THE LESS I USE SOCIAL MEDIA THE MORE I ENJOY THE INTERNET

¡HOLAaaaa! ¿Qué onda con la cámara escondida?
ACÁ, con la novedad de que ya me "tagean" hasta en los tacos : /
No mamen, jajaja ¡ahi pa la otra mejor salúdenme ! /ᐠ_ ꞈ _ᐟ\

(=^`ᄌ´^=)ﾉ NEXT TIME YOU SEE ME don't be a creep and SAY HELLO !

🔥 THIS NOVEMBER i'll be at SHORT RUN in SEATTLE

🔥 Igual también andaré en otros eventos en CD. DE MÉXICO para fin de año
...ahi les aviso por instagram: @inechi__


༗ ᴥ ༗

:::NEW COMICS COMING SOON:::

࿋ ALIENATION 2019
*BULL-SHIT 〜 SCI-FI
Below you can see the NOT final cover... UGH i want to give up on this comic already. I've been working on it for 3 years and still need to fix so many stupid things about it. Help me if u want by sending yr opinion: hate or love or whatever,... say it NOW or never---> gatosaurio @ gmail



ALIENATION is coming out from Fantagraphics in the U.S. y ¡Autsaider en ESPAÑA! Que sacan unos libros reee chulos : ) Gracias a mi profesionalísimo "iberoamerican manager" Martín L.L. ♡ And yeah, Fanta is also kind of, a big deal, I GUESS !!! Thanks for hooking me up, Simon H. darling ♡ Also thanks to Dan from KILGORE BOOKS for your support this year ฅ(=✧ω✧=) jejej ♡


੦ CHERRY 2018
*ONE SHOT 〜 ROCK'N'ROLL Fantasy PORN
This comic is kinda intense and it's coming out for SPX. I'm not going but Dan will have copies : ) this one's for ADULTS ONLY!!




★ ☆ NEW MERCH COMING ALSO FOR NOV. 2018
$TAY TOONED FOR DAT ; )

♡

P.S.: If you're interested in AI and how it's all connected to the fucked up reality we are living in: READ THIS MAP / ESSAY ---> https://anatomyof.ai/ -It's probably one of the best things to come out in 2018 🔥

IT'S NOT ENOUGH

Reality broke down and fell on my head this year, but I'm finally coming out of the rubble. I was feeling really down for some months but instead of accepting that, my brain turned into survival mode and fueled me with manic energy. I didn't have much to hold on to, so like that Velvet Underground song says: "my life was saved by Rock'n'Roll." Now I'm back living in Mexico City, where I grew up listening to Rock'n'Roll with my dad (and learning english thanks to that!)
Anyway, these months that I was being battered down again and again by stupid situations and someone I used to love, I couldn't bear listening anything sad. All I wanted was RAW POWER... Rock'n'Roll has always been an escape from reality, and it now proved to be stronger and more effective for me than any of the drugs that inspired it. I started obsessing not just on the music, but on the whole scene and the real people behind it, in particular with 70's rock, the kind that is now labeled as "punk". And I put it that way because for the original "punks", what they were doing was just Rock'n'Roll. That's what always happens with movements: they start with people that are just there doing their thing, and then later on someone else comes in, gives it a name, packages it for mass consume, and as they say, "the rest is history." And history, just like life, isn't fair. It just remembers the "winners," it doesn't necessarily benefit the best, but those who were at the right place at the right time. That's what happened with the Heartbreakers, they were there first and made rock faster, tougher and better than anyone else in 1975, but faded into obscurity due to bad luck, or maybe because they were really just "born to lose." But perhaps it was for the best... Walter Lure (a surviving member of the band) mentions in an interview that if they had actually achieved the fame and money they were looking for, he would had probably died from an overdose a long time ago...


Waldo, tired of putting up with your shit!

