In a darkened alley, shadows stretch across cracked pavement as a gang scatters in panic, fleeing down a narrow street. A lone paletero stands beside a weathered popsicle cart, his red shirt and jeans barely visible in the dim glow of a flickering light post. His face is hidden in shadow, mysterious and unreadable, as if he’s always been there, waiting. Across the alley in a window, a woman watches silently as the gang disappears into the night.
This is a scene from John Avina’s comic The Last Paletero, about a street vendor’s battle with Godzilla-sized developers. While the alley exists in Avina’s comic world, it draws from his experiences growing up in Pilsen in Chicago’s Lower West Side and the neighborhood streets he knows. Pilsen is a predominantly Mexican American neighborhood and its streets and Mexican murals serve as the cultural backdrop for his work. Pilsen is also the home of the National Museum of Mexican Art.
Avina is a community storyteller at heart, bringing stories of life in Pilsen to life through his indie comics. By day, he works at his mother’s funeral home and helps out at his family’s tortillería. He also runs Avina Photography, a wedding photo and video business he manages with his wife. Avina’s parents are from Tamazula, Mexico. In his comic book storytelling, Avina mixes horror, humor, and pop culture as central elements, shaping the playful and experimental aspects of his work by drawing on the staple of horror within Latinidad, which Avina refers to as the shared cultural, social and identity framework of Latino people, particularly how Mexican heritage shapes storytelling.
In Avina’s hands, indie comics become a site of “desiring temporality,” a way of imagining how Mexican American life could be seen beyond conquest narratives, deportation regimes, and generational loss. Drawing on lucha libre iconography, folklore, and his experiences growing up in Pilsen, his work brings the past into the present. Avina creates action and horror stories that center Latino characters and experiences, blending pop culture, mythology, and social commentary to imagine worlds where Mexican American stories are at the center.
Lucha as Legacy: Mexica Imagery into a Family Drama
Lucha Forever is a comic that Avina created about a former wrestler and struggling actor in Chicago who must balance his dreams and family responsibilities when a once-in-a-lifetime role collides with an unexpected alien invasion.
Neomexicanismo is a major art movement in Mexico that gained widespread popularity from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s. It drew heavily from popular culture, embracing iconic imagery like luchadores and their distinctive masks. Lucha Forever draws from neomexicanismo by utilizing the cultural symbolism of lucha libre and reinterpreting it through a contemporary story about identity, masculinity and family responsibility. In the story, a once-famous wrestler turned failed actor must choose between staying true to his craft or providing for his family.
Lucha Forever draws from neomexicanismo by utilizing the cultural symbolism of lucha libre and reinterpreting it through a contemporary story about identity, masculinity and family responsibility.
In Lucha Forever, Avina reflects on how much of Spain’s wealth was taken from what is now Mexico. He considers how different Mexico’s development and the experiences of its people might have been if that wealth had remained in the country. The comic explores themes of identity, pride, and resilience, using lucha libre as a symbol of cultural heritage and perseverance.
Since retiring his wrestling persona, King Midas, life has been anything but golden for Guillermo Díaz. After a failed audition, he is forced to sell the last pieces of memorabilia from his time as Mexico’s most celebrated luchador. Just when it seems things cannot get worse, the Kross Empire arrives and begins its invasion of Earth.
In one scene, Guillermo learns about other alien encounters throughout history including a striking moment where an alien faces off against an Aztec warrior.
”There’s a moment,” Avina says of the comic, “where, because the story follows a father and son and it’s about a father changing careers and a son caught in the mix, there’s a scene where the two of them find themselves on another planet, on top of a pyramid-like structure. While they’re up there, the dad kind of looks out at what could have been if the Mexica Empire had had the time to grow, and if, instead of a conquest relationship with Spain, there had been more of a trading relationship.”
In many of the comics created by the artist, including Lucha Forever and Pistoleta Americana, themes of time, memory and alternative histories are explored. Avina uses playful and imaginative stories to fantasize what could have been for Mexican American communities and how these imagined histories influence the stories meant to engage readers.
Storytelling as Social Commentary
When asked how his comics explore social, political, or cultural critiques, Avina mentioned his comic book The Last Paletero, describing it as a story about a folk hero, the paletero, protecting Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood.
The Last Paletero uses the story of a boy trying to save his father’s shop as a direct reflection of real housing pressures in Pilsen, especially displacement and rising costs tied to gentrification.
While gangs appear early on, Avina makes clear the bigger threat today is outside developers buying property and pricing out longtime residents. The monsters, like the Rat King or kaiju figures, symbolize these forces as something invasive and consuming rather than abstract.
“The way I did that was by taking social issues and then ‘monsterizing’ the antagonist. In the first issue, it focuses a lot on gangs, because when I was a kid in the 90s, gang culture was a major concern, and getting caught up in it was a real risk. All of that was a central focus,” Avina said.
