Brown Gumshoe: An Interview with Henry Barajas on Creating Noir Comics

Comic book writer Henry Barajas tells stories centering Latine and Indigenous communities. First gaining popularity in the comics world with his La Voz de M.A.Y.O.: Tata Rambo, and later writing the Latine fantasy comic Helm Greycastle, Barajas’s newest project, Death to Pachuco, is a noir comic taking place in LA during the Zoot Suit Riots and the Sleepy Lagoon Murder. No stranger to writing about history (check out his Historias de Resistencia #1: Dolores Huerta and the Plight of the Farm Workers & Union Organizers and Historias de Resistencia #2: Blowouts the Sal Castro Story written for the New York City Department of Education and downloadable for free at Civics for All Comics Group ), Barajas’s latest story fictionalizes very real events through the eyes of Private Investigator Ricky Tellez. Barajas was a guest at BIPOC PoP 2026 where he moderated panels and facilitated a workshop discussion about his practice of writing comics based on history.

Samantha Ceballos: Tell me a little bit about your journey into comics. How did that happen?

Henry Barajas: Comics spoke to me in ways nothing else did. I also grew up in a time when there was a lot of speculation about comics being worth more than they were. My parents were caught up in that speculation and would buy boxes of comics, and I would appraise them. I don't think they realize I'd be reading them because my household wasn't very literate focused. So, I just loved reading them, and I would draw my own stuff. I got very lucky that a comic shop in Tucson, Arizona, Charlie's Comics gave me my first Comic Con badges in Phoenix and San Diego. That was the moment I realized this could be my world.

SC: Do you have a favorite con that you've been to?

HB: The 2019 Latino Comics Expo was a watershed moment in comics history. It tied the community together. You could see what was coming. I love BIPOC PoP because it encompasses not only Latino but Black and Brown, Indigenous, Asian, different people.

SC: Do you have a favorite creator or creators that you look to?

HB: David Lapham and Maria Lapham and their work with Stray Bullets, being independent and having made incredible crime comics. Those are the most important to me.

Berserk is a beautiful comic. And, seeing it continue after the creator’s death is extraordinary. Stray Bullets is always going to be the most important comic and then it goes Brian Michael Bendis, Ed Brubaker, and Sean Phillips. And Kelly Sue DeConnick is another creator that's had a big impact on me.

SC: Nice! You mentioned crime comics; can you talk about Death to Pachuco?

Death to Pachuco Cover Image

HB: Death to Pachuco is my love letter to LA—exposing one of its darkest moments, one that film, TV, and music have largely ignored.

“Death to Pachuco is my love letter to LA—exposing one of its darkest moments, one that film, TV, and music have largely ignored.”

But Death to Pachuco was a thrilling exercise in noir—working within the genre’s tropes while expanding them into territory that rarely features Latino, Black, and Brown characters and creators. Working with Rachel Merrill and Lee Loughridge and Will Dennis and all our cover artists and being able to craft a five-issue story that centers around the Zoot Suit Riot and the Sleepy Lagoon murder trial, I’m very happy we were able to land the plane on a complete story and give readers something that they've never seen before.

SC: Can you talk to me a little bit about how you approach historical material for comics. What was that like?

HB: My go-to is the library. It’s a physical space where I can access materials I can’t take home. It forces me to stay, focus, and work without distraction. I hit the LA libraries first, before I ever go online.

The internet is increasingly polluted with AI-generated content; even Google is compromised. So I sit in a library and open a book that’s been fact-checked, edited, and built with intention. Holding that information in my hands is irreplaceable.

“The internet is increasingly polluted with AI-generated content—even Google is compromised. So I sit in a library and open a book that’s been fact-checked, edited, and built with intention.”

I’ve been able to talk to people who were at these events, or who shaped them, and to visit the physical spaces, like the high school where the Sal Castro walkout started, a pivotal moment in Chicano history. Being able-bodied and having the means to travel to these places, to meet Dolores Huerta. That’s an education. I didn’t go to college, I don’t have a degree, but comics is my college. I get to learn through making them.

“I didn’t go to college, I don’t have a degree, but comics is my college. I get to learn through making them.”

SC: I noticed in Death to Pachuco, there's different quotes that you all put up, did you pick those?

HB: I did.

SC: Okay, what was that research process like?

HB: I treated them like a research paper—quote and citation both, right there on the back cover. I was reading newspapers at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC and I was able to access that information. Somebody gave me a Sleepy Lagoon case, what we would call a zine now, but what they called a booklet. That’s a $700 artifact most people will never access. So, I was able to get that from somebody that was attached to the National Cartoonist Society and use that as a frame of reference, but also including that in the trade paperback, so that people had more context to what the story is about.

And then through my research of Sal Castro, where he talks about being a child and shoe-shining and downtown Los Angeles and seeing pachucos get walloped by US sailors. That research fed directly into Death to Pachuco, but also, I think, to put his name out there. I don't think a lot of people know who Sal Castro. I know a lot of people don't know who Sal Castro is. So, I wanted to give him his flowers that way.

The other thing is because the comic is an actual artifact and the commerce of it is where the comic book seller has to physically turn the comic and scan the UPC barcode so they can give it to the customer, they were faced with a quote that was, you know, the first one says, “we have a race problem,” from Madam President Roosevelt. So it was intentional to make people look at it in a way and to just see the words.