The funny thing is how something that was born out of bored weirdos, junkies and other sorts of marginal bums, ended up being absorbed fully into the mainstream... so much that now even your mom wears a spiked choker! When freaks started dressing in that sort of trashy, punk way, they were shunned, ridiculed and persecuted, and now you can go to the mall and buy yourself a Ramones shirt and some torn jeans. At the beginning there wasn't even a uniform, it was just about getting creative and wearing whatever the fuck you wanted.
When Rock'n'Roll was born in the late 40s, straight out of our post-modern world. Camus had already written about suicide and alienation, Nietzsche had already talked about how god was dead, and still, the U.S.A. was booming with babies and consumerism. But even if the war was over, I think some of these kids knew there was something plastic and fake about that happiness even before learning how to read any of those authors. Then came more war and the hippies and we all know how that ended. All these "punk rockers" grew up in that time, the moment when youth culture started being a commodity. Before that, kids were pretty much like little adults, there wasn't much made specifically for them and many even worked regular jobs... which unfortunately, is still a reality today in many third world countries, but at least in the U.S.A., that was something that changed around the 20th century. So, these kids had every material need full filled, but they still had nothing to hold on to... kind of how I felt like living in Texas these past three years.
Jerry Nolan talks about watching Elvis for the first time when he was a kid and how it changed his life forever... Jerry was star struck with the performance, but the thing that amazed him the most was noticing there was a hole in one of Elvis' shoes. That was something revelating that would define the attitude of future Rock'n'Roll: If Elvis had a hole on his shoe, then any kid who worked hard enough on their style and music skills could pull off being a rock star. Elvis was so cool, that he just didn't give a shit about his shoe.


Unfortunately, Jerry couldn't get enough of those chinese rocks...

But what's the allure of being a rock star? Is it the money? The fame? The groupies? Yeah, I guess it's all of that, but I think there is something much deeper there too... something that has nothing to do with the material world. I think the real magic of Rock'n'Roll is that it is really all about living in the moment. I think about how these kids grew up watching some of the first colour cartoons... cartoons that even today remain as some of the best ever made. Yeah, I'm talking about early Disney, Tex Avery, Walter Lantz... and if you think about the characters that appear in them, many are actually pretty punk in attitude: Peter Pan, Donald Duck, Woody Woodpecker. These are characters that refuse to grow up and basically don't give a shit about anything but having their fun. And that's what Rock'n'Roll is all about. It's like nihilism, but with a rhythm you can dance to.


Donald Duck with spiky hair in 1947, two years before Richard Hell was even born

But what happens when you do, inevitably, grow up? When you have to deal with your hang over and your mess of a life? Just like death, reality is something no human, not even the most badass rock'n'roller can ever escape. And for some, it hit harder and faster than any of their own songs could... Pure Hell, a band that was in the NYC scene from the beginning, never got a record deal and has been almost forgotten thanks to the U.S.A.'s oldest friend: good ol' racism. As much as the original punk rockers despised their parents generation, they still had a hard time shaking off their values... it wasn't just that the system was classist, racist and misogynist, most punk rockers were, deep down, still also like that. It was all handled with humour and under the guise of satire, all done just to shock your mom, but it actually did affect the women and non-white musicians and enthusiasts that were part of the scene back then. I guess that's why punk and hard-core later took that extreme turn in the 80s to be super politically correct...



But no one can deny that the true origins of punk and rock and roll, come from African-American musicians like Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry. Asides from rock, I'm also a big fan of ska and the original dub and reaggae from the 60's and 70's, and it's really interesting to me how many of these musicians came from a rowdy life in the streets and cultural alienation, just like the original punks did. Artists like Lee Scratch Perry, who grew up in that post-modern world as the grandsons of slaves in Jamaica. Their parents had already been stripped off of most of their original African culture, but there was something that could never be taken: the music. John Dougan writes in Perry's biography that plantation masters tried to erase as much as they could of African culture from their slaves, but they noticed that if they didn't let them play their instruments and have their music, they worked slower. So they let them keep drumming. And that remained, and they held on to it, and then decades later, their grandsons rebuilt and reinvented their culture based on those beats, now with the unifying language of the colonizer their new instruments.
I'm not sure, but I don't think anyone sat down with the slaves and asked them how they felt being taken from their homes, beaten, raped and forced to work for others. There may not be many books about the experiences of the oppressed from their own perspective, but you can definitely learn a lot about it from their music. And as sad as many of those songs can be, there's something hopeful about them. You can feel how by acknowledging the hardships they've been through, they still celebrate life and really just want to dance and be in the moment.



