Check it out at https://tapas.io/series/VANGUARD-SAGA/info

One of the things I wanted to do with this comic book is make it inclusive and a place for underrepresented persons of color, gender and sexual preference to have representation. 

The story, while not autobiographical, draws heavily from my personal belief and experiences.

As such, one of the biggest surprises in writing this has been my own personal identity. You see I’ve always struggled fitting in, alway felt outside the norm. Whether that was in school as one of the few LatinX kids who spoke Spanish and ate “weird” food, or within my own community because I was too “whitewashed” to fit in. 

But there was more to it. I loved the opposite gender, I wanted to date them, but I also felt jealousy of how beautiful they got to be and got to dress and be free to express their femininity. Deep down inside I wanted to be a part of that. I didn’t fit the stereotype of  other boys, especially traditional LatinX boys. Especially with an immigrant family from Mexico. I wasn’t “macho” enough, but that was pretty much the same with the male culture of the United States. 

Thanks to the encouragement of my wife, I have felt it time to come out and express my gender fluidity. What does that mean? It means I’m queer. It means I sometimes feel more feminine than male and have always struggled to let that out but never allowed it. Well, not anymore, like Lynx who is allowing herself to discover she is gay, I’m allowing myself the chance to discover what my gender expression is and how it fits into my life.

This attempt started off okay, but I felt that the artwork was inconsistent and at times shoddy.

This attempt was done in 1993 using the first version of Adobe Photoshop, which means NO LAYERS.

This has taken forever!

So the idea for this comic book came about in Junior High, starting out as the Protectors, then Centurions and finally Vanguard.

The idea has gone from being an idea drummed up by my friend Mike and I while we played with action figures and my sisters cast away dolls to an actual team of superheroes.

I worked on the "Bible" in college while getting my BFA (Go Utes!) and it grew at that point with the first Gulf War into something that was at first a galactic group of heroes to a group of "superheroes" trying to stop a seemingly unstoppable alien threat.

Slowly, the idea of how and why the alien threat to be and my ideas on spiritualism, anti-fascism and sense of justice started creeping into the comic idea.

In 2010 I found my friend Lance who convinced me to put out the comic under the banner Burning Phoenix Comics. I will admit not my best effort. The artwork was shoddy, the execution lazy and the maturity of the idea was not quite there. So my passion for it ebbed and flowed.

What was I doing with this comic, why was I doing this comic, is it even a superhero comic book anymore?

Fast forward to 2021 and I feel I know where this is going. My sense of spiritualism, anti-fascism, and sense of justice have grown as I have grown.

My main character is a woman because there should be more heroes that are woman. Being of color should not be looked down upon. Being LGBTQ+ is not wrong. People should be free to love and live how they want and on the backdrop of that I dropped this story about aliens, the end of the universe and people with abilities. But in the end it's about a journey. Mine and the main characters.

The journey to be open minded and to learn and be accepting, and in that vein I wanted to create this comic. I'll make mistakes and I'll probably piss off some people as I learn and get things right. Good, educate me.

But at the end of the day, this needs to come out for me. Hopefully, it resonates with someone. But if it doesn't at least I exorcised this idea and gave it a life.