Primos focuses on a disconnected Mexican family who unites to save the world. The superhero comic is rooted in a connection to a shared Latinx history and culture, including recruiting Al Madrigal, a veteran of The Daily Show, as the comic series writer. With artwork by Carlo Barberi, Primos centers around three cousins who discover their powerful Mayan lineage.
Ahead of Primos' release from AWA Studios, CBR sat down for an exclusive interview with comic creator Al Madrigal. The writer delved into his love for comics and discussed what separates Primos' Ricky from other teen superhero protagonists. Throughout the discussion, Madrigal illuminated why it's vital to bring authentic Latinx voices to the genre.
Al Madrigal: I was always a big Flash fan. I always gravitated towards wittier side characters. My kids were of age when [the Arrowverse Flash series] came out, when all those Greg Berlanti shows started coming out. So we started watching The CW's Arrow and Flash. Those were tough to stick with for us as the kids got older. But again, love all that.
CBR: It's interesting you bring that up because Ricky -- the central character of Primos' first issue -- he's got that talkative, almost goofy Flash vibe to him. What was it like getting to play with the genre like this?
It's great to have Axel Alonso be the guide for you, like my Sherpa into comics. Our narrator is going to be a kid who's an aimless 17-year-old fuck-up who just took molly and mushrooms at a party, and then finds out that he's the world's most powerful sorcerer. That's our narrator. So our eyes into this world and what's happening is a D-student at a public high school.
Which isn't exactly the Peter Parker mold.
No. He is not helping anyone in STAR Labs or at Oscorp. He's not getting the scholarship. He's getting slushies from the AM/PM near his house.
But that ends up working well contrasted against this massive cosmic space opera he's stuck in where he's not the hero. He's the kind of person you'd know in high school who's at the back of the party trying to look cool.
I'll admit this to you, even in Hollywood, I have this social anxiety... There are some parties where I walk into with my wife and I'm just terrified. I can't be cool here. This is like everybody I see on TV. I love TV so much that it's hard for me not to go, "Did you see that?" So I totally have been Ricky -- unprepared, almost unwilling to take advantage of an opportunity or do what's right.
And so, that's where this kid is at. Again, it's thrust upon him. Right when he gets his bracelets and his power, he sees that one of those big badass Mayan Sicarios is coming for his mom at her night shift at the hospital... I don't want to give away too much. But again, you're trying to give this kid a path to success. He's got to step up and it takes a little while. I was a late bloomer. I wasted my twenties, and he's on that same path.
At this point in your career, you've got experience in the worlds of film, television, stand-up comedy. But as you said earlier, you've got Axel Alonso as a resource while shifting into comics. What is that like as a creator to shift mediums like this -- and what surprised you the most about working on Primos?
[Axel] is the best resource. It's a combination of a couple of things. It's having artist Carlo Barberi to execute this... In some cases, it's complicated. Having Axel be excited about where this is going is the ultimate compliment because he's seen it all. I know I'm on the right path because my Sherpa is the best Sherpa there could possibly be and is telling me that I'm doing it correctly. When I'm not, when we're in the editing process, and when he's missing Ricky's narration or anything like that, he lets me know and I fix it. It's been great. We're buddies, that's the other thing. We're both football fans. We went to Detroit together at the beginning of the football season. He's become one of my really good friends.
This isn't your first experience with the superhero genre, either. You actually have a role in the currently still unreleased Morbius.
Let me defend Morbius getting pushed. Morbius was supposed to come out in July 2020. They identified that date. No one saw this pandemic coming. It's Sony and they don't have the Disney+ or the streamer relationship to air it on, and they're not going to sell it off. Having seen some of the scenes in ADR and talking to [Morbius director] Daniel Espinoza, it's good. That's why they've pushed it. If it was bad, they would've dumped it, so I am very glad that they preserved it.
As somebody who clearly loves this genre, what were some comic books that you looked to for inspiration?
It's almost like my acting and career, it's an eclectic mix of everything from Crossed, which is maybe the grossest comic book of all time, to Booster Gold. At The Daily Show, we were passing around graphic novels left and right. It was a lot of The Goon, a lot of Walking Dead, which I only made so far just because, just like with the TV show, it's like, "There's no hope." I read Scalped. Again, just a shit load of stuff behind me as well.
It's such an eclectic mix. It's nuts. [Once and Future] was fantastic. I really encourage anybody watching this, or reading this, or listening to this, just start. There's no reason why you can't crank one of these out. Just start. Whatever it is. If you've got this little nagging thing that led me to stand up and then opened up all these other doors -- if you've got that little nagging thing and voice, definitely listen to it and keep going.
One of the stated purposes you've given for creating Primos was that you wanted to truthfully represent the Latinx community. You wanted to give this underserved community more of an authentic voice. Why was it so important to you as a creator to see this and morph audiences' perspectives about Latinx characters?
On TV, we're rarely seeing ourselves as the main character. Everything I play, I'm the ethnic friend, the comic relief, the side character. And the same thing is true for most Latinos and Latinas on TV and in film. Did you see that USC Annenberg study that came out about Latinos in film and television? It's Cameron Diaz and J Lo. That's it! 20% of the population and 5% of the characters. You need to see yourself on TV. You need to see yourself in comic books. You need to see yourself and people like you represented in film. Not just to know that these jobs are possible, but to also dream and to see have a sense of value, I think.
How is a fourteen, fifteen-year-old kid -- that this is written for -- supposed to realize that they matter when they can't see anybody that looks like them on TV or in comics? Again, that is a big reason why we're doing Primos. It all goes back to The Daily Show. It's like, are you going to complain about it? John Stewart... When I was there, he realized that he could bark about something all day, but if you weren't posing a solution, what were you doing? You're just an asshole ranting. And the asshole ranting is funny, but if you're really going to truly have an impact, you got to do something about it. So that's what I and Axel did. We did something about it. We weren't just the guys complaining.
Primos #1 by Al Madrigal, Carlo Barberi, and Brian Reber is now available from AWA Comics