Being in that dark, tortured state, I felt inspired to stay alive thanks to music. And also because I wanted to keep making things. There is something powerful and ritualistic about creation. Art modifies reality and how we perceive its dimensions: music is built on time and visual arts are a reconstruction of space. The craziest thing to me is that, if you focus hard enough, you really could do anything (the most amazing piece!) with just a blank piece of paper. Yet something pulls you to invoke a certain image, to use specific words. You start to make something from nothing, destroying reality and creating your own world. When you're done, you share it with others, and invite them into that state of mind. And then they take it in, and make it their own by projecting their own vision and interpretation unto it. It's the most real kind of magic I know of. And no matter how absurd life can be, that kinda magic is a really good reason to keep living it.



If you like my writing, I recently had two articles published that maybe you would find interesting: "So... what's the comics scene in Mexico like?" for But... is it Comic Aht? #1 as well as something about Suehiro Maruo (one of my favourite cartoonists!) for The Comics Journal #303.

2017

I'm not very good at taking pictures (that's why I draw!) but here's some from 2017 in México, Texas, Canada, Tennessee, Japan and California. I've been meaning to share these but it's kind of annoying to do it on social media because then each picture is subject to likes and comments and that's just... I don't know. I just want to share this without having to deal with all that bullshit, haha! Last year was cool. I did a bunch of stuff and finished my Alienation comic... which will be published by Fantagraphics in 2019! So that's what I'm going to be working on this year... editing that and making some new comics and merch and hopefully also other stuff that isn't related to comics or sitting down at all.

A post shared by Inés Estrada (@inechi__) on Oct 25, 2017 at 8:07am PDT

A post shared by Inés Estrada (@inechi__) on Aug 7, 2017 at 6:45pm PDT

A post shared by Inés Estrada (@inechi__) on Jun 30, 2017 at 10:19am PDT

aquí y ahora

A post shared by Inés Estrada (@inechi__) on Aug 23, 2017 at 3:58pm PDT

A post shared by Inés Estrada (@inechi__) on Oct 1, 2017 at 1:38pm PDT

sketchbook 03/2016 - 05/2017

A post shared by Inés Estrada (@inechi__) on Jul 12, 2017 at 12:39pm PDT

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Para terminar los dejo acá con algo que escribí el 17 de Septiembre, 2017:


Ayer vimos la pelea de box Edwin, Alex y yo en la casa... en cuanto dimos con el "streaming" gratis apareció en la pantalla la siniestra imágen de dos mirreyes en el público agitando la bandera de México al revés... qué mejor analogía puede haber de que nuestra patria y antiguo hogar está de cabeza... y de que ya todo vale verga

Así empezamos a ver la pelea de Canelo contra el Gordovich (cómo le andabamos diciendo de cábula), y cada que avanzaban los rounds y se partían en su madre me clavaba yo más y más en que realmente asi andamos todos por la vida, pum esquivando un chingazo, pum tratando de conectar un gancho, unos le atinas, otros nel

Andaban aguantando vara parejo, pero al chile, el Canelo aguantaba más madriza de la que metía. Su entrenador no dejaba de decirle "mijo, ya no te me quedes en la esquina" como una especie de shamán papá. En cambio en la cara de Gorgovitch, sólo se veía una decisión fría, mientras que su entrenador lo sobaba con hielos entre cada round, "con una fijación casi sexual", observó Alex, rompiendo la tensión sacándome una risa estruendosa. Edwin agregó "que si el mundo se fuera a guerra de puros putazos, seguro ganaban los rusos", y en ese momento no pudimos más que darle la razón.

