Comic Book in the Works

I have been working on this comic book for a good part of the winter now. Most of the work has been to research the story and to learn how to make an actual comic book since this will be my first time ever making one. It’s been a steep learning curveand it’s been a wonderful challenge to make this book. The book is about the childhood of my father growing up on a Spanish Colony in Northern Colorado in the 1950′s. I’m also making the book more than a biography, it’s also a mystery with some adventure, a bit of history and mysticism that takes you back all the way to the time of Spanish Explorer Hernan Cortez and the fall of the Aztec Empire.

You can see the blog for the comic book project here: http://artpologistblog.wordpress.com/

Gipson School

This painting is inspired by the photo from the collection of Gabriel Lopez historian and writer of “White Gold Laborers”. It’s of The Gipson School in Greeley Colorado.

Monfort Feed Lot

The Spanish Colony in Greeley

Over the last month I’ve been doing research for this graphic novel about my father’s childhood growing up in a work colony in Greeley, Colorado. My goal is to make it look and feel like Colorado in the 1950′s.  I am scouring the internet and looking into books to find images to get a better  sense of  the history in this region. I’m looking at maps and trying to get a greater idea of what it was like in Northern Colorado during the middle of the twentieth century. I’m  also concerned with fashion and what buildings looked like to make the backdrop more authentic. Most of all I am interviewing my father and his family to document their story.

I did get a chance to contact a woman named Sarah L. Brooks a school teacher that hosts this wonderful little website about the history of Greeley.

I also read this great  book  called The White Gold Laborers by Jody and Gabriel Lopez.  This is a story of the Spanish Colony a private housing project built by The Great Western Sugar Company for Spanish/New Mexican/Mexican laborers to keep them from living in Anglo populated Greeley in the 1920′s.

The images of the  Stoop Laborers and the Colony house in this blog post are drawings I made from the photo illustrations in “The White Gold Laborers” to get a better idea of how the comic will look.