Welcome to the first installment of the Nexus’ newest feature: Wednesday Webcomics!
I know, crazy! ;)
We have some really talented comics newcomers working on brand new exclusive webcomics, which will be posted on the Nexus each week. Kicking off our first week is Pedro Hernandez and his new ongoing series ‘Company Man‘.
About Company Man
A mysterious corporation subjects minority children to an experimental serum disguised as a common Flu inoculation, granting them superhuman abilities after a ten year gestation period.
Meet Nicholas Reyes, the latest unwilling “participant” and follow him as he discovers his new found abilities and who he is as a person while being forced into dangerous situations around the world.
The corporation has a plan, but are they trying to save the world or control it?
And what is Nicholas’ role in their grand scheme?
Company Man is an on-going weekly web series from writer / illustrator Pete Hernandez. Copyright 2009 Pedro Hernandez
Come back next Wednesday for the next chapter of Pedro Hernandez’s Company Man and the premiere of Aris Iliopoulos’ Pilgrem Blade!
About Pete Hernandez
Pete grew up in Brooklyn, New York in the 70’s surrounded by poverty, alcoholism, and crime. “The Projects” he grew up in for the first few years were a mixture of friends and foes and comics quickly became his refuge. There were no heroes on the streets so he sought them between the pages of Amazing Spider Man, Sgt Rock, The Hulk, Green Lantern, The X-Men, and Captain America comics.
At the age of five he was drawing on everything that ever remotely looked like a piece of paper much to the delight of his grandparents who are no longer with him but helped shape his desire to become a “Comico” (koh-mee-koh). A term his dearly departed grandfather used to use to describe what he hoped Pete would grow into, a comic artist.
His grandfather loved watching him draw his “munecos” and this fueled Pete’s journey into the world of fantasy, comics, and sci fi.
Moving around Brooklyn during his impressionable years introduced him to all kinds of characters, some good, some bad, and some ugly. His art talent was quickly discovered by the thugs of the area and he became the one thing they protected aside from their own turf. They wanted him to be the one who would graduate from the hood and go on to become something. Young men and women most people despised and called trash were the ones who kept Pete out of trouble, out of gangs, out of jail, and forced him to finish high school while battering him with the idea of college.
“I owe a lot of the fellas from East New York my life, in more ways than they’ll ever know.” He was quoted some time ago. “These guys were into everything from stealing cars to breaking legs and yet they saw my art, what I could do and how I did it and chose me as their symbol I guess. I was going to do what they believed they couldn’t…get out of the hood and be something and 35 years later I still keep in touch, whether I visit or call them on the phone. Nothing’s changed. The second I step back on the block the first question after ‘Wassup Pete’ is ‘Yo, you still drawing?’ And when I tell them I still am and couldn’t give it up they nod up at me with their chins, drag on their smokes and mumble ‘Ai’ght cool, cool.’ ”
Pete is visually handicapped, technically blind by government standards and it was suggested to him by a high school illustration teacher that because of his low vision he was taking on a career that would prove to be too difficult for him. Pete thanks this man as well.
“If he didn’t piss me off I might not have tried as hard as I have over the years to become the best artist I can be. I never leave clients disappointed and have worked for some top shelf places. Places I never thought would ever let me in the door much less hire me.”
Pete has been a freelancer for over a decade working professionally at places like Sotheby’s, Time Magazine, MTV, G3 Inc and so on.
“I took a long break from the comic scene and trying to break in back in 1990 when I was in college. I’d worked with this guy Brian Pullido on some ten pager while he was creating something called Evil Ernie and Lady Death. We did this goofy little thing called The Kid, but I chose finishing college over comics and blew the chance. The rumor mill in the comic scene scared me away from the industry for a long, long time. I’d heard all about the nepotism and the racism and figured f**k it, who needs that? I went into graphics and just made money.”
But it wasn’t enough in the long run he goes on to say.
“After seventeen plus years of slagging away in the graphics mines you get tired of just creating work for other people. The money comes and goes and its good when it’s there but when it’s gone it sucks. It would suck less, I realized finally, if I had something of my own to constantly work on. I realized I needed something of my own…all my own. I’d been writing short stories and poems on the side for about 20 years on and off and have built up a small universe of my own that I finally found the balls to bring to life. I even spent a year in the print world as a columnist for some small hip hop mag and then onto Penguin Putnam as a junior editor / graphic designer. Fancy title for a guy who found typos in Stephen King books and setup out the indicia no one ever reads on the inside title page.”
But no matter how far I ran the dream of being in comics pursued me relentlessly. Finally I stopped running and turned to fight. My first fight begins with my COMPANY MAN series. It’s not detail crazy like some of the Marvel guys but it’s got heart, kicks some serious ass, and a look all its own and I owe a lot to the works of Frank Miller, Eduardo Risso, Orson Welles, William Gibson and…well the list can go on all day.”
“All my spare energy gets sucked into COMPANY MAN nowadays. Finally I have something I can call my own.”
You can view his work here and visit his site at www.goofeesnax.com or find him on Facebook.