Y realmente qué otro deporte puede haber más verga que dos weyes metiéndose unos buenos putazos. Lo que es, asi nomás, un mano a mano entre dos hóminidos, asi como se ha hecho desde la prehistoria.

Al final, pues ya, empate. Estuvo legal la pelea y los dos ganaron (unos buenos millones). Obviamente no iba a perder el Canelo por que es su pinche show, y aparte es el día de la independencia y no nos vayamos a agüitar (asi como si hubiera mucho que celebrar...) pero carajo, al chile que nomás de ver lo mamón que se portó al final, para mi perdió. Toda la dignidad que tuvo para aguantar la chinga del Gorgovitch, en vez de convertirla en humildad la proyectó en ego, diciendo que no, que él no había perdido. Y el Gorgovitch ahi nomás parado, bien verga con todos sus cinturones y viniendo desde la chingada, y con gran esfuerzo intenta hablar en inglés pa decirle que va, que no hay pedo, que se arme la revancha y ya ahi se verá quien es realmente el más chingón. Pero el Canelo necio, "ay no, yo no perdí, que lo tenía dominado y no se qué" y asi en español, de que: vato, si me entendiste chido, y si no,... ¡me vale verga!

Comics bullshit 2017

I keep wanting to write about COMICS... because damn, so much shit went down in 2017! This is all going to be insider bullshit, so read it only if you're a nerd with nothing to do. I don't take myself too seriously... and you shouldn't either! I say this because talking about anything online is now a minefield of mass lynchings and people feeling personally attacked. The evolution of the "same" and "relatable" culture but taken to the world of politics. I've seen plenty of this from the corner of the comics world I'm part of ...and last year there couldn't be a more fascinating gossip for me as that whole thing with Drawn & Quarterly and the Argentinian cartoonist Berliac. There's just... so many layers to it.

First, let me give you a little background on where I'm coming from, as this is, after all, just my very subjective opinion! So, as you may or may not know, I am from Mexico City (born and raised) so my relation to Argentina and its culture is in a way closer but also just very different from the one people in the U.S., Canada or Europe would have. I wrote a bad joke about this before, but I think it was getting lost in translation... my point was to say that something mexicans and argentinians share is a taste for offensive humour! Which isn't something all of our Latin American neighbors would agree with, and even more unacceptable for "americans" and canadians. Some even think that South America starts in Mexico [Mexico is part of North America, and before the south there's still Central America and the Caribbean] ...wait, did you know "America" is an actual continent and not just a country? Crazy, right?!

Anyway! Going back the original topic (comics!) I respect everyone who is a cartoonist, just because I admire anyone that can put themselves under such strain for something that is one of the most underpaid and undervalued arts. So, there's Berliac, right? Regardless of if you like his work or don't, you cannot deny he is dedicated to the craft! And that's also something about Argentina, they're serious about cartooning there. But wait, if he comes from somewhere with a pretty decent cartooning culture, you would think he could draw inspiration from that instead of from somewhere so far away like Japan? The thing about colonization (everywhere and anywhere) is that it leaves us mestizos with a sort of detached relationship to our intersecting cultures. ["Mestizaje" is one of the founding ideas in Latin American countries, we are no longer just indigenous but we also don't want to identify with the colonizers, we are the mix of both. This nebulous concept obviously brings new complications, but that's a whole other topic, for now... you get the idea!] So, in that way I think anyone who can't relate to "the status quo" naturally relates to things with an evidently non-western aesthetic as can be found in japanese comics and animation.

