HELLO AND WELCOME TO A NEW EDITION OF MY NEWSLETTER!

After weathering the end of May with winds straight out of hell (I didn’t move up North of Spain to suffer this heat), your favorite newsletter is back!

SPAM!

My usual calendar of releases:

USA & UK
-Galaxy of Madness Omnibus: The Mortal Machine, published by Mad Cave, is on sale. The book compiles the vol. 1 (written by Magadalene Vissaggio and art by Mike Oeming & Taki Soma) and vol. 2 (written by Vissaggio and art by me).
-Moon Eaters GN will be published by Titan in October but I think pre-orders are available or they will be very soon.
-My Fahrenheit 451 adaptation also should be released throughout the year by Titan.

SPAIN
-Cassandra (The Left Hand of the Devil) is on sale, published by Yermo Ediciones.
-Kid Maroon GN and Galaxy of Madness will be released in Spain surely in the second half of the year.

FRANCE
-Against Hope GN coming out published by Komics Initiative (with two editions, regular and an exclusive limited print of 100 with exclusive cover).
-Requiem Chevalier Vampire volume 1 is on sale and the 2nd volume coming surely in October.

BRASIL
-Moon Eaters is on sale in Brasil, published by Poptopia.

And if you are a paid subscriber, you have your monthly doses of SILENZIO. On the June 1st, I posted Episode 6, which means this strange experiment has now been going on for half a year.

SUPPLY AND DEMAND

In a creator-owned author’s life, there are plenty of conversations about rights, licensing to other countries, contracts... You might not like this bureaucratic side of your job, but you have to get familiar with these issues if you don’t want your routine to consist of just drawing pages, getting paid, and forgetting about it (and even in work-for-hire, there’s paperwork to do, buddy).

I was recently talking to an agent who represents the publication rights of one of my Spanish graphic novels. Since she knew the story was optioned by a small producer to make a TV show adaptation, she used to ask me if there was any news. She knew that this kind of project helps to sell the book to other countries.
At the same time, the producer was asking me whenever he had the chance if there had been any progress in finding some publisher to release the book in English, since that would go a long way toward attracting new partners. And the potential show writers would love to read the book in English.

Don’t get me wrong, they’re both incredibly kind people... But there I was, in that sort of dissociative state where each of them was pulling me in the opposite direction: “Get me a show to sell the book! Get me a book to sell the show!”

What did annoy me a little, though, was that the agent had told me that a foreign publisher was interested in the rights to my book... provided that they also handled my audiovisual rights. This essentially means representing those juicy TV and movie rights and, I suppose, sharing the benefits with me. It’s not a bad thing in and of itself, since I’ve done that way with Dark Horse and it worked out with Polar.
But Dark Horse PRODUCED that book.
In this case, we were talking about buying the license to publish an already-made book in a different language, which is substantially cheaper than paying people to create it in your market/language.
Just imagine if I bought the rights to publish a series in Spain… for example, Naruto, and demanded that the publisher, Shūeisha, let me handle the anime adaptations myself.

I understand that the publisher wants to release only series for which it offers the full package, including the audiovisual rights. But that would be a different matter (I’d be happy to pitch them something), though of course with the page rates for something created specifically for them.

Looking at the bigger picture, it’s not an unusual situation either.
Fair? No. Common? Significant.
It wasn’t exactly a situation that lifted my spirits... Is that how things are now?
It’s cool that the prospect of making movies or TV shows serves as a source of support, something that allows us to finance risky projects we believe in.
But do we write and draw for editors and readers, or for agents?
I have this feeling that comics are now just an excuse to sell ideas like sausages without consulting the true creative force behind those stories: the creators.

RETURNING TO FANTASY

I’m trying to include more recommendations and reading suggestions in the newsletter again, which I think might be more fun than some of my boring personal opinions about the Comics Industry.
I’ve mentioned before that although part of my career has been linked to fantasy, and I’ve been an avid reader of the genre, it doesn’t make up a large part of my regular readings. I’ve shifted more toward science fiction and sometimes space opera, with a few notable exceptions like Terry Pratchett (whom I’ve always resisted categorizing solely as fantasy) and my revisitations of Michael Moorcock, undoubtedly my favorite writer in the genre ever since I read The Eternal Champion as a teenager.

I’ve been meaning to read some modern fantasy; since I read a couple of his SciFi novels I’m not interested in George R. R. Martin anymore, and I have the strong feeling I won’t like Sanderson… But I’m hopeful about Joe Abercrombie, who seems more in line with my interests.

Meanwhile, I also recently tried to start super-famous Matt Dinniman’s Dungeon Crawler Carl series. I gave it a shot because my wife is a big fan and I wanted to discuss it with her (we’re reading all of Pratchett’s Discworld novels in chronological order), but I just can’t get past page 150. I had the same problem I had with Ready Player One, that feeling of a guy telling me about the game he played the other day on the PlayStation. As soon as they started with “And then a level-20 goblin came along, and I hit him with my +5 mace and took 3 hit points off it,” the book fell right out of my hands. And I’m a casual RPG player, though I’ll admit that the tables are the part that bores me the most. But I recognize that Dinniman writes quite well (which is something I can’t say about Ernest Cline) and has a fresh sense of humor.

But what finally happened is that I returned to the genre with the first Heroic Fantasy book I’d ever read (before Tolkien, before Moorcock): Louise Cooper’s The Time Master Trilogy. Although heavily influenced by Moorcock (Cooper was a huge fan of the novels about the albino Elric of Melniboné), she has a rather unique personality and her character development that was quite sophisticated for the standards of the genre then.

I’ve owned the first volume (The Initiate) since I was a kid, and I found the other two volumes in excellent condition at a secondhand store. So I picked them up so I could reread the entire series.
I read The Initiate when I was very young, and it’s funny how certain books leave a mark on you, because reading it now I gradually began to recognize writing patterns, cadences, and rhythms that I had used in my own stories. In other words, you never suspect how a first love determines your subsequent relationships.

I think it’s beautiful to be able to map out your influences and see where you come from, and how the things you loved shaped you. And this is why I’ve never liked to project the image of a reclusive artist living in a world of his own. I’ve always believed in making your influences visible, embracing them, and sharing them with the people who read your work.

And that’s all for today! Pray to the Gods of Chaos for my damned soul and see you in a new edition of BrokenEnglish, and if you are a paid subscriber, in a new episode of Silenzio or The Red Circle.

Copyright © 2026 Victor Santos. All rights reserved.

FIND ME IN MY SOCIAL NETWORK:
victorsantoscomics.com
My official Facebook page and my personal Facebook page
My Twitter / My Instagram / My Bluesky / My Tumblr
The BROKEN ENGLISH Tinyletter archives

MY DIGITAL STORE (ORIGINAL ART, SKETCHBOOKS, SIGNED BOOKS):
victorsantos.bigcartel.com

DIGITAL COMICS:
POLAR / GUTS (AGAINST HOPE) / PARANOIA KILLER / GINGER’S REVENGE / SILENZIO

BUY MY BOOKS:
My Amazon page / My Random House page

HI AND WELCOME TO A NEW EDITION OF MY NEWSLETTER!

May is already here! But didn’t the year just start? Time is slipping through my fingers... I’d better get started on the newsletter soon.

RELEASES

My usual calendar of releases:

USA & UK
-Galaxy of Madness Omnibus: The Mortal Machine, published by Mad Cave, is on sale. The book compiles the vol. 1 (written by Magadalene Vissaggio and art by Mike Oeming & Taki Soma) and vol. 2 (written by Vissaggio and art by me).
-Moon Eaters GN will be published by Titan in October.
-My Fahrenheit 451 adaptation also should be released throughout the year by Titan.

SPAIN
-Cassandra (The Left Hand of the Devil) is on sale, published by Yermo Ediciones.
-Kid Maroon GN and Galaxy of Madness will be released in Spain surely in the second half of the year..

FRANCE
-Against Hope GN coming out in the middle of the year, published by Komics Initiative (with two editions, regular and an exclusive limited print of 100 with exclusive cover).
-Requiem Chevalier Vampire volume 1 is on sale and the 2nd volume coming surely in October.

BRASIL
-Moon Eaters is on sale in Brasil, published by Poptopia.

IMPOSTER SYNDROME VS GRIFTER SYNDROME

I’ve had several Zoom meetings regarding a TV series project I’m developing based on a pilot I co-wrote with my regular partner-in-crime Anthony, in this part-time job I’ve taken on, trying to make my way in this bizarre TV world... The thing is, if the original premise were followed, this show would have to be shot largely in Japan. From the start, it seemed crazy to me, but my “mate” encouraged me to try my luck and reach out, and to date we’ve had several meetings to secure production there, talking to technicians and companies that connect teams from the West with the East.

Every time I finish one of these meetings, I think, “Am I fooling these people?” or “Are they just playing along?” because when you start talking about these projects, you end up discussing castings, budgets (“Hey guys what do you think, over 1 million per episode?”) and crazy stuff like that. It’s like we’re playing a game where we pretend we’re creating a series... but with people who ACTUALLY do that.
As I’ve already learned, the chances of getting a green light are scarce and it will take a looooong time, but I’d like to think these people wouldn’t meet with us out of pity… And it’s not like I’m a master of deception. Hell, I don’t even have great charisma… So the project must have something good that attracts them, at least enough to get them to agree to meet with us.

People are always talking about imposter syndrome, but think about this: If someone says they have imposter syndrome, they actually think they’re really good! (“I’m great, but I feel bad because I have this condition”).
I don’t think I have a syndrome, but if I do think I’m a bit of a clumsy author who manages to charm people, then I must surely be an arrogant jerk who sees himself as some kind of poker master, a mix of Doc Holliday and Frank Miller.

I don’t know… In the end, I think we authors spend too much time wondering whether we’re any good or not; I suppose it’s something that stems from the inherently unstable nature of our job.
I think this is one of those situations where it’s best not to dwell on your abilities, but to just keep moving forward as if you’re fooling everyone. Keep pretending until you become who you say you are, or who you want to be.

THE FIST AND THE FURY

Talking about real charismastic guys, thanks to Blu-ray format, both in Full HD and its latest incarnation in 4K, I have built up a good collection of films from the 60s, 70s, and 80s in some of my favorite genres, such as spaghetti westerns, classic noir, yakuza films, Hong Kong heroic-bloodshed, kaiju eiga, chambara and of course, Kung Fu.

I especially love martial arts movies from the era of the Shaw Brothers studio. We associate a certain level of poverty with these productions, but we couldn’t be more wrong. The problem is that we saw many of these films in poor editions, with terrible image quality, mutilated in their screen format, when directly censored. So we mix up the low quality of the edition with the low quality of the work. There is a certain racist component in linking Chinese culture to exploitation and carelessly manufactured products. And it’s true that the pace of production at that time was frenetic... but when you see these films in their original format, with the color and image restorances as they were conceived... the care taken in the composition and lighting of these films is amazing.

Because of Chuck Norris’s passing (RIP), I was indirectly reminded that I still needed to watch this movie in UHD, Fist of Fury, surely Bruce Lee’s most popular film after Enter the Dragon.
Honestly, I think those are the only two Bruce Lee films I like. I find The Big Boss really boring, and in Way of the Dragon I only like the iconic final fight with Norris. Game of Death is an outrageous rip-off that gave us the legendary yellow tracksuit (homaged or plagiarized by Tarantino depending on your opinion) and the fight with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, but that’s practically 10 minutes... The rest is a shameful impersonation of the actor, who died when he had barely started shooting the film.

So we’re left with Enter the Dragon, which I think is a great spy and exotic adventure movie rather than a martial arts movie... and what is Lee’s most perfect martial arts movie: Fist of Fury.

What is most striking about this film, which has a plot that is so overused it has become a parody (revenge for the death of the master), is that Bruce Lee operates at a different speed from the rest of the actors. Normally, Chinese actors of the time went at 100 km/h, but Bruce had the overacting dial set to 200 km/h. It’s basically charisma without boundaries that cannot be compared to others. He’s not even a great actor. He’s just... Bruce Lee, a genre himself.

This imbalance is evident when the story introduces a romance subplot. The love stories in Bruce Lee’s films seem out of place because he is a kind of deity. He’s beyond human understanding. You only see that everything is in its place when he fights, and even then, when you witness such ridiculous moments as numerous opponents waiting their turn to be beaten by Lee’s nunchucks... it works. Because it’s not even martial arts per se... it’s a Bruce Lee martial arts movie.

But some of the best resources from martial arts films, later exploited by other media such as modern action movies and shōnen manga, are brilliantly used here: the progression of increasingly stronger enemies or the colorful use of techniques and weapons, refined here by Lee’s more spartan and less flowery Jeet Kune Do style, but spectacular nonetheless.

