The Texas Latino Comic Con Returns For Its 7th Run With (¡Pum Pam!) Lucha Libre Wrestling

It’s taken a couple of years for the Texas Latino Comic Con to get back to its full fighting strength since the COVID lockdowns. Now, this year’s event is going to end with a “Pow!” in the wrestling ring. 

“We were really hitting our stride in 2019,” says Hector Rodriguez, the creator of the El Peso Hero comic book series and founder of the convention. “Then COVID hit and we went digital for 2020 and 2021. Last year, we had a very soft reboot, a low-key reboot to get our bearings. This year we’re back in full force after COVID.”

This year’s seventh annual Texas Latino Comic Con on Saturday, Aug. 5, at the Latino Cultural Center, promises chances to meet with and hear panels from the biggest names in the Latino comic community and one of the most explosive endings to a comic convention of any type or size.

The day-long celebration of cultural comics will feature guests such as writer Henry Barajas, who penned  the graphic memoir La Voz De M.A.Y.O., the comic Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Splintered Fate and a special Marvel’s Avengers title released in 2021 that encouraged readers to get vaccinated against COVID.

The convention will also host a panel with prolific comic book artist and Emmy-winning creator Rafael Navarro, who has worked on shows such as Scooby Doo, Rugrats and Mucha Lucha and comics for Marvel, DC and Dark Horse, plus the Xeric Award-winning Sonambulo and the top-selling sci-fi Western Guns A’ Blazin’ that he co-created with Mike Wellman.

“We’re making sure we bring in everybody from the veterans to the ones making waves at the moment to the up-and-coming as well as bringing up new folks and creators who are just starting their first convention,” Rodriguez says. 

Robert Mercado, a Dallas writer for Lucha Comics behind titles such as Aski The Mayan Warrior and Azteq vs. The Prowler, has been going to the con ever since the first gathering. He says the convention has opened doors for him that helped him find his voice and style.

“It helps a lot because you can show your product to different types of people,” Mercado says. “Even if my comics are focused on luchadores, you can show your comics to different people and cultures and even from different countries. It’s a very, very good marketing tool to present your work.”

The convention also offers the talents of artists who create works outside of comic book pages, such as artist and illustrator Dianita Ceron, who paints fantasy portraits and is currently working on a special tarot deck for Llewellyn Worldwide. She says the convention has introduced her to people who took an interest in her work and helped her build more than just a career and connected to her a community of creators who celebrate her cultural contributions.

“Attending as an artist has been very helpful with meeting other artists and really connecting with other people in my community,” Ceron says. “It’s really awesome to see their faces when they meet artists from every branch of comics and illustration.”

The whole comic celebration will end with a lucha wrestling match between Rodriguez and Aski the Mayan Warrior to settle a challenge that’s been brewing for a year.

The grudge started during the cosplay contest at last year’s Texas Latino Comic Con when Aski interrupted the show to complain about the lack of lucha representation at the festivities. The feud boiled over to the point that he challenged Rodriguez to settle their beef in the ring.

“As an advocate of this wonderful sport that’s given me everything for the last 21 years, I had to make a point and think what is the best way to do it,” Aski said in a Facebook video with Mercado. “By stirring up controversy.”

Rodriguez says he is actually going to step in the ring and tango with the masked, muscular marvel. He’s been training for the entire year for a chance to take home the inaugural Texas Latino Comic Con Championship belt, even though he notes, “I could just give it to myself, but I don’t think that would be fair for him.”

“He sees me in an egotistical light that Texas Latino Comic Con is all about myself and all about El Peso Hero,” Rodriguez says. “He got a little envious and I got fed up and he wants me walking into his world … I’m making sure I represent the comics and the comic books and not just talk the talk but walk the walk.”

The tension isn’t limited to wrestling rivalries in the Latino comics community. Rodriguez says it’s growing all over the country and he hopes his convention can show the vibrant and important voices that his and other comics (and luchadores, even if he didn’t explicitly mention them) contribute to the culture and demonstrate that they own the stories and images they create and share with the world.

“Our stories matter, and we want to make sure that we forge our own way, especially when it comes down to narrative storytelling,” Rodriguez says. “Even now, with the advent of [artificial intelligence] in creative fields and the pressures from corporations to try and monetize our stories and feeling used at times that we’re the ones that are the driving force for our narratives.”