Lara Cayci: Okay, hi. So just starting out, like which comic overall is your favorite would you say?

Principal Delgado: I would say that when I was younger, what really led me into comic books was Batman, the 1960s Spider Man. I found a stash of those as a kid. And I really loved it. And then also some of the 80s daredevils. And from Batman, it was probably like the late 80s, early 90s that I really fell in love with. And then as I as I’ve gotten older and become an adult, I got more into some of the more outside of the big two. So I’ll be a nerd for a second here. So there’s the big two which are DC and Marvel, and then there’s smaller publishers. So there’s an image you know, Dark Horse, there’s, they’re more indie presses, and now they’re pretty relatively big. But as I’ve gotten older, I started to like to follow some of those that I found more appealing. And then I kind of grew up with comics where then I started reading comics from an improvement of DC called Vertigo. So I got into like Sandman is fabulous by Neil Gaiman. Yeah, I mean, there’s a lot of good ones. So I would say that it started with superheroes, but then it’s really gone into, as I’ve gotten older, it’s gone into sort of like looking at Comic books as literature.

Lara: Yeah, that’s cool. Like, which character is your faith? Not necessarily from like a comic, but which character do you think appeals to you the most?

Principal Delgado: You know, I have really been, this is kind of cheesy, but right now, the the comic book that I’m finding the most interesting is, there’s so before Sabrina, the Teenage, which was a Netflix series, it was actually a comic book, probably four or five years before. And actually, when I taught creative writing, here at SPA, I had them read an issue of it prior to it becoming a Netflix series. And the the Sabrina is a fascinating character, and the way that they’ve rebooted her so she’s not cartoony anymore. But she’s this complex protagonist, that’s essentially you know, she’s half witch and half half human. And so talking about almost like this, there’s a lot of interesting interplay about like a mixed heritage. And so they’ve done a lot of good stuff with her. So she’s the one that I’m enjoying right now. I’m actually reading a lot of Archie, horror comics are pretty good right now. So I’ve been enjoying that. But then if I go back in time, certainly I think Batman is probably the one that I loved as a kid the most. Um, yeah.

Lara: Honestly, I really like Batman. Do you like um, so you mentioned that as a child, you found a lot of comic books. And that’s how I got into it. Which age do you think?

Principal Delgado: Early. I, so I grew up in Mexico City, until I was about six years old. And even then they would have these, you know, video, these stands that would be out in the street, and you would buy, you could just buy these little comics. And there was a bandit in Mexico as a kid called Manila. And I would buy their comic books. And I would read theirs, and then they had like American comics that were translated into Spanish and I would buy and read those. But my aunt, actually in Mexico City who still lives there, most of my family’s in Mexico City. Um, she worked at a comic book publisher, and there was cartoonists that were there. And so she would take me to her office as a kid, and I would see them all stay sitting at their table sort of illustrating. And that is when I really got into it. And Mexican comics are really different than American comics in the sense that they’re, they’re very similar to like, what comics were like in the United States, maybe the 1950s, where it’s a lot of morality tales. So like, Tales of the crypt and, you know, vault of horror, like all of those are like morality tales in the 1950s. Like the bad guy always, you know, loses and has some kind of horrific grizzly death. And Mexican comics were very similar in the sense of they’re all these like people doing things they shouldn’t and then being punished in terrible ways. Right? Yeah. So those are the comics that I would read as a kid. So that’s where it started. And then I moved to the States,  what I discovered was like, then I discovered like American comics and got into probably started Superman, Spider Man, and then I discovered Batman. And that was it.

Lara: So like, you mentioned film adaptations. Which do you like which film or movie adaptation do you think is your favorite?

Principal Delgado: I think Marvel does a really good job. Actually I’ve enjoyed those a lot. I think DC does a terrible job. To be honest with you. I will say though that the Nolan films for the Dark Knight have been really particularly good. Um, I really have been enjoying the adventures. I watched it with my daughter, but I will say probably my favorite is the Spiderman Homecoming like that. That Spiderman. Yeah, there’s been a lot of different iterations of Spiderman is probably my favorite. I think it’s the most accurate to the character.

Lara: Oh, yeah. So, so which one is your least favorite then? Like a specific, not to call them out, but.

Principal Delgado: Probably the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. The Alan Moore film adaption was awful.

Lara: What about it? Like, what did they get wrong?

Principal Delgado: Just they made it. They made it like campy and they tried to be cute and clever. Well, if you read the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen by Alan Moore, the original one is really sort of this sophisticated, dark. It’s not funny. Yeah. You know, and they tried to make this sort of a funny campy one was such a, it was such a stray from it, that it was that it was sort of disappointing. And I also really hated Ben Affleck and Daredevil back in that. So whenever whenever that was early 2000s. Yeah,

Lara: So it was like they weren’t really accurate to them and accurate now. Yeah. So yeah, this is kind of a controversial question. Okay. Do you, which one do you prefer Marvel or DC overall?

Principal Delgado: Marvel for big, for the big universe. DC for back then.

Lara: Yeah. Okay. So, you know, since you were you said, when you were a child, you’re really drawn to like, the whole process of how they made it and stuff like now, what do you think draws you to them? Was it like, the art style, because personally, I’m an artist, I love the art style. I think it’s very, like, I think it’s almost like artistic, it’s very beautiful. Like, some of them are really interesting like to read. Like, when I was a child, I would read comic books and mangas, because I I’m bilingual, so I didn’t know how to read English well that way. So that’s why I really like those kinds of stuff. But like, do are you drawn to the stories the arts like.

Principal Delgado: I actually think they’re, they’re the story is the art. The art is the story, right? I think that that’s something that it’s such its own. You can’t separate one from the other. Like, if you look at a comic book, there are some comics that have no words to it, which I think are really good, but they’re written with a different intentionality. But really, if you look at a comic book script, it’s pretty boring. And it has to be the art that sort of joined with it. I think I’m drawn to it for a couple reasons. One is I do think it’s its own art form, I think, being able to tell a story visually in a sequential way. There’s people who do it who are just fabulous at it, right. And then I think that the other thing that I really enjoy about it is that I think with a lot of genres, that’s where there’s less sort of cultural investment in it looking a certain way and telling a certain story. And so usually in genre is where artists can be more playful and experiment more and and play with expectations in a way that doesn’t, that feels disarming to the reader. And so I think there’s a lot of really good stories that are told in comic books. That wouldn’t be that it’s almost because the art form isn’t taken as seriously that it’s able to scoot in and be more, almost countercultural. Right> Without sort of the the white blood cells of this is what a story supposed to look like coming in and attacking it right? Yeah, yeah. Um, so that’s what I like about it. And yeah, and the artist, fabulous, but I think if you have a, but it’s really, I don’t know if you’ve had this experience, but reading a comic that’s really well drawn but poorly written is really unsatisfying.

Lara: Because it had so much potential.

Principal Delgado: Right. So it’s got to be really written well, too. Yeah, yeah.

Lara: Thank you.

Principal Delgado: Yeah, yeah. Anytime we get to talk about comics, I’m pretty excited.