Which brings us to Berliac, an Argentinian guy, living in Berlin, drawing comics... duh, of course he's gonna love asian shit! Someone said his work just looks like he copies Yoshihiro Tsuge, and... yeah, I can see that. I can see he loves the shit out of GARO magazine. Then there's that text he wrote “GAY-JIN: Manga is not a genre. It’s a gender” which is just... damn. Coming from Mexico, I get it: ha ha ha, offensive macho jokes, just another part of our lovely latino culture... not! Wake up, man: it's 2017 and you're on the fucking internet! You can't do that shit. Ok, but wait, how would you explain this whole thing to someone 30, 40 years ago? You can't, it's just crazy: Drawn & Quarterly announces they're publishing Berliac's book, "Sad Boy", and in about 24hrs. this news has already gone around the world and brought up a tumblr post Berliac wrote in 2015 (yes, that infamous "GAY-JIN" text) which devolved into a ridiculous public exchange with Sara Horrocks... this incident got him labeled as trans-phobe and now, returning to 2017, makes D&Q cut all ties with him and drop the publication of his book, like nothing ever happened. It just comes to show how disposable artists are... or should I say "content makers"?! Ugh. It seems like there was no contract involved, which is a crazy way to come out and announce a book... so if anything happens they can just back off...

So wait, him being dropped didn't actually have anything to do with the actual content of his book, or did it? A lot of people did come forward accusing him of cultural appropriation, because of the way he draws. Kim Jooha [A Korean comics critic based in Canada] claimed his depiction of asians is offensive, as he portrays them with the stereotypical slanted eyes. And although Jooha can't speak for all asians everywhere, she definitely has more of a saying in that than me or Berliac, who aren't asian. So, we are latino... but what does that mean? For Berliac it means that if he went to Asia, people could consider him white, but in Europe he could also be seen as an arab... we are by definition, undefined. So inevitably, this whole mess became more complicated once people started realizing that Berliac isn't your stereotypical "evil white man." But then, don't a lot of other western artists also draw tons of inspiration from Asia? The annoying difference with Berliac is just the amount of pretentiousness he adds to it. I asked him on twitter about why he re-purposed linguistic signs (as that's how I interpreted the way he spells out the titles in his covers) but I think at that point he was already feeling too attacked from too many sides and he just kind of denied it defensively. Anyway, I am not for lynching anybody, so I also preferred to retreat and keep observing from outside the drama black hole (and I call it that 'cus it can suck you in!)

And then came his defense... the juiciest part of this whole drama! He wrote a long, public facebook post (how else could it go down, really) where he detailed his suffering as a poor, immigrant in Europe today (which, as we know is in the middle of a big immigrant crisis, being overflowed with millions of refugees from Africa and the Middle East). A true, Latin American drama, all that justified catholic suffering come to life. Then at some point he off-handedly mentions how he forgot to renew his italian passport, which was why he didn't get all these european union benefits he could've had... wait, what? That sounds more like "# first world problems" to me! Haha. Oh well, sucks that his book didn't get published. After all this bullshit, I got kinda curious to read it since it is actually supposed to be inspired by these misadventures he had as "another poor immigrant in Europe". Eh, I can just read it in spanish if I really wanted to! After all, I think all this attention just benefited him as he got a lot of people from Europe as well as Latin America to defend him and take interest in publishing his "banned" book. Good for him! I guess... if the internet doesn't forgive you, it will definitely forget you, because someone else will fuck up next week and everyone will move on their hate towards them.

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Speaking of "hated men in comics"... what about that whole Nick Gazin thing? All this people coming at him for writing the worst "best of comics list" of 2017? Like, dudes, where have you been? Nick has been writing silly, biased, lazy and yeah, sometimes straight up dumb articles about comics for like 10 years now... it ain't nothing new. Also... he has actually ran many genuinely good comics on the site and gets artists paid, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Whatever, Nick knows no one takes him seriously, and that's why he doesn't give a shit! The exact attitude that was pretty much a requirement for working at Vice back when it started... and yeah, I'm biased about this too because (for better or worse) I was the comics editor of Vice Mexico for 5 years hahaha... All I'ma say is that if you want some real comics journalism, you're not gonna find it there, that's for sure.


