to pray for and remember a special loved one in their lives," Cantu said.