And that’s all, little dragons! See you in a new edition of Broken English, and if you are a paid subscriber, in the exclusive sections or a new episode of Silenzio.

Copyright © 2026 Victor Santos. All rights reserved.

FIND ME IN MY SOCIAL NETWORK:
victorsantoscomics.com
My official Facebook page and my personal Facebook page
My Twitter / My Instagram / My Bluesky / My Tumblr
The BROKEN ENGLISH Tinyletter archives

MY DIGITAL STORE (ORIGINAL ART, SKETCHBOOKS, SIGNED BOOKS):
victorsantos.bigcartel.com

DIGITAL COMICS:
POLAR / GUTS (AGAINST HOPE) / PARANOIA KILLER / GINGER’S REVENGE

BUY MY BOOKS:
My Amazon page / My Random House page

HELLO AND WELCOME TO A NEW EDITION OF MY NEWSLETTER!

Today’s edition is going to be long, but this topic was too complex to explain in two paragraphs. But first, my usual calendar of releases, which I’m gradually getting organized:

RELEASES

USA & UK
-Fahrenheit 451 adaptation will be published by Titan, but I haven’t a release date yet. I don’t know if the book will be published by the end of this year or in 2027.
-Moon Eaters GN also should be released throughout the year.

SPAIN
-Cassandra (The Left Hand of Devil) is on sale, published by Yermo Ediciones.
-Kid Maroon GN and Galaxy of Madness will be released in Spain sometime in 2026, most likely in the second half of the year..

FRANCE
-Against Hope GN coming out in the middle of the year, published by Komics Initiative.
-Requiem Chevalier Vampire volume 1 is on sale and the 2nd volume will be released this year.

SEÑOR TRUMP AND THE SPY GENRE

Let’s go now to the hearth of the matter.
Although I’ve talked about politics on other occasions, I don’t think I’ve ever been this direct on the subject, but I find it interesting, from a European perspective, to explain how distinctly American genres are perceived from an outside viewpoint. I believe that popular fiction from the United States is really intended for domestic consumption. And like all mass-market fiction, it says a lot about the country, its ideology, and how its people perceive themselves.

We Europeans have always had a particular relationship with USA culture. On the one hand, there’s fascination, but on the other, it’s clear that it has always been used as an ideological vehicle. In Spain, we have this word, “americanada” we use it when an American work of fiction has such an overt message that it practically ruins the experience of the story. Because we feel like we’ve basically been bombarded with propaganda. It’s used frequently with movies like Independence Day or Air Force One.

So when we want to enjoy a spy series, for example, we have to turn off part of our brain and forget what we know about History, and if a special agent says they need to intervene in Venezuela or Middle West for the poor people living there (and not for the oil), we smile, raise an eyebrow, and let John Krasinski walk into the Venezuelan president’s office and slap him (real scene, I couldn’t believe it when I saw it).

I remember this hilarious scene (I think it was in Prime Video’s G20) where, at a UN meeting, a politician accused the CIA of conducting covert operations abroad and everyone was outraged… as if that weren’t precisely its raison d’être.

It’s not that American pop culture hasn’t been critical of its own dignitaries, but they’ve usually played the “bad apple” card… The bad guys are the exception, and we see how the system itself purges corruption. But it’s still curious that the character who exposes the government’s secret atrocities will be considered a criminal in real life (and no Republican or Democratic administration has escaped this). In cases like the Abu Ghraib tortures and WikiLeaks, the guy who exposed it would have been the hero in the fiction and not a wanted fugitive.

But despite these flaws, you can still enjoy this kind of story, and there are shows like Homeland, or even the first season of Jack Ryan (before it veered into pure delirium) that keep a critical and clever approach.
The problem with this kind of thriller now is that they’ve all been left in the dust by the way Donald Trump has conducted his politics, especially his foreign policy.
It’s not that Trump has pulled back the curtain to reveal what’s behind the stage… He’s blown up the damn theater.

Remember those stories where someone has compromising videos or outrageous statements from a politician and struggles to make them public before the bad guys cover the story?
How can you believe that plot having an actual president on trial for various proved sex scandals who sometimes acts like a Russian sleeper agent who’s just woken up? Or who proclaims he can grab a woman by the pussy or kill someone on the street without anything happening to him… and you find yourself wondering if maybe he’s right?
How can you turn off your suspension of disbelief when a real president threatens to obliterate entire civilizations? In any work of fiction, no one would even consider the possibility that the president of the United States might openly declare his intention to commit mass murder. Or accidentally reveal military secrets at a press conference. Or watching a member of the government giving the Nazi salute live on TV without real repercussions. Or audience questioning whether a mentally unstable person has been placed in charge of the most powerful nation on Earth.
That sort of crazy stuff was only seen in the wildest British sci-fi, like 2000AD magazine, or Frank Miller and Dave Gibbons’ satire Marta Washington. Or we should say ex-satire.

I think we’re going to see a shift in how the world approaches the spy thriller genre. Obviously, European fiction is going to change their perspective in a lot of stories. Americans were seen as a problematic ally, but always an ally. Not like someone on the level of Russia or China, for example. But I think we could see more and more European series where the US Secret Services are the new bad guys.
American fiction will have to assimilate the recent Age of Trump as well. I also think that the comic-book world should take the first step (if they haven’t already), because I believe that, in that regard, part of our essence has always been to be defiant. It’s happening in the latest seasons of The Boys.
And it’s going to be interesting because, if they don’t ignore what’s happening like some shows do, I think it’s going to bring us a series of pretty interesting stories that will practically blend thriller, satire, and science fiction and pure craziness.
Because no madness seems implausible now.

Phew! Don’t say I didn’t warn you. I hope you found this interesting, and I look forward to your comments. Since politics is more than ever a sensitive topic, please be respectful.
This article is not intended as an attack on anyone (and I would find it strange if anyone took it personally), but rather as an expression of my own astonishment, as an ordinary citizen of this planet, at what is happening.

See you in a new edition of Broken English, and if you are a paid subscriber, in a new episode of Silenzio or The Red Circle.

Copyright © 2026 Victor Santos. All rights reserved.

FIND ME IN MY SOCIAL NETWORK:
victorsantoscomics.com
My official Facebook page and my personal Facebook page
My Twitter / My Instagram / My Bluesky / My Tumblr
The BROKEN ENGLISH Tinyletter archives

MY DIGITAL STORE (ORIGINAL ART, SKETCHBOOKS, SIGNED BOOKS):
victorsantos.bigcartel.com

DIGITAL COMICS:
POLAR / GUTS (AGAINST HOPE) / PARANOIA KILLER / GINGER’S REVENGE

BUY MY BOOKS:
My Amazon page / My Random House page

HI AND WELCOME TO A NEW EDITION OF MY NEWSLETTER!

This newsletter is packed with information! Let’s get started without further ado...
But before I forget to link it, I had a very entertaining chat on the 22panels podcast where we talked about Kid Maroon, Silenzio and other of my works, as well as all kinds of topics, such as storytelling, influences, the differences between writing in Spanish and English, films, TV shows, comics and more.

Here is the link to the 22panelspodcast episode

RELEASES PLANNED FOR 2026

Today I can be more specific about things coming this year. I have sorted the releases by country:

SPAIN
-My graphic novel Cassandra (The Left Hand of Devil) is finally on sale, published by Yermo Ediciones.
-Several Spanish publishers were interested in the Kid Maroon GN, and finally an agreement was reached, so we could have an Spanish edition soon.

FRANCE
-There is a French edition of my Dark Horse Against Hope GN coming out in the middle of the year, which I’m pretty excited about because of the people involved, the friends of Komics Initiative. It will be a very nice book.
-The Requiem Chevalier Vampire manga I’m currently writing for Glénat is on sale since January, and the second volume will also be released this year.

USA & UK
-English language editions of my Fahrenheit 451 adaptation and Moon Eaters GN have already been signed and should be released throughout the year.

BRASIL
-There is also an agreement signed by Moon Eaters for its publication in Portuguese.

PLUS
-I know of a Russian and a Mongolian edition of Fahrenheit 451, but I don’t have much information about its status, although it’s signed and I have even approved the book’s design.
-I’m negotiating writing another commissioned GN that will probably be released at the end of the year or the next one.

Meanwhile, of you are paid subscriber you will have your monthly dosis of SILENZIO. I had a lot of fun planning this latest chapter, an homage to Gareth Evans’ the Raid.

READINGS

I recently finished reading Frederick Forsyth’s The Day of the Jackal. Although Fred Zinnemann’s 1973 film had a huge influence on me when I was creating the Black Kaiser, I had never had the opportunity to read the book. But I saw a paperback new print in the store, bought it and devoured it quickly.

The 1971 book is what we would consider a bestseller today, and I am amazed at what was considered a bestseller in the early 1970s, because the prose is harsh and dry, almost journalistic, and makes no concessions to the reader… and yet it’s entertaining and addictive. Nowadays, the “bestseller” tag is often synonymous with a series of creative concessions that I see repeated more and more often: Increasingly shorter chapters, impersonal and plain prose, constant reminders to the reader... A bit like the conditions Netflix currently imposes on creators to treat their audience like distracted children.

So, podering about this masterpiece of suspense from almost fifty years was what would be considered “a popular reading” makes me reflect on what we are losing in terms of mass entertainment.

VIOLENT SOAP OPERAS

My wife is a huge fan of series about magic powers, especially if there is witchcraft involved, and especially if they’re a little bit bad. Human beings can’t live only watching The Sopranos, Pluribus, or Severance. I remember when we watched The Wire, we were so emotionally devastated after every season (that damn 4th season about the schoolkids) that we used to watch True Blood to recover. Sometimes we need mindless, crazy entertainment, and if possible, full of shameless sex and violence.

The Pandemic taught us how much we need little places of comfort.

So among the more “intellectual” or “elevated” products, we see things like A Discovery of Witches. It has all the ingredients you would expect: romances between witches and vampires, absurd plot twists, and power level-ups for the protagonist with no justification other than how beautiful she is. I remember saying in amazement, “I can’t believe this was written by a grown woman.”

It’s funny how traditionally much of this light content has been attributed to women’s tastes, especially in the format of soap operas, or telenovelas in Spanish. It’s true that one of the reasons goes back to the absence of women in the workplace, destined to be “emotional creatures” who do not enjoy with “too complex stories”... but I also remember being a teenager and getting hooked on Models TV show (with a young Carrie Ann-Moss) during the summer holidays.

And although it may be a derogatory term due to its status as popular entertainment, the origin of soap operas takes us back to serialized stories, the fouilleton, to Alexandre Dumas, Dostoyevsky and Arthur Conan Doyle. Respect to the idea to entertain the readers with cliffhangers.

If we want to be reductionist, there is a distinctly masculine format that I like to call violent soap operas, which could include Game of Thrones, Spartacus, and tons of crime series such as Peaky Blinders, Boardwalk Empire, and more recently Gangs of London and Mobland. And although many people like them equally, I do see an intention to fulfill many male fantasies using the same narrative resources that we could find (applied to romance) in shows such as Bridgerton and Grey’s Anatomy…

In conclusion, I think we must give a chance to things we don’t yet know we need and not to be swayed by gender stereotypes. I never thought that The Crown could be one of my favorite Netflix shows, considering that it’s about one of the topics, English Royal Family, that interests me least in the universe. And I would have missed it if I had considered it “just entertainment for girls”.

And that’s all! See you in a new edition of Broken English, and if you are a paid subscriber, in a new episode of Silenzio.

Copyright © 2026 Victor Santos. All rights reserved.

FIND ME IN MY SOCIAL NETWORK:
victorsantoscomics.com
My official Facebook page and my personal Facebook page
My Twitter / My Instagram / My Bluesky / My Tumblr
The BROKEN ENGLISH Tinyletter archives

MY DIGITAL STORE (ORIGINAL ART, SKETCHBOOKS, SIGNED BOOKS):
victorsantos.bigcartel.com

DIGITAL COMICS:
POLAR / GUTS (AGAINST HOPE) / PARANOIA KILLER / GINGER’S REVENGE

BUY MY BOOKS:
My Amazon page / My Random House page

HI AND WELCOME TO A NEW EDITION OF MY NEWSLETTER!

Thank you to the people who wrote to me with encouraging words about the art and story concept of Silenzio! I don’t want to bore you (again!) with the whole story about this independent project I’ve created for paid subscribers, so I’ll just leave the link to the first and free episode here in case you missed it.

