Alexis E. Fajardo's Blog, page 5

REVIEW – Infodad & The Rise of El Cid

Infodad.com’s Family Focused Reviews gives Kid Beowulf: The Rise of El Cid a stellar 4-star review!

What is particularly important in these exemplary graphic novels is the way Fajardo uses the narrative form to re-tell, often in tremendously changed fashion, some of the great histories and legends of an increasingly dim past. Yes, he gives female characters greater strength, solidity and prominence than those legends did, and more than females had in medieval times; and yes, he emphasizes characters’ relationships and interrelationships for a 21st-century audience in part by having them use modern slang and have adventures that are as likely to be comic as serious (a self-aware pig named Hama continues to accompany Beowulf and Grendel and to have a small but significant role in some events). But some genuine thoughtfulness and real scholarship underlie everything Fajardo does.

You can read the full review here!

Celebrating Snoopy and the Eisner Award

This is some belated news, but worth posting all the same. As some may know, in my other life I am Senior Editor for the Charles M. Schulz Studio. This summer one of the books I co-edited, Celebrating Snoopy, won an Eisner Award for Best Archival Project, Comic Strips! The Eisners are often referred to as “the Oscars of comics” – they are named after the great cartoonist pioneer, Will Eisner and awarded every year at Comic-con International in San Diego. In the comics world getting nominated for an Eisner is a big deal and actually winning one is crazier still.

Celebrating Snoopy was a lovely, over-sized collection of the best of Snoopy through the fifty years of Peanuts. It was published by Andrews McMeel and put together through the hard work of my co-editor Dorothy O’Brien and her team at AMU and my team of assistant editors at the Schulz Studio. If you have the book Celebrating Peanuts 60 Years (which I edited and was published in 2010) then this new collection is the perfect bookend (literally and figuratively).

Here are a few photos from the Eisner Award ceremony which took place on Friday, July 20th. Congratulations again to everyone who helped put this book together and of course, to Charles M. Schulz for creating such a singular character like Snoopy.

The cover for the awards ceremony guide and cheat-sheet
Our book actually got two nominations and had stiff competition!
Back at the Schulz Studio with the award and my assistant editors. L to R: Jason Cooper, Donna Almendrala, Kat Efird, Denis St. John, and Creative Director Paige Braddock. In absentia, assistant editor Nomi Kane.
Me shortly after winning the award and still shell-shocked.
Loki, of course, knew our win was a lock.

Destreza – The Art of Spanish Fencing

A behind-the-scenes look at the graphic novel Kid Beowulf: The Rise of El Cid and the inclusion of the Spanish fencing form, Destreza.

REVIEW – HistoryComics.net

I was absolutely blown away while reading this engaging, historical, and fun graphic novel by Alexis E. Fajardo and I was already a big fan from the first two books in the Kid Beowulf series. This book is a self-contained story, but also adds to the ongoing saga of these two main characters. I found myself having to read this book with a computer at my side as I wanted to learn more about what was referenced in the story. This is what makes the book perfect for a classroom as there is so much to learn and it is presented in a highly engaging way. I kept putting in sticky notes with comments and moments that stuck out to me as a social studies teacher. The graphic novel would fit perfectly in a Language Arts or social studies classroom, either as a core text or part of a library.

…and that’s just part of a glowing review from comics scholar, teacher, and author Tim Smyth. Tim is the man behind Historycomics.net – an amazing online resource for teachers and librarians interested in bringing comics to their schools and libraries. I highly recommend you check it out.

Tim followed up his review of “The Rise of El Cid” with an interview too!

INTERVIEW – Beowulf & Storytelling

Recently I joined Beowulf translator, author, and podcaster, Nick Zacharewicz for a fun interview all about Beowulf and Storytelling. Nick does “A Blogger’s Beowulf” which has been a multi-year translation project online; not only does Nick translate the Old English poem but he provides some insightful commentary with each bit he translates. On the podcast we talked about Beowulf the epic poem, its scholarship, and how it’s inspired us in our work. Click the link above to hear it.

#30DaysofElCid

To get primed for its arrival August 7th, I’m doing a month long behind-the-scenes look at book two, Kid Beowulf: The Rise of El Cid.  I’ll be posting all sorts of fun tid-bits from the making of the graphic novel including: history, character bios, fun facts, videos, and whatever else comes to mind.  The posts will be available on my Instagram page and the Kid Beowulf Facebook page so be sure to follow the hashtag #30DaysofElCid on your favorite channel.

PREVIEW – The Rise of El Cid

The third adventure in the Kid Beowulf series, The Rise of El Cid, arrives next month! Below is a preview of the opening scene – this seven-page sneak peek picks up shortly after the events of book two, The Song of Roland. After helping their Uncle Holger and the rest of Charlemagne’s Peers vanquish Ganelon and the Saracens, Beowulf and Grendel become paladins in training…

I hope you enjoyed the preview. If you like to read more, The Rise of El Cid is currently running three days a week at GoComics and you can pick up the story here. You can also pre-order the book here.  And if you are a long-time reader and have read the black and white Kickstarter edition of The Rise of El Cid, then please consider writing a review either at Amazon or Good Reads and tell your friends about it!