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Ooof, then there was that whole 2D Cloud thing... in which they fired and publicly cut ties with Blaisee Larmeé and Andy Burkholder for... fucking up. What do I mean by that? Well, I wish could say, but out of respect to everyone involved, I won't. So, yeah, let's just say they fucked up, and they fucked up bad. But then, does that mean we should completely ostracize them and exclude them from "the comics community"? I don't know, man. It's hard because I agree that victims should be supported, but also, we should challenge abusers to change and better themselves, and I'm not sure if shutting them off completely actually helps them do that. I don't know!

So, this one definitely ended up negatively for Larmeé and Burkholder, but for 2D Cloud as a publisher, it gave them a lot of positive attention from people, and I think sort of disguised their already existing financial problems as being caused by their well-meaning decision to fire them. Later on came Dan Nadel with some snarky remarks... which was just laughable for me! That was like the big dog going after the wounded little dog in the park. Yeah, 2D Cloud isn't perfect, but at least they're trying to do something to be better!

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Something else that was very funny to me and seemed quite defining of the moment we are living in comics right now (or at least in our corner of "alternative" comics) was at the after party of Comic Arts LA in which I was hanging out with a big group of women. We were talking about who were the "hot single guys" of the fest and we were kind of bummed out because we could only come up with like two names. I said something like "There aren't any, they're all either gay or underage" to which I remember most laughed and agreed to. So yeah, this is it, this is what we've always wanted! This is our moment!

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I hope with all this bullshit I'm adding something to the conversation and making ya'll question some shit and it's not just like,... me stirring up and warming some cold-ass pot of drama! hahaha
Anyway, I genuinely think we are living in an amazing moment for comics. There's so many new kinds of comics coming out by all sorts of people and I love that! Some of my favourite books from last year where...

* By Monday I'll be Floating in the Hudson with all the other Garbage by Laura Lannes

* Sec by Margot Ferrick

* Mirror Mirror II edited by Julia Gfrörer and Sean T. Collins

* Tonto by Abraham Díaz

* Dust Pam by Thu Tran

* How to be Alive by Tara Booth

* Portrait by Simon Hanselmann

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There's so much going on in the internet all the time that it's hard to pay attention to anything, but here are some longer format things I've enjoyed reading lately have been...

* Austin English's TCJ column Interesting stuff for alt comics and zine nerds! Also Austin is putting out this comics mag that's gonna be more of that but on paper, it looks like it's gonna be fun, you can preorder it here! ...and yeah, he invited me to write something for it so I'm biased, but whatever haha

* Kim O'Connor's blog I don't necessarily agree with everything Kim says but I do find all of it fascinating to read. I don't think I've ever read a positive review from her, but she's so good at tearing everyone apart. There's also something sort of obsessive about her approach to dissecting everything that I can really relate to.

* I don't really listen to podcasts but I have enjoyed some episodes of Anya Davidson's Mindkiller podcast as well as some others of the Study Group Process Party podcast. They talk with some really cool cartoonists!

* Kind of hard to read long texts on instagram but I do enjoy taking my time to read all the manga related things Ryan Holmberg writes about.

* Not specifically comics but I really liked Jacob Berendes' 100% Publishing blog. Update more, man!

* Forge Magazine, which is also not just about comics, but has a lot of really good interviews with all sorts of artist people. It's edited by Matthew James-Wilson who is also now co-organizing Comic Arts Brooklyn (and that gives me hope!)

* not comics related, but one of my favourite links on the internet that I look at every day is THE UNDERESTIMATOR blog, run by Gus (aka Wally Nightingale on facebook.) Both places he posts the most insane pictures from original punk rock n' roll!

Thanks for reading, nerds!