THINGS TO COME

In the first newsletter of the year I mentioned some new comics and a manga series with my involvement that will be published in France and Spain in 2026, and although I don’t have any new book release announced for the States at the moment, I have received good news that two graphic novels I wrote and drew entirely myself, created for the Spanish market, will be published in English throughout the year. So you’ll have Victor in the UK and the USA this year, at least in that sense.

I hope that some of the projects I am sending to US publishers now will come to fruition. It’s an increasingly difficult market, but I am not giving up on it. I really love the comics made in the States, especially the creator-owned ones, and there are stories that I have written or want to draw, prepared by writer friends, that I really think are meant to be set there.

GEEZERS IN ACTION

I have a genuine fascination for the aged action movie stars, maybe due to my fondness for the Batman of The Dark Knight Returns Frank Miller’s seminal comic. But what truly fascinates me are those actors who never did action until they turned 50. Those guys who suffered some kind of middle life crisis, went to the gym and learned martial arts.

We could consider Liam Neeson the herald of this practice with Taken, although his physical weaknesses are largely camouflaged by editing tricks and the irritating use of shaky camera.

Denzel Washington was almost in his sixties when he made the first Equalizer movie. Denzel had starred in thrillers and made strong characters, but had never embraced with such commitment the mystique of the invincible action hero with abilities bordering on the supernatural as he approached pre-retirement age.

Before this, I followed cases like Cuba Gooding jr, who tried to be a serious actor and ended up doing films for video rental and later VOD movies in Bulgaria, Romania and places alike with Dolph Lundgren. Well, sharing a poster with (my beloved) Swedish wonder is the best proof that you are now part of the B-action constellation. In fact, Luke Wilson recently made the hideous The Best Man with Dolph!

Keanu Reeves in John Wick was destined to be one of these examples of actors in the doldrums making low profile action productions… but what separates this actor from the rest is the international success of the first movie, a real “sleeper”. John Wick was destined to be a modest production that became a mainstream franchise thanks to the talent of everybody involved. They repeated the method with the Nobody films with the previous dramatic actor/ previous comedian/now super-cool action actor Bob Odenkirk.

Actors like Aaron Eckhart (The Bricklayer), Dermot Mulroney (Ruthless), Antonio Banderas (Security) or John Travolta (I am wrath) tried to replicate the Keanu formula transitioning from “serious” actors to action mature stars. Even Michael Keaton (The Protégé’), comedian Kevin James (Guns up) and Christoph Waltz in Old Guy with almost 70 years! But they never got the same results because it’s almost impossible to match the physical commitment of The Matrix actor and of course, they didn’t have a compelling story or have the Stahelski/Kolstad couple directing.

I hope to see a similar phenomenon in the case of actresses. Cases such as Charlize Theron or Maggie Q could be considered “mature women doing action,” but honestly, they look so young that they don’t really seem to belong to that genre. Once again, the most sexist Hollywood won’t let us see the story of a female character punished by time and pain, a deadly gaze framed by wrinkles, returning from retirement to kick some asses. I’d like to see this kind of products with Linda Hamilton, Jodie Foster or Demi Moore encarnating bad-ass old retired agents and hitwomen putting young people where they deserve to be… Six feet under.

Audiences who grew up with the old-fashioned action heroes of the 80s love these violent geezers. And they are also an international-intergenerational bridge for dads and sons. Nothing brings you closer to your old man than watching a movie together in which an Oscar winner forgets about all that acting nonsense and tortures a drug dealer with a jackhammer.

The success of these three sagas, John Wick, Equalizer and Taken are good proof of the good health of these stories. Meanwhile, the B-products make good money filling the insatiable demand for content in the streaming platforms.

Ageism doesn’t exist in the wonderful world of action movies!

And that’s all, old folks! See you in a new edition of Broken English, and if you are a paid subscriber, in a new episode of Silenzio.

Copyright © 2026 Victor Santos. All rights reserved.

FIND ME IN MY SOCIAL NETWORK:
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BUY MY BOOKS:
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HELLO AND WELCOME TO A NEW EDITION OF MY NEWSLETTER!

And welcome to the first newsletter of 2026!
Although we started the year terribly, realizing once again that our fate is in the hands of unscrupulous criminals, at least we still have the refuge of fiction to say what we want... at least until some giant corporation tells us that we can’t create because they own all fiction now, or that from now on our creative work will be done exclusively by a shitty AI app. But that’s a hill I’m willing to die on.

I am starting this year with the goal of writing newsletters more frequently because I actually enjoy doing it. I’d rather spend more time writing here than on some social media platforms, which has given real scumbags a voice and made our lives much worse than they were before they existed.

Speaking specifically about my work, in 2025, the graphic novel Kid Maroon (Vault) and the paperback of the issues I did for the Galaxy of Madness series (Mad Cave) were published in the USA, as well as the 25th anniversary omnibus edition of my series Los Reyes Elfos in Spain and the French edition of my Fahrenheit 451 adaptation. 2026 will begin with the publication of the manga Requiem Chevalier Vampire vol.1 in France I wrote for Glénat, and, as complete author, my martial arts graphic novel Cassandra for publisher Yermo in Spain, finished a year ago and delayed due to the bankruptcy of ECC. I also hope that throughout the year a Spanish edition for Kid Maroon could become a reality.

As happened in the second half of 2025, it seems now that my assignments are less focused on drawing comics and more on writing scripts for other artists, plus a TV development project (co-writing a pilot episode) and some illustration/cover work. However, I had this bullet in the chamber in my attempt to explore new paths as a complete comics author. The title is…

SILENZIO

This is a very special project to me, and I wanted to do it in a very specific way in terms of storytelling, structure and genre. Unfortunately, things aren’t so easy for projects that aren’t franchises or created by celebrities. It’s a constant battle in which either the publishers themselves are overwhelmed with proposals and pitches, or those who are interested can’t offer you a basic decent compensation or a fair deal in termes of potential adaptations of the IP (and no, Image isn’t always the panacea for creator-owned projects, although I wish it were).

In that distant newsletter, I mentioned my idea of creating a kind of 10-12 pages full color downloadable comic book that would work individually, and the inspiration came from both 80s TV shows and 90s animation hits such as Samurai Jack, Batman TAS and Cowboy Bebop, where you have self-contained stories that you can get hooked on at any time, but which together form a larger tapestry.
This story is also my personal interpretation of the Lone Wolf and Cub trope, and I already dropped a preview in an Inktober a couple of years ago.

Initially I worked on the idea of serializing it on Patreon (I even opened the account), but recently they changed the conditions for new customers and the percentages and fees were unfavorable and the new interface was awful. Enshittification strikes again.

So I finally decided to serialize it here for paid subscribers on my newsletter, since I already have the channel established. I was initially reluctant to create this paid version, but I plan to offer to the supporters additional material in addition to this exclusive monthly comic, like an exclusive editions of the newsletter and behind-the-scenes art and WIP videos before anyone else.

I really want to be able to offer something special, the kind of iconic characters that I feel I could be drawing my whole life. I’ll let you know all the details very very soon!

THINGS I SAW

We continue with samurai, but this time from the period and place to which they belong.
I loved the Last Samurai Standing series, starring Junichi Okada (whom I remember from the action-comedy film The Fable), who is also the choreographer of the sword duels. I’m sure the show was pitched to Netflix with the premise of “Battle Royale (or Squid Game) but in samurai Japan.” Actually the story goes much further than that and reveals itself to be a political thriller in which the role of the samurais, stripped of their former privileges, is irrelevant and uncomfortable for a Japan that wants to open up to the industrial Western World.

Although the show is obviously imbued with the romanticism of the samurai myth (they were actually quite ruthless and less honorable and more pragmatic than fiction portrays them), I have always been captivated by stories of bygone worlds giving way to new ones. This is the case with the wonderful Sergio Leone’s Once upon a time in the West, where the cowboys and outlaws are those samurai, in a world where the railroad has made stagecoaches and horses obsolete, just as firearms have turned handling a katana into a sport for the rich.
My only complaint is that the six episodes leave you wanting more and leave the door wide open for a second season, which I don’t know when it will arrive.

And that’s all! Please stay tuned to this newsletter for more details about Silenzio and more stuff!
See you very soon!
Victor

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Copyright © 2026 Victor Santos. All rights reserved.

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HELLO AND WELCOME TO A NEW EDITION OF MY NEWSLETTER!

December is here, and Robot Santa is cleaning his firearms, while we know that this year we will be prepared after training in the latest Purge. Let’s get started!

ORIGINAL ART

I had this exhibition in Tenerife island with original art and some of my process work. I haven’t uploaded them here so as not to make the newsletter too heavy, but you can see them all on my site.

GINGER STOPS (TEMPORARILY)

I really enjoy writing and drawing Ginger, the online comic that accompanies this newsletter, but unfortunately, after chapter 6, which I just finished, I will put it on hold for a while. The reason isn’t exactly a lack of time (well, maybe a little), but rather a lack of energy and ideas. Usually, with these online comics there is a big part of improvisation, but I have a slight storyline and an end in mind. In this case, I had one, but as I progressed, I realized that I didn’t like it. So I decided to stop at a point where I have freedom of action, and I’ll pick it up again when I find a path that I really enjoy drawing and that I think you’ll enjoy too.
I would also like to take this opportunity to thank my good friend, comic book author Dan Christensen, for helping me with the English dialogues of Ginger.

THINGS I SAW

I watched Guillermo del Toro’s adaptation of Frankenstein, and although it has some good points, as is often the case with del Toro, I never quite like it all the way through. I would love being more fan of this man because I admire his opinions about cinema, comics, technology, his opposition to AI… and I enjoy his public talks I find online, but I always find things in his stories that don’t quite convince me, especially in how he structures them. He often digresses or dwells on details that lead nowhere.
Also, I don’t know if it’s a matter of the cameras they use now, the lighting or the specific characteristics of streaming productions, but everything looks digital and fake in the film (something really unusual with del Toro). The sets look like green screens even though the director physically made them!

To remind me of what cinema used to be like, an Asian movie came to the rescue once again, this time with the film The Old Woman with the Knife (Min Gyu-dong, 2025) . A very clichéd theme, that of the aging killer (you can guess that I love it), the film plays with the structure and dosage of information, and although the old killer ends up displaying abilities far beyond her presumed age, it is an incredibly enjoyable spectacle of intrigue and action, and its two hours fly by in a flash.

And that’s it for today, this time was brief due to some pending assignments.
In the next newsletter, I’ll give you all the details about an oncoming new project I’m working on, here in substack. Meanwhile, see you next time with the last chapter (for the moment) of Ginger returns!
Take care, guys.
Victor

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Copyright © 2025 Victor Santos. All rights reserved.

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DIGITAL COMICS:
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HELLO AND WELCOME TO A NEW EDITION OF MY NEWSLETTER!

Today I have a lot to tell you, so we’ll skip the preliminaries…

DRAWING MANGA

The Mangatober is finished, and if you want to see all my scanned drawings of this edition and the editions of previous years you can find them in my blog/site:
victorsantoscomics.blogspot.com/search/label/inktober
I hope you enjoyed it!

LINKS, LINKS, LINKS

In the US, Kid Maroon OGN, written by Chris Cantwell and published by Vault is now available:
-First 44 pages of the graphic novel
-Bonus and links to buy Kid Maroon
Along with Galaxy of Madness volume 2, written by Magdalene Vissagio, published as paperback by Mad Cave.
-Galaxy of Madness volume 1 (art by Mike Oeming)
-Galaxy of Madness volume 2
-Galaxy of Madness Omnibus (pre-order)

In France, the first volume of Requiem Chevalier Vampire will be released this January. It’s a manga adaptation I wrote from the original BD (bande desinée) created by Pat Mills and Olivier Ledroit and it’s drawn by a young and talented Bolivian artist named Seban.
-Preview: First chapter of the volume 1 (in French)
And recently ActuSF published the French edition of the Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 OGN adaptation I wrote, drawn and colored for Planeta Comic.

And in Spain, you have Los Reyes Elfos 25th Anniversary edition, and if everything goes well, we finally will have published the delayed (much to my regret) Cassandra graphic novel before the end of the year.

WRITING MANGA

Returning to Requiem, the story about this assignment has the curious circumstance that its original scriptwriter, legendary Pat Mills, is in his 70s and unfamiliar with manga, while the new artist, Seban, is a outrageously talented brat in his 20s whose main reading material is manga, so I was chosen as the writer to act as a bridge between the two generations. I am old enough to have grown up with European albums and American comic-books, but young enough to have experienced the manga boom of the 90s and be a regular manga reader.

