August 2009 – Written By Strong Ave. Studios Staff

Well, he is now in a book. Now they are both in a book. Anthony and the Amigoman story. Frederick Luis Aldama, an Arts and Humanities Distinguished Professor of English at the Ohio State University, asked Anthony for an interview a while back for a book he was writing on Latino comic books. He thought Amigoman - The Latin Avenger was something worth writing about. And now its a reality. Anthony and Amigoman are in the recently published book "Your Brain on Latino Comics" with 21 other artists and writers. "It's is an amazing collection of many amazing, hard working and creative people.", says Anthony.

Bits Taken from an interview by Rorotoko.com

"Your Brain on Latino Comics" is a critical study of Latino comics. But an important feature of it is the inclusion of twenty-one interviews with the actual author/artists of Latino comics. The book joins the theoretical apparatus with the actual practice and experience of the author/artists themselves.
I organized the book in this way to allow a deep engagement for those who are interested in this storytelling form a critical perspective as well as for those interested in an actual practice perspective. Moreover, what we know of Latino comics, and what we know about how our brains process visual and verbal information from panel to panel, both enrich our pleasure in the actual experience of comics – Latino comics and comics generally.

In Your Brain on Latino Comics I’m particularly interested in questions such as why author/artists do know that a bold faced word is louder than a non bold-faced word. Why do we imagine movement in the spaces (gutters) between the comics as well as within the panels proper? Why do we each have our own tastes in terms of certain styles of writing and drawing?

Your Brain on Latino Comics provides readers with an understanding of how comic books in general work to move us and to engage our critical faculties and imagination. It also opens our eyes to how authors of Latino comic books (and comic strips by the likes of Gus Arriola and Lalo Alcaraz) choose to tell stories in any number of genres and styles: from the superheroic to the domestic, to the bitingly political and satirical.
We see in such choices also how author/artists of Latino comics overturn preconceptions of Latinos—not only as represented in mainstream DC and Marvel comics since the first appearance of Firebird (Marvel) and El Dorado (DC) in the late 1970s, but also in the sense that Latinos in comics are much more than Spanglish-speaking, taco-eating, pre-Columbian-ancestrally connected figures. Just as their creators, they represent the full and rich range of human experience and personality types.

Your Brain on Latino Comics is the realization of my ambition: to offer a solid understanding of how Latino comic books work, as well as to give readers a firm grasp of the aspirations and goals that these author/artists set for themselves in the creating of comic books. This abundance of voices and takes on the craft should give readers a clear picture of the Latino comic book in the United States today.