By turning gangs into giant rats or developers into Godzilla-like monsters, Avina uses a playful, fantastical style that draws readers in, helping them feel and understand the real challenges people face in the community.
By mapping and photographing Pilsen, Avina made even his wildest monsters feel rooted in reality. “It’s real easy to disconnect [The Last Paletero] as that’s fiction. Whereas if I set it in Pilsen and you look at the art of the buildings, that is Pilsen. I literally took pictures of Pilsen. I took pictures of the streets that I’m writing about and I gave it to the artists,” Avina said.
Avina explained that for many people unfamiliar with Pilsen, there’s still a perception that gang violence is the neighborhood’s central problem. As he experienced growing up in the 1990s, gang activity was a real and immediate concern for young people growing up in the area. In the first issue of The Last Paletero, he represents that earlier reality through a massive, people-absorbing rat, turning a once-dominant community threat into something literal and visible.
“With that story, I talk about a lot of the social issues that are happening. Right now, with issues three and four, one focuses on religious authority and the other focuses on Immigration Customs Enforcement. We’re addressing things I know matter within the community and that people may have questions about. My goal is to show what I think and hopefully spark a conversation,” Avina explained.
Death as Part of Everyday Life
As a funeral director, death is a constant presence in Avina’s life, influencing the way he approaches storytelling.
“Death is part of my everyday life. Sometimes it’s like a gift, where I get to help people mourn and feel, and for a moment, I become part of the family, guiding them through the grief process,” Avina said.
Many of Avina’s works, including Lockjaw, Americana, and Devil in the Rearview, explore grief as a central theme. His focus on grief isn’t just about mourning, but about the unexpected moments when a song or a scent brings back memories of someone who they will never see again.
Avina’s exploration of grief and the ways people remember the departed connects naturally to Mexican traditions, like the calavera (skulls and skeletons), which symbolize both remembrance and celebration of those who have passed.
The calavera is a very popular Mexican form or icon. For Day of the Dead, the calavera represents honoring the dead. In 2023, Avina made his debut at the Days of the Dead convention in Chicago, bringing his horror comics to a local audience for the first time.
Showing his work at the convention was meaningful for him, as it allowed him to connect directly with fans and share comics deeply rooted in the community he grew up in. The event gave attendees a chance to see his Chicago-inspired storytelling up close, and Avina described the experience as a “huge piece of inspiration” for his ongoing work.
In Lockjaw & Pistolero, former mariachi singer Gustavo Plata has just five days to capture the Red Witch or risk losing his soul to an ancient Aztec god. The story draws on the imagery of the Aztec underworld, the realm of the dead, connecting Gustavo’s race against time to the calaveras that inspire Día de los Muertos and highlight the comic’s themes of mortality and fate.
“Calaveras are pretty much a standard in Mexico and now we see them in Mexican American art as well. Since the beginning of the 20th century, calaveras have appeared in cartoons, drawings, and prints. José Guadalupe Posada, (a Mexican graphic artist) really pushed that image into popular culture and since then, serious artists like Diego Rivera and others who work in cartoons and simple drawings have continued to take it up,” explained Cesáreo Moreno, Visual Arts Director and Chief Curator at the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago.
Learning from History
Avina emphasizes that storytelling isn’t just about revisiting the past, it’s about connecting history to present-day struggles. He points to events like the Tulsa Race Massacre, where decades passed before the story resurfaced in popular culture, leaving a generation unaware of its significance.
“It comes from two things. First, people don’t really understand their roots, because they’re disconnected from the ground level of activism. It can feel like we’re only talking about the past when I’m talking about last week. For Latino and Black creators, we owe it to the next generation to talk about it. If there’s too big a gap between an event and when the art about it comes out, we’re going to forget it,” Avina said.
By capturing these stories in art, creators can bridge that gap between the past and present.
By capturing these stories in art, creators can bridge that gap between the past and present.
“So by having artwork that tells stories, whether they are folklore, legends, contemporary narratives, or first-voice stories, we can serve as a mirror to Mexican culture. At the same time, it shows other communities ways to represent themselves and take pride in their own culture, their own stories and their own legacy here in this country. Maybe other cultures can see that too,” said artist and art educator Gilberto Sandoval.
Avina’s comics are more than entertainment; they are a bridge between memory, imagination and cultural identity.
“Latin main characters are always my focus, even when the story itself isn’t explicitly about identity. I want other storytellers to see that you can tell any kind of story, and what makes it Latino is the people within it. That’s how I want my stories to come across— familiar genres, centered on Latino characters,” Avina said.
Hector Cervantes is a Chicago-based freelance writer focused on stories impacting Latino communities, culture, and social issues. He earned his M.A. in Journalism from DePaul University, where he strengthened his reporting and storytelling skills across digital and print media.