So this book is unlike anything I’ve done before. I had written two self-contained 30-35-page stories using manga storytelling for the Japanese magazine Tezucomi, and a manga volume adapting the universe of the game Infinity. But in both cases, although I was working with pre-established universes (Osamu Tezuka’s characters and a SciFigame of miniatures), I was creating new stories. In this case, I’m adapting a story that’s already been done in comic form... except for a different type of comic.

Because it was originally published in installments of a few pages in a magazine and later compiled in big-size 48-page albums, it’s a very dense material, and adapting those albums to the narrative of 200-page manga volumes (each one structured in chapters of around 30 pages) is a really complex issue, because BD and manga are completely different media, both in terms of narrative, time... and in the way dialogue and character development are exposed. So I think the hardest part was choosing which parts to include and which to leave out or delay for later. Pacing the information is a crucial factor in manga, and it was very difficult to choose. Right now I’m starting volume 3, and I think I’m finally getting the hang of it.

But it’s exciting because I had never worked that way before. I had to change a lot of things and write and expand new parts to make it feel like a new and current story, not just retell the albums. The challenge, and working as a team with Seban, the editors, and the original team is enlightening. People from very different backgrounds and with completely different tastes... And there I am, in the eye of the storm. Is there any better place to be?

WATCHING, READING, RECOMMENDING (SOMETIMES HATING)

The third season of Tulsa King has started, but I’ve given up on the series for good. I found it difficult to tolerate protagonists who were considerably more unlikable than the supposed villains, and as in many Stallone productions, his ego ended up taking over the main character and leaving little room for the rest of the cast to develop. Stallone is a fascinating phenomenon in the sense that he has created two iconic characters (well, one it’s a literary adaptation) whose spirit he has betrayed twice for the sake of political propaganda. It seems like the kind of betrayal that would be committed by firing the original creator of a franchise and replacing him for a loyal servant of the Power, although in Sly’s case I feel it like a seppuku against his blue-collar hero (Rocky) and his tragic anti-war broken toy (Rambo) transforming them into ambassadors of the interests of the current administration.

My current dislike for Stallone is not 100% ideological. Tom Clancy’s works are probably at the opposite end of my political spectrum, and I’m really enjoying the Splinter Cell: Deathwatch series on Netflix. Everything I couldn’t find in the disappointing second season of the FX show The Old Man, I’m getting in spades in this animated series, even though I have zero prior knowledge of its videogame lore.

I think Derek Kolstad does a magnificent job as a writer and creator of the show. His contribution to the John Wick universe is often underestimated in favor of the directors Chad Stahelski and David Leitch, but his absence from the sequels and spin-offs to the saga, as well as his lesser involvement in the sequel to Nobody, are noticeable. He is a very intelligent writer capable of creating interesting characters with very few elements, and I find his background in B-movies very interesting, capable of sparking flashes of brilliance in crappy productions shot in Eastern Europe with gods of the video store pantheon such as Dolph Lundgren or Hollywood’s fallen angel par excellence, Cuba Gooding Jr.

Let’s talk now about novels… I just finished the Jonathan Ames’ Happy Doll series third novel, titled Karma Doll. Ames is another curious case in which I genuinely hate some of his creations (Bored to Death is surely the show with the most pedantic dialogue I have ever heard), and yet I’m in love with both his novella You Were Never Really Here and his Happy Doll detective series. A character completely opposite to the Mike Hammer stereotype: Buddhist, pothead, insecure, totally in love with his little dog George... but still unable to escape violence.

When it comes to comics, I have to admit that I’m pretty out of touch with what’s going on in the US. Except for some occasional independent books (in Brussels I got a beautiful giant edition of Jesse Lonergan’s wonderful Hedra) and a few compilations of old material I didn’t have yet (Captain America: Winter Soldier and Green Arrow: Year One recently), I’m basically buying manga (Dandadan, Sakamoto days, the Saint Seiya Final Edition, Sanctuary reprint) and some bande desinée album (I’ve gotten hooked on Peyo’s The Smurfs again at 48 years old).

Honestly, I’m lately a little dejected about the American market. Facts like the suffocating presence of AI, the fees that prevent me from shipping items from my store (even gifts to friends) and how difficult it’s to get fair deals for your own project really gets me down. The idea of a Patreon for some of them is once again resonating strongly in my mind.

Well, enough whining! It's time to get back to work, to the drawing board and the computer!

See you next time with a new chapter of Ginger returns!
Victor

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Copyright © 2025 Victor Santos. All rights reserved.

FIND ME IN MY SOCIAL NETWORK:
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My official Facebook page and my personal Facebook page
My Twitter / My Instagram / My Bluesky / My Tumblr
The BROKEN ENGLISH Tinyletter archives

MY DIGITAL STORE (ORIGINAL ART, SKETCHBOOKS, SIGNED BOOKS):
victorsantos.bigcartel.com

DIGITAL COMICS:
POLAR / GUTS (AGAINST HOPE) / PARANOIA KILLER / GINGER’S REVENGE

BUY MY BOOKS:
My Amazon page / My Random House page

HELLO AND WELCOME TO A NEW EDITION OF MY NEWSLETTER!

This is the first newsletter after my vacation, which was practically in the first half of September. And now it’s basically October!! I feel like I'm returning to work last, but on the other hand, there's never a real disconnection, no matter how hard you try, and there's always some meeting or email that keeps you connected to the flow of the world.
So let's get started ASAP!

CONS AND BOOKS

This week I will attend the Chambéry Festival to present the French edition of my Fahrenheit 451 GN adaptation. The book has been published in Spanish, Italian, German, and coming soon in Mongolian and Russian. I can’t believe there is not an English version yet, especially for the US where Bradbury was born. I think that stories like these have never been so necessary.

Kid Maroon OGN is finally on sale, written by Chris Cantwell and published by Vault. Here you can read the first 44 pages:
https://aiptcomics.com/2025/05/19/read-kid-maroon-1-free-ogn-coming-september-2025/
And here you have a bunch of bonus and links to buy it:
https://blog.vaultcomics.com/notes-on-kid-maroon/

A SHORT REFLECTION

Has arrived enshittification to newsletters? I recently dropped out two newsletters I have been following with great interest. One was of a veteran writer of comics and TV, and other of a clever analyst about economics, and the reason was their latest newsletters looked advertorials about what they are buying and promoting. And even after scrolling their kind of informal amazon lists, they left space for their sponsors! The peak was when they announced their favorite AI tools and how to buy it. And especially with the writer, it was like “Ok, I am here for your work, so that’s the spam I want. I enjoy your opinions and your theories, I want to know what you are enjoying right now, music, books and comics. Not your new fancy watch or your leather travel jacket and even less your garbage AI management tool”.

So please, if you see my newsletter is transforming into a series of Youtube ads, please let me know. Or maybe the problem is that I don't have enough subscriptions like these guys, so you could say I would sell out if I have the chance? I hope you help me first.


INKTOBER

Again, Inktober 2025 (or what I used to call Inktober) is coming!
Since I enjoyed revisiting Akira Toriyama's characters last year, the 2025 theme will be manga and anime characters. I don't have any specific lists; we'll see what comes up each day.

Same rules: One (traditionally) inked drawing every day until the end of the month, not spending more than 30 minutes in a drawing on a 21x29,7 cm (8,3x11,7 inches) Canson sheet. I will be uploading them in my Twitter, Bluesky, Facebook and Instagram accounts (links at the bottom) and selling them in my big cartel store.
This year is going to be a bit irregular because I have two conventions in October, so some days I won't be posting and others I'll be drawing two images to make up for it. Stay tuned and sorry for the inconvenience!
If you want to see all my scanned drawings of this edition and the editions of previous years you can find them in my blog/site:
https://victorsantoscomics.blogspot.com/search/label/inktober

Unfortunately, due to recent changes in customs tariffs of the Trump administration, I will be unable to ship packages to the US until further notice, which means that Inktober (and probably most of the content in my online store and commissions) will not be sold to that country. At the moment, I haven’t found a way to restrict sales to the US in the store, so I will have to cancel orders as they come in.
I don’t know how this will end, but it will probably mean having to increase shipping costs specifically for the US or definitely canceling any sales.

THE MANHUNT

As I told you in my previous newsletter, I wanted to share with you my list my list of favorite “manhunt” genre movies. Surely you know that the origin of this story is Richard Connell's tale The Most Dangerous Game (AKA The Hounds of Zaroff), where the evil Count Zaroff hunts the unsuspecting who are shipwrecked on his island. I always loved the concept and tried my own version in my graphic novel Against Hope, where I recount not only that perverse game but also the subsequent revenge of the survivor, Hope Walker.

The Connell’s story (I recommend you, it’s a very cheap purchase in kindle) was adapted in 1932 with the same title, The most dangerous game. If you love the classic King Kong movie, it's really funny to watch because they were filmed at the same time on the same jungle sets, King Kong during the day and The Game at night. Leslie Banks gives a spectacular performance as the evil count.

The movie got a remake in 1945, A game of death. It's basically the movie shot again (even recycling footage) with small changes, like the character's origin. Still, it's very enjoyable.

The “manhunt” trope quickly became popular, basically because it was very cheap to produce, with dozens of variations of the story produced, and they have continued to appear to this day. I like to highlight a few more:

I’m sure you know the classic Hard target (1993) directed by the master John Woo, with Jean-Claude Van Damme and his impossible mullet and I couldn’t recommend it enough. But in 2016 a sequel that nobody has asked for appeared, starring my beloved Scott Adkins against a new bunch of despicable rich hunters, including Rhona Mitra dressed in leather during the Thai summer and a bullfighter who uses his toreo techniques against human beings. The characters are crazy enough to make it a very entertaining film.

Surviving the game (1994) adds the component of racism and tell us the beef between Ice-T against Rutger Hauer plus henchman Gary "I'm too crazy even for myself" Busey.

The Hunt (2020) is a darkly funny inversion of who the privileged are, with a spectacular Betty Gilpin as avenging prey.

And the bizarre version arrives with Slave girls beyond infinity (1987). Okay, it's actually a bad movie, but its shameless mix of crappy robots, terrible acting, horny mutants, and the interplanetary hunt for women in bikini is something worth seeing once in a lifetime.

And now if you'll excuse me I have to grab my crossbow and... Why I’m lying? I'm on the side of the poor preys. Hunt the rich!
See you next time with a new chapter of Ginger returns!
Victor

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Copyright © 2025 Victor Santos. All rights reserved.

FIND ME IN MY SOCIAL NETWORK:
victorsantoscomics.com
My official Facebook page and my personal Facebook page
My Twitter / My Instagram / My Bluesky / My Tumblr
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MY DIGITAL STORE (ORIGINAL ART, SKETCHBOOKS, SIGNED BOOKS):
victorsantos.bigcartel.com

DIGITAL COMICS:
POLAR / GUTS (AGAINST HOPE) / PARANOIA KILLER / GINGER’S REVENGE

BUY MY BOOKS:
My Amazon page / My Random House page

WELCOME TO AN EXTRA EDITION OF MY NEWSLETTER

Finally, after an odyssey of difficulties, project restructuring, and other events, I can announce that the KID MAROON graphic novel is now on sale.

KID MAROON is written by Chris Cantwell, with my art and colors by Mattia iacono, and published by Vault.
Here you can read the first 44 pages:
https://aiptcomics.com/2025/05/19/read-kid-maroon-1-free-ogn-coming-september-2025/
And here you have a bunch of bonus and links to buy it online (but you know, if you have the chance buy it in your favourite book and comics store):
https://blog.vaultcomics.com/notes-on-kid-maroon/

And this trailer about the misterious creator of Kid, Pep Sheperd:

Chris and I have poured our love for comics and mystery into this story. I truly hope you enjoy it and help us make it a success. Only easy actions like sharing and commenting help a lot. The road has been bumpy, but in the end, the final work remains.

And, if you didn’t have enough of my comics, mi run in the GALAXY OF MADNESS series, written by Magdalene Vissagio, has been recently published as paperback by Mad Cave.
https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Galaxy-of-Madness-Vol-2/Magdalene-Visaggio/Galaxy-of-Madness/9781545817780

See you soon with a new edition of the regular newsletter.
Victor

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Copyright © 2025 Victor Santos. All rights reserved.

FIND ME IN MY SOCIAL NETWORK:
victorsantoscomics.com
My official Facebook page and my personal Facebook page
My Twitter / My Instagram / My Bluesky / My Tumblr
The BROKEN ENGLISH Tinyletter archives

MY DIGITAL STORE (ORIGINAL ART, SKETCHBOOKS, SIGNED BOOKS):
victorsantos.bigcartel.com

DIGITAL COMICS:
POLAR / GUTS (AGAINST HOPE) / PARANOIA KILLER / GINGER’S REVENGE

BUY MY BOOKS:
My Amazon page / My Random House page

HELLO AGAIN AND WELCOME TO A NEW EDITION OF MY NEWSLETTER!