PREVIEW – Lay of the Last Survivor

A new story in the Kid Beowulf Eddas series: “Lay of the Last Survivor” debuts today as a digital-only exclusive at Comixology and Amazon Kindle.  Not too long ago I posted some behind-the-scenes process pages for this story, now the story is finished and I’m pleased with how it turned out (the colors by colorist Jose Flores are terrific). For continuity nerds, this story takes place before part two of book one, “The Blood-Bound Oath” and follows an early adventure of Beowulf and Grendel’s mother, Gertrude.

Long before she protected her sons, Beowulf and Grendel, Gertrude protected another…

Led by a brutal warrior, a crew of Viking raiders storms the winter coast of Daneland and takes no survivors.  When fifteen-year-old Gertrude stumbles upon their camp and finds a lone child among the dead she is compelled to get it to safety…or die trying.

Enjoy the six-page preview below, if you want to read more, I’ve been posting more pages on Instagram and you can download the full story today at Comixology and Amazon Kindle.

Download the rest of the story at Comixology and Amazon Kindle!

Lumacon Shop Talk 2018

This past weekend Lumacon kicked off the 2018 comic convention season for me. Based in Petaluma, California and put on my enthusiastic teachers, librarians, and students, Lumacon is the little comics-convention that could and a fun single-day event featuring local cartoonists, authors, and cosplayers. The genius of Lumacon is the organizers invite young amateur cartoonists to table alongside pros creating a very communal and inspiring event for all in attendance. There are cosplay parades, panels, and bake-sales!

Speaking of panels, I was on one with friend and fellow cartoonist, Brian Fies. The topic was “Inspiration vs. Perspiration” and the chat ranged from our influences to finding our style to a general “shop-talk.” It was moderated by one of the show’s key organizers Nathan Libecap and we even had a surprise mystery guest join us halfway through the panel. I recorded it and you can listen below – I missed the Nathan’s glowing introduction and the audio picks up just as Brian talks about this early start as a cartoonist. Brian also did a nice review of Lumacon at his own site with all sorts of good photos.

http://kidbeowulf.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Lumacon-2018.m4a

Kid Beowulf Eddas: Lay of the Last Survivor

I’ve got a new short story on the drawing board and wanted to give you guys a sneak peak. This continues my stand-alone, Kid Beowulf Eddas, short story series and focuses on Beowulf and Grendel’s mother, Gertrude.  The idea for the story came from the sketch above, where Gertrude comes across a village after a viking raid discovers an orphan child.  The rest of the story follows Gertrude as she tries to keep the baby safe from the raiders who come after her and the last survivor.

Astute readers will notice that the Gertrude in the sketch is older, post-birth of her twin sons.  In the original timeline of the script I figured this story would take place while Beowulf and Grendel were on their adventure in Spain.  But an interesting thing happened as I began to draw the story – Gertrude became younger, more sprightly and a little awkward in her movements: she morphed from the adult version of Gertrude into the teenage version of herself (who we see in part two of book one, “The Blood-Bound Oath”).  This change immediately felt better for the story since it put an untested Gertrude and the baby in more danger against the viking raiders and alludes to the nature of Gertrude being a natural mother figure.

I view the Kid Beowulf Eddas series as testing grounds for concepts I want to try that I may not necessarily want to tackle in a 200 page graphic novel.  For Paladin’s Tale I wanted to do a story with multiple narrators, in Lookin’ for Lingonberries, I wanted to do a light, comedic story.  For this story, which I titled “Lay of the Last Survivor,” I wanted to do a wordless story – aside from sound effects, all the storytelling is done through the pictures.

Some folks don’t like wordless comics (I think they assume they are getting cheated), but people forget that comics is a visual medium and good comic storytelling comes from panel-to-panel narrative; if you can understand the story without words then you don’t need the words to begin with. That was the challenge I posed to myself with this story.

Students of the epic poem Beowulf might be familiar with the title of this story too. “Lay of the Last Survivor” comes from the end of the Beowulf poem (lines 2211-25-15), when we learn about the dragon who is going to terrorize Beowulf’s homeland after a jeweled goblet has been stolen from his barrow.  Apparently that golden treasure-horde came from a long-lost tribe and was buried in a mound by the tribe’s last survivor.  We don’t know what killed off his people (war? famine? plague?) but the last survivor laments the loss of his people and how useless all the gold is when there is no one left to share it.  It’s a sad part of the poem that echoes the themes of melancholy, ring-giving, and the ephemeral nature of life in the hard world of war-tribes and cold landscapes that runs through Beowulf, all of which I hope comes through in this short story.

Keep a lookout for the finished story which will be available to read later this year.