SC: In the comic you write "now is not a good time to be a Mexican,” but then it's juxtaposed with, "now is a good time to be a Mexican," Can you talk about that?

Panel from Death to Pachuco

HB: Yeah, I bought the BBC masterclass that Alan Moore had created, and he talked about what is the first line of your book? and that's the first line from the protagonist, Ricky Tellez. “Now in a good time to be a Mexican.” To write it in such a way that dances in the mouth and that sounds cool and sounds like something you can say at any point in time. My friend J Gonzo pushed back: “there have to be lighter moments. It can’t always be a downer.” And I thought: yeah, now is a perfect time. I wanted the characters living, thriving, sharing a meal. Against all odds, the people who wanted to exterminate this culture lost. That’s the moment we get to sit with. In noir, the main characters don’t always win. And when they do, they’re usually in a personal hell. I wanted readers to feel something different. That was the point.

Panel from Death to Pachuco

“Against all odds, the people who wanted to exterminate this culture lost. That’s the moment we get to sit with.”

SC: I smiled because the first time I heard you present about this comic was at the CreArte Expo and I thought, “oh, I have to see this.” Then to see it as Ricky’s first line? Badass. Having read the comic now, I thought: Hell yeah, that was a power move.

HB: I appreciate that.

SC: Where do you envision Ricky? Where do you want him to go? 

HB: I want Ricky to be like Columbo: the Zoot Suit Riots is his first case, and then I want him to explore more cases every decade.

SC: Time travel?

HB: He’s a time liver. He's just gonna exist in 1950s LA and I have a story for that. And the 1960s with the civil rights movement, and the 1970s, and 1980s.

This is the first comic I’ve made that I want to become something else; something that lives in film and television. If an actor takes on Ricky today, he can do part two in ten years without de-aging. He grows old with Ricky. That’s an evergreen Philip Marlowe story.

Ricky’s last case lands in the ’80s. That’s forty years, Ricky in his 60s, the world changing around him, his methods changing with it.

The ending of Death to Pachuco

SC: I love that! What’s been your favorite project?

HB: Wow, that’s not fair. I think I will always be grateful for La Voz de M.A.Y.O. because without that, I wouldn't be where I am. Death to Pachuco is my favorite thing I’ve ever done, a culmination of ten years of growth since that first comic. I’ve lived enough to say something and mean it. But La Voz de M.A.Y.O. will always be a book I cherish; it’s a portrait of who I am as a person and as a comics maker.

SC: Can you talk more about collaboration. How does it work for you?

HB: Rachel Merrill believed in the project and in me enough to co-create, bringing her own family photography, her love of history, jazz, and film noir. I wouldn’t have found that in anybody else. And to have that experience and to travel the world with her and to share the story is something that I will cherish for the rest of my life. Lee Loughridge, being one of the greatest colorists of our time, who revolutionized digital coloring, who wrote the book on how to do it. Without him there, I think we'd have been set back a long time and to have such a professional name and career and color style to have that attach to our project just gave us more credence.

Digital detail in Death to Pachuco

Working with Will Dennis, someone who has the editorial depth I’ve always wanted in a collaborator, was a dream. Him taking calls to talk through the story, bringing in cover artists like Tula Lotay. Someone told me: “I saw Will Dennis is in your book. It must be good.” That’s the credibility he brings.

Every cover artist was someone I’d always wanted to work with. I treat every project like my last. If this is the final comic I make, I want it to say exactly what I think comics can be. Sweeney Boo, Sarah Gordon, Tula Lotay, David Lapham, Ben Passmore, Katie Skelly are all artists you don’t normally associate with this kind of book or this publisher. Gonzo’s issue 5 cover has taken on a life of its own. Open the cover credits and it’s always a Wu-Tang Clan of collaborators. I’m grateful to everyone, like Dani, who worked within my budget and still delivered stunning art.

“Open the cover credits and it’s always a Wu-Tang Clan of collaborators.”

Cover Art Beauty of Death to Pachuco

SC: The images stopped me. The colors and texture were unlike anything I’d been reading. The collaboration radiates on every page. Last question: anything you want folks to know?

HB: I just want people to pick up Death to Pachuco and enjoy it as a noir the way people are watching Guillermo Del Toro’s Frankenstein. It's not Mexican Frankenstein, it's Frankenstein. I hope people pick up Death to Pachuco and say, “Hey, this is noir.” It’s in Spanglish. It intentionally stops you to look things up in the way that if you were to watch Star Trek, you're not going to change the channel because you don't understand Vulcan. I hope people say, “hey, this is a noir and I can enjoy it for the genre.” And if anyone wants to extrapolate, whether it’s the themes, the characters, what it says about history, I hope people give us enough grace to understand that we’re just trying to tell a good noir.

“I hope people give us enough grace to understand that we’re just trying to tell a good noir.”

SC: So, what's next? What are you working on now?

HB: Right now, I’m not working on anything. I've never been in this position so, I'm excited to start the next project. I know what I'm gonna do, a fantasy horror series. It's just a matter of money and time. The biggest obstacle is raising enough funds to pay the talent I want, on time. I respect this as a craft and a job; and it’s hard to ask people to bring someone else’s vision to life without getting paid upfront.

Grab your copy of Death to Pachuco at your local comic shops or order the collected edition online. The collected edition is slated to be released March 18^th, 2026. Curious about what the story is about? Check out the first issue online!