I hope you're not suffering too much from this hellish August and its high temperatures and heatwaves... Meanwhile, even though the heat is making me lose the desire to type or draw or work, here's a new edition of my newsletter.

READS OF INTEREST

My oncoming KID MAROON OGN, written by Chris Cantwell and published by Vault. Here you can read the first 44 pages:
https://aiptcomics.com/2025/05/19/read-kid-maroon-1-free-ogn-coming-september-2025/
And here you have a bunch of bonus and links to pre-order it:
https://blog.vaultcomics.com/notes-on-kid-maroon/

And even we have this super-cool trailer!!

And for the Spanish readers, a new 25th anniversary edition omnibus of the series that made me a professional in Spain launched this past July. LOS REYES ELFOS (The Elf Kings) is published by Dolmen.
https://dolmeneditorial.com/los-reyes-elfos-edicion-25o-aniversario/

THE BRAVE AND THE SEXY

Whenever I post this type of image of femmes fatales on social media, they are very well received. Apart from the fact that they are -obviously- images of beautiful women, I think people appreciate the play of lights and shadows and the aesthetics of vintage criminal tale .

People often cite the reference to the characteristic style of Frank Miller’s Sin City, which is accurate but not unique. In fact, both the works of Howard Chaykin and the pin-ups by the animation master Bruce Timm have a lot to do with these drawings.

The truth is that I really enjoy making these drawings, so lately I've been pondering about the possibility of working on something with this kind of character. Speaking of Chaykin, I remember how shocking Black Kiss was when it was published, because of its themes, format, and aesthetics (very short-length black-and-white comic books with explicit sex). So I was thinking about genres, especially reviled genres (the best ones), and the imagery of those sexy thrillers that became trendy during the 90s came to my mind. Movies like Basic Instinct, Jade or The Last Seduction, and shows like Silk Stalkings. OK, I'm not going to start paying homage to Shannon Tweed's crappy softcore movies, my standards are a little higher... Anyway, this is one of those things that stays in the back of my mind for some time, tenderising, and suddenly one day the idea for a story emerges. Maybe I'll have to remind you of this newsletter in a few years.

FROM THE CRADLE TO THE BOOK

I love talking about the process of making comics, especially storytelling, and checking some of my files of my Fahrenheit adaptation (I need some stuff for the oncoming French edition of the GN) I found these pages. When the Spanish publisher, Planeta, offered the gig to me, I had to make a little test for the Bradbury family. Just a couple of pages, you know, the guardians of the flame wanted to be sure their legacy was in good hands.

It seemed fair to me, but obviously I never intended to use these samples in the final book. First, even if I had a clear image in my mind of how the characters look because I had read the book several times, I have not made any character design and wanted to work a lot on it, especially the firefighters suits. Second, I need to investigate the tone and storytelling of the adaptation, and this is something you can only get during the process of making the book. It’s not something you plan, it’s a path you find walking the path itself.

I thought of two moments which mean a lot to me and were key scenes for the story. I think the first one is the first encounter of Montag and Clarisse. In the left is the sample I sent, and in the right the same scene that finally appeared in the book:

See what I mean? I tried to make something beautiful to show, but it wasn’t the tone the story needed. I found it when I began to work on it and discovered the storytelling and composition resources the adaptation was demanding. Maybe the first page, isolated, looks more spectacular… But it wasn't adequate.

You will see even more clearly in this second sample formed by two pages. I choose the immolation of the old lady, the collector of books, as second sample for the Bradbury family. You can appreciate how the scene is basically an exposition of facts:

There is an attempt to create a tension by using a size reduction of the panels in the dramatic suicide scene, but it’s more an intuition than a strong intention.
This is the final scene, fully developed in the GN:

So you can see that it wasn't just a matter of making the firefighters' uniforms cooler, but rather finding the right pacing and tempo that the story requires.

Perhaps this newsletter has ended up being too focused on my work. I had a few more topics to cover, such as my list of favorite “manhunt” genre movies, but I'll save those for my next newsletter.

See you next time with a new chapter of Ginger returns!
Victor

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HELLO MY FRIENDS, WELCOME TO A NEW EDITION OF MY NEWSLETTER!

We are heading inexorably towards August and if, like me, you are one of those who don't like the heat, you know that the worst is yet to come. While we long for a polar cold wave, I leave you with a new edition of my ravings.

BUT FIRST, THE SPAM

Some of my new books that may interest you and that you can purchase if you want to support my work:

My KID MAROON OGN, written by Chris Cantwell and published by Vault.
Here you can read the first 44 pages:
https://aiptcomics.com/2025/05/19/read-kid-maroon-1-free-ogn-coming-september-2025/
And here you have a bunch of bonus and links to pre-order it:
https://blog.vaultcomics.com/notes-on-kid-maroon/

The complete GALAXY OF MADNESS series, written by Magdalene Vissagio, will be finally published as 2 paperbacks by Mad Cave. Mike Oeming (Powers) drew five issues and I drew and colored the other five.
https://madcavestudios.com/comics/search/?filters=product_cat%5B1931%5D&v=12470fe406d4

And for the Spanish readers, a new 25th anniversary edition omnibus of the series that made me a professional in Spain (and to my astonishment, many authors claim that it had a considerable impact on him) launches this month. LOS REYES ELFOS (The Elf Kings) is published by Dolmen.
https://dolmeneditorial.com/los-reyes-elfos-edicion-25o-aniversario/

STRUCTURE IS STORY

One subject about writing comics that has always obsessed me is how they are structured. I think that writing a story is relatively easy, but what determines whether the reader is hooked or not is how you present it: The pacing, the number of pages needed for each scene, where (which in comics is equivalent to “when”) you place that plot twist… So when I have a story in mind, before the idea has barely forming in my mind I think “What structure I’m going to use?”. Is it going to be a story in chapters or is it going to be read in one sitting? What length is necessary to get the message across but not be so long that it feels bloated?
Or sometimes I even have a format in mind and I think "I want to tell a story in this way and at this size.... What could fit?". This is the size of my obsession.

It's funny that in this kind of secondary job that I have, developing different audiovisual projects, I have been in the situation of changing formats. I had two projects, one was Left Hand of the Devil and other was a spy thriller I can't talk about it yet. I wrote both pitches and developments for movie feature formats and at some point (due to market demands of potential producers) they must be transformed into TV shows.

But of course, you can't take a movie script and chop it up and turn it into a series. Well, you can do it and do it wrongly and make Obi-Wan Kenobi. But you shouldn’t. Or you can have a Moana TV show for Disney+ and transform it into the sequel of the first movie due to monetary reasons, and then you have all these bunch of characters, conceived to have their own story arc, with no time to develop them.

It’s said that movies are driven by story and series are driven by characters, and it’s something you can apply in comic-books too. And this is the reason why the compilation of ongoing series like Marvel or DC superheroes don’t often work properly as graphic novels (even now that writers have the trade paperbacks as final format in mind). You can name great exceptions like Watchmen or Batman: Year One (although its episodic structure reveals its serialized origin) but the thing is not so simple as gluing all those comic-books together.
We could say that the ongoing series are rivers (in the case of superhero universes, affluents of a big river called “continuity”) and the GNs should be like lakes.

So returning to my case, when we've had to work on that restructuring from film to show, you have to completely change how you tell the story. The characters are presented gradually and the information is dosed differently. The basic movie three-act structure no longer works. And you have to expand what they call “world-building”. In essence, there is more time for things to happen and more time for the viewer to ask questions. And much more time to keep their attention focused on your story, which today is practically a chimera.

But whether in series or comics, you have to try. That's why we tell stories.

And this story comes to an end (for now).
See you soon in a couple of weeks with the second chapter of Ginger returns!
Victor

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HELLO AND WELCOME TO A NEW EDITION OF MY NEWSLETTER!

I hope you are all well. Today we're going to get straight to the point with a couple of news items about wayward children.

THE MAROON SPAM HAS BEGUN!

I don’t want to distract you too much with the general information because you can find it in my previous announcement.
KID MAROON. Original graphic novel. Hard-boiled kid detective. Written by Christopher Cantwell (Halt and Catch Fire, Iron Man, Doctor Doom). Drawn by me with colors by Mattia Iacono. On sale this September published by Vault comics. A letter of love to comics, to Will Eisner, Johnny Craig, Chester Gould, Harvey Kurztman and all the great masters.

And if you don’t believe me, you can read THE FIRST CHAPTER COMPLETELY FREE (44 pages!!) here:
https://aiptcomics.com/2025/05/19/read-kid-maroon-1-free-ogn-coming-september-2025/
And the Kid Maroon site in Vault, where you can read all the information about the book, the character, with production notes by Chris & me and of course, links to pre-order the book.
https://blog.vaultcomics.com/p/bb0fe45c-23e9-49d6-8fcb-5c99267ae2bb/?member_status=free
Pre-orders and sharing helps a lot so if you have the chance, you know what to do. Thank you for your support!

THE REDHEAD GIRL IS BACK

And speaking of redhead kids, after some time thinking about a new story, I've finally decided to bring back my beloved British redhead with anger management issues. Ginger Returns is the continuation of the comic I've been publishing in this newsletter on a monthly basis, alternating it (whenever possible) with the regular version.

This is a new self-contained story, and you can read it without having read Ginger Revenges previously… But if you want to do it, you have the series available in this newsletter or in an excellent digital complete edition in PanelSyndicate (where you can pay what you want for it).

TECHNOLOGY RUINING THE FUN

I'm a hardcore fan of The Simpsons, one of those who doesn't mind torturing friends and family (and sometimes random people) using the most obscure references to the most forgotten episodes. I have a whatsapp chat with my brother (who is another fan) and we've practically developed a language of our own using those references.
Being a diehard fan makes me quite condescending about when the series "started to decline", which is a unanimous opinion that only differs in when we place the date.
I have really enjoyed many episodes beyond the “sacred first ten years”, and I feel a special predilection for those focused on the city of Springfield. The greatest advantage of such a long-running series is that it managed to create a living ecosystem of characters and relationships more tangible than many real places I know.

I think the problem with the series really came when they decided to leave the characters aside and focus on parodying very specific events or happenings. Basically, when then the “modern” internet came along.
Plots like “Homer gets cancelled on Twitter”, “Homer plays Pokemon Go”, “Homer uses Yelp”, “Bart takes part in a EA sports tournament, later attends a Minecraft convention” or “Marge gets into true crime podcasting” become the rule. In the latest seasons there is an episode about dressing like a clown and scaring people! This trend was viral one week!
The reason episodes like the Marge vs the monorail or The Joy of Sect are so brilliant is because they appealed to universal feelings of the human condition. Springfield worked as a reflection of our own greed, blind faith in charismatic leaders, or just plain stupidity.

It's something you can see even in the character designs, the originals were so obviously simple that they worked as “social vessels”, you could “project” all kinds of themes or situations on them. New additions’ designs are so baroque and specific that they seem destined to fill audience quotas.

I’m aware that I sound like an old geezer despising youth but obviously a narrative work is a reflection of the people who are writing it and it’s clear the generational turnover in The Simpsons screenwriters, and how most of their lives take place in virtual spaces.
So we no longer had an episode where Homer voluntarily gained weight to take advantage of the integration policies of the nuclear power plant. Instead, he opened a Youtube channel or created a viral dance for Tiktok.

I think when we incorporate technological elements into our stories, being too specific is a problem. In my opinion, we creators should aspire to a certain degree of universality.
And I'm not against stories that analyze the impact of technology or social media in our world. Black Mirror is a brilliant example, because if you rewatch any episode, you'll see it hasn't aged. And that's because the scripts of the show focus on the impact of technological advances on human relationships, while Homer getting a Google glasses was already old when it aired.

And after this “Old man yells at cloud” sermon, I finish this edition.
See you soon with the first chapter of Ginger returns!
Victor

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HELLO AND WELCOME TO A SPECIAL EDITION OF MY NEWSLETTER!

If you read my newsletter regularly, you know the rough beginnings of this noir project I drew with script by the great Chris Cantwell. Although it was initially going to be a miniseries, Vault decided to turn the project into a graphic novel, and finally it has been announced in Aiptcomics, and it will be published this September.

