Calavera P.I. Blends Crime and Mexican Folklore in 1920's Hollywood
Check out an exclusive first look at Calavera P.I., an intriguing new supernatural noir series from Oni Press.
Oni Press recently unveiled an ambitious slate of graphic novel releases for 2025, but that doesn't mean there isn't anything new to look forward to in late 2024. Oni will close out the year by kicking off a promising new Chicano noir series called Calavera P.I.
IGN can exclusively reveal a first look at Calavera P.I. #1. Check it out in the slideshow gallery below:
Calavera P.I. is a four-issue limited series written and illustrated by Marco Finnegan (Morning Star), with variant covers by Ramón K Pérez, Esteban Sanchez, and J. Gonzo.
Here's Oni's official description for the new series:
1925. Hollywoodland. Juan Calavera is a private investigator whose undercover and daring escapades have made a name for himself in Tinseltown, especially among the Mexican communities, who have begun to see him as a hero. Which is why the young, aspiring newspaper reporter Maria Valdez has been following him around, getting the inside scoop as Calavera busts human trafficking rings and drinks into the early morning, until one fateful day he is visited by a mysterious and cloaked figure known only as . . . La Fantasma. Inspired by Mexican folklore and his love of detective stories, Marco Finnegan (Morning Star, 007, The Keeper) blends supernatural intrigue with pulp thrills in the four-issue Chicano noir Calavera.
"Calavera came about for two reasons," Finnegan tells IGN. "One: I love film noir/pulp novels and comic strips from the 1930s-50s. Those set in LA I love even more. There’s something about seeing the underside of a town you’re familiar with reflected at you in black and white or written about in newsprint."
Finnegan continues, "The second reason is that as I learned more about the history of Chicanos in Los Angeles, the more it nagged at me how none of this history was reflected in those noirs I loved. Occasionally Chandler would have a Mexican driver give Marlowe some hot tip, or the Continental Op would chase a Latino hood in a Hammett novel, but for the most part we were erased. So I imagined that if I lived during the 30s, what kind of hero would I want to represent me? Thus: Calavera."
According to Finnegan, the series really took shape when he was inspried to transform his protagonist into a hero of the people.
"Originally I wanted to do a straight PI story until I saw the drawings of José Guadalupe Posada," Finnegan says. "One in particular showed a Calavera in a hat having a drink. It was such a noir cliche that I started riffing on that, imagining a Calavera that would be the hero of the ignored and the erased during a time where Chicanos were being deported en masse, blamed for the country’s problems, and being treated as less than their white neighbors. Not much has changed. Calavera was made to be a pulp hero that reinstates the Chicano presence in LA and hopefully honors the pulp/noir heroes of the time in a fresh way."
Calavera P.I. #1 will be released on November 6, 2024.
In other comic books news, find out why DC's Absolute Universe has us so excited, and check out an exclusive preview of Aliens vs. Avengers.
Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.
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