“Courtesy of Vault Comics, AIPT can share the entire first issue of Kid Maroon #1, along with the announcement of the OGN coming this September. Written by Christopher Cantwell (Halt and Catch Fire, Iron Man, Doctor Doom), drawn by Victor Santos (Polar, Violent Love), colored by Mattia Iacono (Kid Venom, The Dead Lucky), lettered by Andworld Design (The Many Deaths of Laila Starr), and designed by Adam Cahoon (The Nasty), the OGN comes in a oversized deluxe format with french flaps, foil treatment, and high-end paperstock.

Originally created by Shepard in 1944, the daily Kid Maroon comic strip focused on a hard-boiled boy detective who investigates horrendous crimes in his hometown of Crimeville. The series quickly attracted significant controversy, as the stories drew on Shepard’s nihilistic outlook, penchant for violence, and obsession with bathtub laudanum.”

You can read the press note and THE FIRST CHAPTER COMPLETELY FREE here:
https://aiptcomics.com/2025/05/19/read-kid-maroon-1-free-ogn-coming-september-2025/

The physical book is going to be gorgeous, I drew a new cover and I think it’s my favourite Kid drawing ever. So I think we will get something positive of these initial problemas we had, and thanks to this “transformation” of the project you will be able to enjoy a new super-cool edition.

Now the hard work begins, because the preorders are very important, so in future newsletters I will put the relevant links if you want to order now. Right now are hard times to edit a comic, especially creator-owned, and I think that acts of courage deserve to be rewarded. This is one of the works I'm most proud of, a real love letter to comics as a medium, so I'm going to fight for it.

Stay tuned!
Victor

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HELLO MY FRIENDS, WELCOME TO A NEW EDITION OF MY NEWSLETTER!

Lately, except for some pending commissions and stuff for the online store, I haven't drawn too much. I have been quite focused on writing, both a commissioned script and a personal project and revising a couple of scripts and story treatments (one of them for a TV project on which I have ended up in a still somewhat indirect way, it’s a story I will tell someday).

And I don't know if it happens to those of you who usually draw, but after several weeks without touching a pencil (physical or digital), I feel afraid that I'm not going to recover all the knowledge I've learned... Which is pretty stupid, isn't it?

I've also had time to work on the newsletter, so let's go!

FROM THE VAULT OF OLD WORKS: ANANSI BOYS

From time to time I like to rescue things that I couldn’t show at the time of creation. Previously I posted examples of concept art I made, like in a project of Polar anime, HERE and HERE, and an Against Hope attempt of a movie for Netflix HERE.

I made these illustrations in 2021 commissioned by director Mark Tonderai for the development of the TV show adapting Anansi Boys, a spin-off of American Gods. Taking as a reference the pilot episode script and some actors that appeared in American Gods, I made four images and a kind of poster.

I don't remember if the reason of this assignment was because Mark was in the development of the project or he aspired to be the showrunner... The fact is that he sent me this script to create some images. We had already done something similar together in the development of the Against Hope movie and it was quite simple and fun because Mark is a very nice guy. I don't know what happened to the series, I guess the project was cancelled after a long development or the terrible allegations against Neil Gaiman finally killed it.

At least the testimony of these images remains as a curiosity.

WHEN THE ARTIST IS GONE

Putting some order in my (literally) columns of comic-books boxes, I came across a book full of Image comics paperbacks. Amongst them it was this Zero series written by Ales Kot. And I don’t say "drawn by” because this series has the particularity of every issue being drawn by a different artist (but always with colors from the great Jordie Bellarie to unify the style in some way). It's not the first time someone used this model, Warren Ellis did it his Global Frequency.

If you check the copyright, the owner of the rights is Kot so, knowing how Image comic works, I guess he paid out of his pocket for all the guests. I find out later that he wrote a TV series pilot and got on the Blood List, which means he has real chances to get it made into a real audiovisual project.

(Please do not consider this story as an attack against this writer, who I don’t know personally. As often happens in my newsletter, something I saw/read/watched is the trigger for the topic I humbly choose to develop.)

My point is this writer (whom I repeat I do not know and have no specific feelings towards him and in fact I recommend to buy this comic) paid to develop his IP. He took that risk. And in part I think the artifice worked this way because most of these artists surely wouldn't have committed to an 18-issue series (which is how long it lasts) for something they didn’t share.

It’s a format (one “writer creator”, multiple artists) that I have seen repeated on several occasions that, as I say, is accessible to artists who cannot commit to more than one issue but, let's face it, it can be very convenient too. And I think it's not the same as collaborating on an already established series, like when you do a short story or a fill-in for a previously created series where the aesthetics and the path to follow are already clear.
And I'm not particularly against the writers who want to do it as long as the cards (and contracts) are on the table.... What happens when a publisher comes into the game and wants their piece of the pie?

It happens too often that a publisher and a writer team up to create a series, share the rights (especially the juicy rights to transform it into other media, i.e. TV, film and video games) and “commission” an external party to do the visual development. Visual aspect, on the other hand, which is inherent to the medium they are working on.

Let me be clear: This is not the same case as in the Anansi Boys illustrations I did for Mark, since in these I simply tried to capture a certain visual “mood” to reinforce a script that was the ultimate goal of the project. My images were not the final product, but a visual support for the script. But when you make a comic-book or a graphic novel, the artist (or artists) is adding layers of significance, creating a rhythm, an aesthetics and an acting of the characters and many other things that will be used in a future film script. It's co-writing.
It’s the same as not considering the first draft of a movie script or a prose novel as valid.

I will use two examples from a mainstream publisher, DC comics, in this case through its Vertigo imprint where DC “opened” the door to share the rights (or not?):

Fables is co-owned by writer Bill Willingham and DC comics. Although several artists passed through the series, artist Mark Buckingham was really who polished the aesthetics for which the series would be known and read, and even as Willingham was an artist and when selling the project he created some primitive character designs… Do you really believe that the series would have reached its cult status without the refined art and use of narrative of its star artist?

100 Bullets originally was “created” by DC comics and writer Brian Azzarello, and Eduardo Risso was “simply” hired to draw it. But Risso's undeniable contribution, his character design, lighting and storytelling made 100 Bullets' personality stand out over other crime series. So Azzarello, in an act of professional integrity, decided to share the ownership with Risso. And I can guess that Risso's part came out of the writer's, not that there was a 33% restructure of the copyright. If anyone knows, please correct me, but I'm sure that the business stayed at 25-25% and 50%. Anyway, good for Brian (you can see that this is not an anti-writer post).

If you think about it and we take the idea a little further, there is a certain parallelism between bypassing the artist as co-creator and telling the AI to make a comic book from your ideas. The seductive temptation to use AI is there for writers (and I'm also someone who prefers writing to the hard work of drawing) but you and I both know that the result is not the same.
The difference is that the artist will give you back more.
Surely the algorithm will take from here and there to give the image of something already known. In the best-case scenario, it will give you exactly what you demanded...
But the real -the human- artist will understand the writer's intentions and will apply that to the visuals.
The artist will come up with ideas that the writer hadn't thought of. He/she/they won't answer “you're right, how about this slightly modified shit?”.

And somehow or other, that has to be paid for.
With rights, with money (a lot, if it’s possible) but (and this goes for the big fishes) also with credit.
Because I am still sick of seeing characters of movies created by abstract corporations or ghost artists.

And now the social-fighter Victor has to go to review a contract that must be done well too.
See you in the next edition of BrokenEnglish! Meanwhile, take care and give love to your fellow artists (and writers)
Victor

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HELLO AND WELCOME TO A NEW EDITION OF MY NEWSLETTER!

I recently returned from the Barcelona Comic convention. Last year I didn't attend because I didn't have any new releases, but this time I presented the Spanish edition of Elixir. Two years of absence seems like a lifetime, because Barcelona is the most important meeting of the Spanish comic community and there are authors that I only see on that occasion.
It was a bittersweet time too, because I have this “end of an era” feeling. The (originally) little brother show of Barcelona, the Manga edition, next December, is already three times bigger than the comic version, which from my perspective the (let’s call it) “traditional” edition has entered an unstoppable process of decadence, in terms of the amount of people I see and the number of stands related to the industry.

I have no answers to assess the motives. I don't know if it is something that can be corrected or channeled, or if it is the natural course of things.
Anywere, there we are, fighting for art made by people and invited by the good people of Norma Editorial, publisher a large part of my American work and some GNs I've done for them like my Kurosawa biography.

(It’s weird that I feel like a stranger at manga fairs because -hey!- I started reading manga in my teens. I'm not a mature man who has joined the trend to look young.)

RED HOPE (PART 2) IS ONLINE

I commented that I was drawing “analogically” at times a new short story to publish on my Polar webcomic page, where the first three volumes of Polar and the Against Hope OGN began.
The story is titled RED HOPE, and originally I had planned a single story of 8 pages, but the storytelling expanded itself, and I divided it into two parts of 8 pages. If you didn’t read it yet, the first part was available at polarcomic a month ago, and the second and last one is online now ! I hope you like it!

This is something I’ve done for fun and no editor is paying me. I feel a little guilty for it, so you can ease my distress buying an original page in my bigcartel store as a way to fund my artistic whims. I considered it not "published" work, so I have put them at a cheaper price than usual and it’s a good opportunity to get a Polar style page at a good price.

FAMILY, THOSE NOSY PEOPLE

Just finished the first season of the new Day of the Jackal TV show, based on Frederick Forsyth’s novel and also taking elements of Fred Zinnemmann’s 1973 movie, which I love and was one of the influences for my Black Kaiser character. And even though I think it’s a very well-crafted entertainment, and Eddie Redmaine shines in his performance, I can't help but find annoying this resource that I see repeated in many productions that adapt characters to the longer format of the series: Adding a family to a main character who originally didn’t have it.

The problem is: Often the idea of the main character having a family clashes directly with his/her very original essence. If the reason is to humanize the character, an international hitman capable of killing anyone, it’s a basic mistake. Precisely what distinguishes the character is his absolute coldness and detachment from people.
Then, do you really need me to empathize with this new Jackal? At the beginning of the series, a client refuse to pay him for a job done, as a freelancer I was already fully committed!

And if the producers think a viewer won't watch a series starring a ruthless murderer... Then you can focus the spotlight on his pursuer. Ironically, the show consciously strives to make his persecutor, who is on the side of justice, an unfriendly character.

But there is another possibility: Adding a family is a new source of conflict and a way to fill more footage.
The problem of making a series from a movie is obvious: You need to tell a much longer story. But is adding a family the solution? Because in this show, the family subplot is unbearable. I enjoy very much the cat-and-mouse game between the hitman and his pursuer, performed by Lashana Lynch… And then do I have to pause my enthusiasm to watch the wife arguing with the mother-in-law and brother-in-law about buying a local business?
In fact, the Jackal has a tenuous camaraderie relationship with one of his client's agents performed by a solvent Eleanor Matsuura that I feel to be infinitely more interesting than his wife's, and it's barely developed.

I enjoyed the show, it has numerous virtues, like a very interesting new origin for the character, and it's filmed with care. But I wanted to use the excuse of the family as a starting point, because sometimes I get the impression that this resource is an easy way out.

Do you need more running time for your action story? Bring up more challenges, create new enemies or competitors. Squeeze your brains.

I remember the movie Shooter, an effective Matt Whalberg’s actioner transformed into a 3-season show. The story was about a lonely (almost an eremit) sniper. But now he’s sociable, good neighboor and has a family.
Or the trilogy of Equalizer movies, this retired agent of Intelligence based on a 70s TV show… But now you have a new show with the plot every fan of Denzel Washington’s movies wanted to see: Indeed, problems with your ex-husband and kids custody. (Note: I like the idea of the gender swapping of the character even though I can't exactly consider myself a fan of Queen Latifah).

Can you imagine applying this logic to other cold-blood characters?
“Hey, let's make a Judge Dredd series… Ok, but now he's got an ex-wife who's claiming alimony.”
“Let's make a Dirty Harry series… Cool, but now he's got a mouthy daughter helping him on cases.”
”What if we do a Resident Evil show, but Jill Valentine has problems because her husband doesn't approve of her schedule?”

Hey, I am not against a character has a family! There are examples of how to use it excellently, as in the new update of Arsene Lupin's character, where his wife and son are part of the plot and are key to many of the protagonist's actions (and mistakes).

But when I talk with friends about fiction I get a lot of “the show is great but I hate the teen daughter/son” comments (I have my own thesis on writing teenage characters that I added to a TV treatment I wrote for Ginger's Revenge. Summary: They don't need to be jerks.) But creating a family just to have them pissing the protagonist (and the viewers) off… It never works.
I believe that family is an enriching element in a character, but it does not work for every story. And of course you can't treat it like another hero's antagonist. In fact, the action genre sadly has served to perpetuate this sexist stereotype: The hero's annoying wife.
You know her: “ Oh John, I know you have to save the world, but what about my emotional needs?”

I believe that the family element should contribute and not be an obstacle. I could be wrong (for sure) and it is possible that in the creations that I actually quote, the scriptwriters really added these elements to enrich the story... but it is not the impression that I have when I see them.
(Plus: These shows are big hits so what do I know?)

As always, everyone has their own opinion and I would be happy to hear yours.

Leave a comment

And that’s all for today!
See you in the next edition of Broken English!
Victor

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Copyright © 2025 Victor Santos. All rights reserved.

FIND ME IN MY SOCIAL NETWORK:
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DIGITAL COMICS:
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BUY MY BOOKS:
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HELLO AND WELCOME TO A NEW EDITION OF MY NEWSLETTER!

Nice to see you again and let’s begin!

I've recently been working on finding a new home for my graphic novel Cassandra: Lef Hand of the Devil after the bankruptcy of the Spanish publisher ECC, and the steps are coming along slowly but with good prospects. I've also received news on how the final edition of Kid Maroon will come out and I'm hopeful that the wait will be worth it.

I have also had several conversations about the possibility of turning Paranoia Killer and Ginger’s Revenge into audiovisual projects (I had one about Ginger some time ago but the interest has resurfaced from another frontline).
Don't freak out yet because I have these chats very often. I think it's become routine for most authors working on creator-owned series, although every once in a while (very once in a while) an interesting opportunity comes up.

This interest in some of my comics that have never been actually printed (and I see it more and more difficult due to this strange period of uncertainty) has made me remember a text I wrote eight months ago about the value of IP.

And it’s an interesting topic because webtoons have consolidated the idea that the comics have an entity of their own, and you can find a lot of examples in Korean TV shows based on webcomics.
Or using an USA-Netflix example, even if Hearthstopper had not been published in paper... Do you think the TV series would not have been made? If the characters and the story were powerful enough, what did it matter whether the medium was digital or physical?

I try to keep the hope that technology can help us to stand up to the giant platforms with their self-satisfying logaritmh-worshipper content. I know, technology is fucking us artists up pretty good lately… And you don’t need me to give you examples.
But every once in a while we can capture the enemy's weapons and fight back.

RED HOPE (PART 1) IS ONLINE

And speaking of webtoons/webcomics, I commented to you in my previous newsletter that I was drawing “analogically” at times a new short story to publish on my Polar webcomic page, where the first three volumes of Polar and the Against Hope OGN began, involving precisely two of the characters of those books: Christy White & Hope Walker.
The story is titled RED HOPE, and originally I had planned a single story of 8 pages, but finally I didn't have enough space for what I wanted to tell (although it was a really simple story), so I have divided it into two parts of 8 pages. The first one is already available at polarcomic, and the second one will be soon. I hope you like it!

And I also explained that this is something I’ve done for fun. I can't help but feel the guilt of the freelancer, so you can find the original pages in my bigcartel store as a way to fund this whim (an advantage of turning back to paper).

THE PACT

Like every decent and intelligent person, I love monster movies. And my first love, like many of my generation, were the Godzilla movies I rented or watched on TV when I was a kid in the 80s. Not the classic black and white dramatic film of 1954, but the monster brawls of the sixties or seventies, full of colorful sets, five monsters making wrestling moves at the same time, and massive destruction of models.

Now as an adult, although I have seen many of the later incarnations of Godzilla, especially the Japanese ones, my favorites still are the 19 movies that belong to what is called the Showa Era (1954-1975). I don't know why, but I find the destruction of those models and those tiny tanks and planes soothing and comforting.

I think there is a connection with the notion of craftsmanship and tangibility that these objects and these rubber suits have when you see them on your screen. It's like when you see a Wallace & Gromit movie, I feel fascinated just contemplating the small details of the kitchen or Wallace's inventions. Someone has fabricated every little object and placed it there.

There is another reason why I love those Godzilla movies: I think I unconsciously understood the concept of suspension of disbelief with them.

When you are a little kid, your relationship with fiction is complex, and the reasons are not only psychological, but also biological. Explaining it quickly, your brain, the way your connections work, is not fully formed; you don't perceive fiction as the artifice it is even though you KNOW it's fiction. Somehow, ALL feels real.

I saw a lot of good old 60-70s Japanese anime and movies at TV because this kind of material was a cheap source of content to local Spanish little broadcastings in the late 80s. I remember watching the 7th Godzilla statement, Ebirah: Horror of the Deep (1966) in some local channel and thinking “Ok, I know I'm looking at two guys in lizard and crab suits throwing polystyrene rocks at each other.... But I'm not going to let that spoil my fun”. I consciously made a pact with myself to override the disbelief.

It's a situation similar to when you are a child and you begin to suspect the real identity of the Three Wise Men and the Little Mouse Pérez (the Spanish equivalents of Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy). Partly you play to ignore the truth (we are talking about gifts) and partly you don't want to let that part of magic go.

So now I'm an adult and there is a part of me that belongs to the author I became, that is analytical and loves to study the structure of stories. But there is this part that belongs to the child I was once that still wants to believe in giant monsters. And guys, I think that is something that we should keep even if you are just fans.

So YouTube analysts with those “plot holes of this and this” accounts: Don't be so fussy and watch the monsters fight.

And that’s all for today! See you in the next edition.
Take care!
Victor

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Copyright © 2025 Victor Santos. All rights reserved.

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DIGITAL COMICS:
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BUY MY BOOKS:
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I want to thank you for the messages and comments on my previous newsletter. I didn't want to sound too pessimistic but I think that we live in a moment where due to social media, people who are starting out may feel that they are not succeeding fast enough or may fall apart due to rejection. So it’s important to de-romanticize some subjects. This profession is something very nice but it also has its ungrateful parts. Fortunately I can say that I’m one of the privileged ones, but that doesn’t mean that everybody hasn’t ups and downs.

Anyway, let's start now with the usual newsletter with recommendations and even some thoughts.

GALAXY OF MADNESS

Although the release of two of my more personal projects have been delayed, my five-issue run in the Galaxy of Madness series, created by Magdalene Vissaggio and my good friend Michael Avon Oeming is being published now. Mike drew the first five issues, with colors by Taki Soma, and I drew the rest of the series, including colors.

It was a really fun job because the series has a very retro-SciFi vibe, and I'm a devotee of movies like Forbidden Planet or The day the Earth stood still, so if your are a fan too, you’ll really love the series. I had the chance to use a more colorful pop style instead of the usual grim-and-gritty high-contrast I keep for noir stories, and it was kind of a relief to go nuts and draw these crazy aliens and planets and spaceships. Mags is also a wonderful writer of characters and gave each member of the crew a really complex personality.

And I took a new promo photo with some of the (cool) shit I have in the studio.

Some interesting links about the series:
https://madcavestudios.com/series/galaxy-of-madness/
https://popculthq-comics.com/the-crew-of-the-verisimilitude-is-back-in-galaxy-of-madness-6/
https://www.lunardistribution.com/home/search?term=galaxy+of+madness

TURNING ANALOG (TEMPORALLY)

I'm drawing at times a new short story to publish on my Polar webcomic page, where the first three volumes of Polar and the Against Hope OGN began.
Why now? The truth is that since 2019, when I started working in digital, I hadn’t made a comic in “analog” again. I have drawn the Inktober editions and obviously I must do the private commissions with brushes and paper, but in the case of comic pages I had definitely switched to digital inking. As it’s cleaner and faster, I must admit it was a very convenient tool that makes things easier. But recently I felt I had lost something.
So looking to “reconnect” with that part of my process I decided to make this story on paper, just for fun or as an exercise. Going back to the old school.
And like this is something done for fun I can't help but feel the guilt of the freelancer, so I will probably sell the original pages in my store (big disadvantage of digital) to fund this whim.

I decided to do a crazy thing and put together two characters from different books, both created by me: Christy White from the Polar novels and Hope Walker from Against Hope. My own crossover!
The deadly couple will face a group of human traffickers to rescue a teenage girl. I only had this storyline, and from there I’m improvising a silent story like in the good old days of the first version of Polar.
I don't know how many pages I will do yet, probably around 8, and I will link them to you as soon as I finish them.

WHY I HATE SCREAM

(Or why I usually dislike self-awareness in fiction.)

(Or maybe how self-awareness has been used wrongly lately.)

The other day I saw a 2003 movie by my beloved Johnnie To, director of Hong Kong noir classics like Election, Exiled or The Mission, titled Running on Karma. The synopsis must be seen to be believed, because it’s the story of a Buddhist monk who becomes a bodybuilder and stripper due to a traumatic experience in which he learns the ability to see the karma of people, and he knows how they will die depending on the bad deeds they did in their previous life.
Just as I tell it.
I was watching it and although it’s a strange movie and the story completely derails in its third act, I enjoyed it immensely for the simple reason that I literally didn't know what was going to happen the next minute. It went on like that for 90 minutes.

It’s not a comedy. It begins with some silly jokes but it ends up being a very dramatic and transcendent film about how acts of violence have repercussions on others, using a delirious premise to challenge us to get into it.

Which leads us to Scream.

I hate Scream for several reasons. One of them is that it made trendy an innocuous, bland, commercial horror with hardly a trace of blood. But the main reason is how it used the tool of self-awareness to sell us the same shit over and over again.
“Hey, we know this genre has these shitty rules, let’s repeat them again.”
“Hey, we know sequels stink, but let’s do one.”
I don’t hate self-awareness. Nor do I hate metalinguistic stories, and a good example is the brilliant The Cabin in the Woods, which works as both a horror story and a metaphor for the genre at the same time.
But making something obvious does not mask lazy writing, in the same way that Peter Parker using the Alien movie's plan (and quoting the reference) to defeat a villain in Avengers: Infinity war does not make the plagiarism any less flagrant.

And speaking of Marvel, I think it's precisely self-awareness that makes their movies not as much fun as they pretend to be. It's a common place that their characters often stop to point out the absurdity of the situations. You know, “This raccoon with a gun is talking to me?” Marvel tries to be faithful to the colorful world of comic-books but I think they betray them because they feel they are doing something ridiculous and want to warn us every five minutes.
The stylized art of comics works so well with superheroes that they don't need to justify themselves. It's when comics started to look like movies that creators started thinking “Hey, seen this way it looks stupid.”
For this reason and without a doubt my favorite Marvel movie is Captain America: The Winter Soldier, because it's a great spy thriller with people in disguise throwing shields at each other and no character has a problem with it.

Honestly, I think Snyder's DC movies, with that grim and ridiculous attitude and the rest of his innumerable flaws seem a little more honest to me because Snyder believes in them in his particular, childish way. Maybe they can be considered idiotic movies for the most part, but at least they are committed to that vision.

That's why movies like Running on Karma rock, or another example you surely have seen: Face/off. This is such an amazing film because they take a completely stupid premise and go forward with it without any jokes about its silliness. Completely committed, all the way to the end, without worrying about the plausibility of the face-swapping process. And it works because of the commitment from the director, writers and actors. Because the fun part of creating a story is making you believe in a world where this happens.

No shame, no regret, even no concern about making a fool of yourself.
Create, after all.

And with this always necessary message of “don't apologize for doing what you love”, I end this edition.

See you soon!
Victor

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Copyright © 2025 Victor Santos. All rights reserved.

FIND ME IN MY SOCIAL NETWORK:
victorsantoscomics.com
My official Facebook page and my personal Facebook page
My Twitter / My Instagram / My Bluesky / My Tumblr
The BROKEN ENGLISH Tinyletter archives

MY DIGITAL STORE (ORIGINAL ART, SKETCHBOOKS, SIGNED BOOKS):
victorsantos.bigcartel.com

DIGITAL COMICS:
POLAR / GUTS (AGAINST HOPE) / PARANOIA KILLER / GINGER’S REVENGE

BUY MY BOOKS:
My Amazon page / My Random House page

HELLO MY FRIENDS, AND WELCOME TO A NEW EDITION OF MY NEWSLETTER!

This first month has been strange and complicated for me, although not for the same reasons that have made this January a darker world globally... But let's just say that the confluence of all this does not help in your day to day life.

ABOUT KID MAROON AND THE DIRECT MARKET

Professional creators often write about how exciting the world of comics is, but the truth is that it is often bitter and harsh. I hadn't commented about the Kid Maroon series recently due to some problems with the release of issue 1. I'm not very aware of how the publisher's PR managed it in social media but the issue was scheduled for November-December but it was delayed due to the publisher's change of printer. Then a worse problem arose related to the distribution system itself, the direct market: Initial orders were not very good. In a market based on hype in which when the first issue comes out, the retailers are asking for the third one, there is no margin to improve your numbers. If you combine this with the recent news about the Diamond distributor bankruptcy announcement and that even Vault is going to distribute its comic-books itself…. As you see, there is a real problem about how we are trying to sell this book.

The result of this chain of events was that the bosses decided my comic with Christopher Cantwell wasn’t going to be released as a comic-book miniseries. The good thing about this situation is that the strategy has been refocused and the series will come out as a graphic novel. Not as a trade paperback, but as an original graphic novel with the particularities of distribution in general bookstores.

I won't lie to you, having your comic get bad orders is disheartening. You feel you've ruined the book because your art should be the main bait, even though it often is not. Maybe the problem was prize, and the investment on double-size issues (more expensive than the regular comic-book) was too much for a saturated market. Or maybe the concept was too “meta” for a market who pay more attention to the umpteenth relaunches of nearly century-old superheroes and 80s franchises. In my darkest moments I end up thinking that we, the readers, especially men, are nothing more than grown-up children who just want to play with the same toys over and over again ad nauseam.

But I feel optimistic because the graphic novel market has a bigger space for creator-owned series. And readers who want to read it will probably have to wait until autumn, but in exchange you will have a much better edition. As a reader I like the format better, although as an artist sometimes I have had no choice but to work in the serialized 22-page format because it is better paid.

Time will tell if the decisions were the right ones, although I know that at least we all wanted to make them for the good of the series. And I have deep appreciation for the retailers and readers who ordered copies of that first edition that will never come out. I'm sure they will be there when the graphic novel comes out.

PLUS, CASSANDRA

As I write this, the publisher that was going to publish the OGN Cassandra: The Left Hand of the Devil (ECC, Spanish publisher of licenses like DC and Skybound) has declared insolvency and it’s going to shut down, so the book will not be published with them. In spite of the shit storm, I am one of the privileged ones who received the full advance and like the book seems that it wasn’t sent to print, I have the possibility of moving the book to another Spanish publisher.

So I have suddenly found that two of my titles that were going to be published right now have been postponed for reasons that are totally beyond my control, and even if it has not affected me economically, as an artist you want to share your work with the rest of Humanity.

Although I have new editions of my work coming out (international editions of Fahrenheit 451, Elixir and some old material printed again too) it’s depressing to have so many pages done and not really know when you’ll see them printed and distributed.

LOVING THE OUTSIDERS

Lately I have been revisiting some of Jean-Pierre Melville's films, essentially his gangster movies. Apart from the fact that I love his films, I have always been fascinated by the figure of this director because he was in love with American culture when in some French circles (especially artists) this was an unforgivable sin. When I saw his films for the first time in college, seeing those lonely assassins dressed with old-fashioned hats and coats like Alain Delon in Le Samurai, seemed to me the most natural thing (I was watching prehistoric stuff, 60s right?). But looking at them now, in context, it was basically French cinema with gangster cosplay... Melville wanted to live in that American fictional universe and he didn't care that at that time the critics were demanding for committed social realism.

Akira Kurosawa was frequently accused of being “too western” for Japan audiences (unlike Ozu, the “good brother”) and it was true that he was in love with John Ford and Dashiell Hammet, but also with Russian literature and, of course, his own culture. He aspired to create a universal narrative that could be enjoyed by everyone and this is one of the reasons I love him so much (like I said in the biography I wrote and draw about him).

I think I’m an unusual author in my country. I work mostly for the USA but I don't draw DC/Marvel superheroes (only a scarce bunch of us do creator-owned) and when I work for my country I try to incorporate “genre” elements (like crime) when here the autochthonous model of author (not sure how to call it) is either comedy or stories more focused on social/autobiographical chronicles. It is not something that, as with Melville, attracts a lot of critical acclaim. My books don't usually appear among the best of the year o the recommended ones in critics’ choice sections (not even the more “respectable” works like biographies or literary adaptations or my Eisner/Harvey nominated works). I generally receive pretty good reviews, but I never had that “point of excellence” for lists.
I don't care about it very much (well, maybe a little) but I use that feeling to embrace the idea of my fondness for John Carpenter, who calls himself an author (and rightly so!) even though his love of comics, pulp and “humble” genres (horror, action, western) means that a sector of the critics don't consider him as such. He is the third outsider of this particular pantheon of mine and he’s very much on my mind when the year ends and social networks are flooded with those predictable lists where you will never find me.

This has turned out to be a very personal newsletter…
Curse the artists and their unbearable ego! I guess we reflect more on ourselves when faced with bad news than with good news, which will eventually arrive, I’m sure.
I hope the next edition will be a little lighter, with some superficial nonsense.
Meanwhile, take care!
Victor

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Copyright © 2025 Victor Santos. All rights reserved.

FIND ME IN MY SOCIAL NETWORK:
victorsantoscomics.com
My official Facebook page and my personal Facebook page
My Twitter / My Instagram / My Bluesky / My Tumblr
The BROKEN ENGLISH Tinyletter archives

MY DIGITAL STORE (ORIGINAL ART, SKETCHBOOKS, SIGNED BOOKS):
victorsantos.bigcartel.com

DIGITAL COMICS:
POLAR / GUTS (AGAINST HOPE) / PARANOIA KILLER / GINGER’S REVENGE

BUY MY BOOKS:
My Amazon page / My Random House page

HELLO AND WELCOME TO A NEW EDITION OF MY NEWSLETTER!

Hi, friends!

A new year begins full of promises, hopefully most of them good. This year several series I've been working on during 2024 will be release this year (Or so I hope). Some in the USA, others in Spain and France... even one of my comics was recently bought by a Russian publisher! During 2024 I've been very quiet, with hardly any signing sessions, but surely this year I'll have to roll up my sleeves and work harder in promoting what's to come.

THOSE DAMN WRITERS

This 2024 I had a little bit of a bitter experience on a professional level, with a fellow writer. Nothing dramatic, but it is one of these cases in which you take the chance to reflect how you must behave as a collaborator of other professionals.

He was someone I knew and wanted to work with him on a creator-owned project. We started a previous project a couple of years ago and he left me high and dry with it after doing several designs and concept art, but I didn't keep in mind. That's life. He approached me recently but he wasn't interested in our previous project: He had one new in mind that he had been working on and was very excited about it. The whole conversation turned to how important it was to him. I tried to respond to their enthusiasm, but when I received the story, one thing became clear: It was not for me. The references, the setting, the genre... didn't really fit me. It wasn't a question of quality, I could see right away that it required another type of artist with a much more baroque style. It also required a huge development work, and we are talking about someone who had already left me alone with a half-finished project. Plus, I was coming off a very tough year of several very demanding jobs and preferred not to tackle something so ambitious so soon. So I told him all this with complete sincerity and opened the door for us to work on something where our interests were aligned.

His response was to cut off communication completely. He ignored me totally. A total silence that continues right now.

I made attempts to contact him to make things right but I gave up soon. Not worth it. In the best case, he will appear later telling how personal circumstances or his emotional state influenced his bad decisions. Perfect. But what about my circumstances? Because I didn’t feel very well with the situation.

I have worked on both sides of the chain. Sometimes I do everything, I'm often an artist illustrating others’ stories, and I write for others on occasion. And I'll tell you something: No one is here to fulfill the dreams of others. No one is anyone else's tool. Artists, writers, colorists and letterers, no one is anyone's servant. The great artist Carlos Pacheco compared the process to rock bands. Maybe in the bands there are more visible members but no one is at the exclusive service of anyone.
What that writer got with his bruised ego is my firm resolve never to work with him.

Luckily, I've had great experiences with writers and I've repeated with many of them. The problem is when a creator won't take no for an answer, and that's when an artist (especially a young one) has to know how to spot the red flags.

STORE UPDATES

I had some time to curate and scan the original art I have in my home, so I will be regularly updating my online store, where you can find signed and sketched books, blank covers, never-seen original art and drawings, and original pages from series like Polar, Against Hope, Bad Girls and The Mice Templar.

BUILDING FROM THE MAIN CHARACTER 

When I studied arts in college, I had a lot of arguments with teachers. Sometimes the reason could be I was an arrogant brat. But sometimes I was right. Of course, this is my newsletter and I will tell you one of these times I was right.

One of the problems at my university -I suppose it’s not the only place where it happens- is that most of the professors had never worked as pros. Many graduated and entered the university machinery until they became professors without going into the world of work. The real world. Frequently they even didn't know the technical vocabulary that the professionals used outside the walls of the school, and that they did not know how to use it.

I once had an argument with an animation teacher because she said that you should always write a story before taking any other step. The plot was all. But I told her that you could build a story based on many things such as creating a character and developing a world through it. She told me that it was never done that way. Again, you make the story, characters later. I didn't need to get a degree to see she was wrong.

I had the idea of writing about this subject while watching Russell Crowe’s movie The Pope’s Exorcist. Although I love horror films, surely exorcism movies are my least favorite. I find it kind of random how an exorcist solves the situation, it seems that the possession finishes basically when the runtime of the movie is over. And this movie is not an exception: It's a very routine story with all the twists you can expect from it. But it works. And it has been an unexpected commercial success. And the reason is because Russell Crowe’s character, the father Gabriele Amorth, is damn well built.

Usually exorcists in movies are serious and solemn, basically stuffy scholars. But the movie subverts this trope with a cheerful and careless rascal (this Mediterranean joie de vivre that makes mature American women fall in love when they visit Tuscany in Hallmark movies) who doesn’t hesitate to take a sip from his flask between prayers. You can't help but be on his side because he is also a man compassionate to human frailties. He is definitely not like the priest who gave me communion. He even owns his own Batmobile, a small Vespa that gives him a mundane nuance.
Writers also introduce elements of the crime genre that give a fresh touch to the story: He is an exorcist with his own methods and the ecclesiastical bureaucracy itself wants to put a stop to his methods: “I answer to no one except the Pope, suckers.”
Everything works so well with it that really the plot is the least of it. It’s not a surprise that Hollywood is working on a sequel.

Following the idea of series whose title is the main character's name, some other examples came to my mind.

Jack Reacher books follow the path of the Western genre heroes (or Eastern ronin warriors). So if you have an errand character with a different environment and rest of the cast changing, the author, Lee Child, obviously focused his efforts in creating a character so charismatic he never gets tired of him.

In manga series, one of the most habitual ways to build a project is defining the main character and developing the rest of the cast around him/her. The creator of Naruto, Masami Kishimoto, explained that the most difficult part was creating Naruto’s personality and backstory with his editor. After this, his friends and foes were created to reflect or oppose aspects of the little ninja.

So the lesson is that the paths of creation are numerous and the concept of classic approach (writing a story plot into three acts) is just one of them.

MOVIES, COVERS AND BOOKS

While visiting my family for the vacations I read the novel The killer's game by Joe R. Bonansinga. Since spending time with family can be really heartwarming but stressful at the same time, I wanted something really light for my nights. It's a very funny '97 dark action comedy that has just been adapted into a movie starring Dave Bautista, Sofia Boutella and my homoerotic obsession Scott Adkins. I’ve only seen the trailer but it looks like they took the original premise (an elite hitman misdiagnosed with cancer puts a price on his own head) and little else. But it’s about professional hitmen fighting each other, so of course I’ll see the movie.

I've said it in previous newsletters, I feel a lot of sympathy for those editions of books with the poster of the movie on the cover, whether they are adaptations or novelizations. I have a good handful of them. I would have loved to get an edition of my Polar GN with Mads Mikkelsen on the cover. Maybe if a sequel ends up being made I'll get that chance.

But culturally these “movie-books” are considered something like the lowest point of literature but for me it's just the opposite: The fact that they are a kind of strange pop hybrid is what makes them so special. And also that if someone tells me that something is not “intellectually high enough”, I feel a special urge to oppose.

And that’s all for today! See you in the next edition of my newsletter. As I comment from time to time, if you have comments, proposals for topics or questions, the comments section is at your disposal. And don't forget that sharing helps too.

Take care!
Victor

Share

Copyright © 2025 Victor Santos. All rights reserved.

FIND ME IN MY SOCIAL NETWORK:
victorsantoscomics.com
My official Facebook page and my personal Facebook page
My Twitter / My Instagram /  My Bluesky / My Tumblr
The BROKEN ENGLISH Tinyletter archives

MY DIGITAL STORE (ORIGINAL ART, SKETCHBOOKS, SIGNED BOOKS):
victorsantos.bigcartel.com

DIGITAL COMICS:
POLAR / GUTS (AGAINST HOPE) / PARANOIA KILLER / GINGER’S REVENGE

BUY MY BOOKS:
My Amazon page /  My Random House page