Super Lucha Cats: A new comic book from Southeast L.A. County

Javier Solorzano, creator of Super Lucha Cats. (Courtesy photo)

When vampires, demons, and all manner of things that go bump in the night threaten the town, who will be there to save it?

The Super Lucha Cats will.

Created by 33-year-old Bell Gardens native Javier Solorzano, “Super Lucha Cats” is a brand-new comic inspired by Latin folklore, a love of lucha libre, and a couple of feline friends.

It follows the adventures of Coco, Pizza, Nopalito, and Fresa; four cats adopted off the street by a retired luchadora who – with the help of a magical lucha mask – raised and trained the four siblings to piledrive the forces of evil.

According to Solorzano, the journey to the creation of the book began around five years ago, with the book coming to fruition over the last year.

“The most obvious inspiration is I have two pet cats; one is named Coco, and one is named Pizza,” said Solorzano. “They’re the basis for Coco and Pizza in the comic.

“Just seeing how they interact with each other – how they wrestle around and how they bug each other – they definitely have a big brother / little sister vibe.”

Solorzano says that his cats would often begin playing and chasing each other while he would watch wrestling on tv.

“After a while, with my sketch pad I just decided to draw an ambiguous cat with a lucha mask, and I thought, ‘Oh, this is cute,’” said Solarzano.

Lucha Cats didn’t start off as a comic, however. Instead, Solorzano initially intended it as a clothing brand.

“Eventually, as I started doing comic conventions and art fairs, a lot of little kids would come and they’d see the big banner with the cat in the mask and they’d start asking, ‘Is this a cartoon? Is it a comic? Is it a book you’re making,’” said Solorzano.

Book editor Mark Batalla suggested that Solorzano write something with his seemingly popular cat hero but Solorzano initially resisted, due to his commitment to another project.

“It was at Long Beach Comic Con last year, the same thing happened…and this guy who saw what happened to me said, ‘You need a comic book,’” said Solorzano. “During the course of that convention, I started hashing out basically the rough beats of the story. It wasn’t until afterwards that I realized I kind of had this story in different pieces and parts rummaging around in my head this whole time.”

Solorzano likened the set up of the book to the “monster of the week” format seen in shows such as Scooby-Doo, so that readers will not feel lost or obligated to back track if they haven’t read from the very beginning, though this doesn’t mean that dedicated fans won’t still have an overarching narrative to follow from issue to issue.

“We want to use this as a chance to have each city have its own little ecosystem of creatures,” said Solorzano. “…if you pick up issue three, you’re not going to feel lost.”

“I think that’s something that big comic books from the big two [companies] have a problem with. I’ve taken my nephew out to go get comics and it’s overwhelming trying to figure out where to start because there is always some massive event where reality is going to be forever changed, and then it does it again in two years. I didn’t want to do that; I didn’t want it to be a thing where if a kid comes to the booth and we’re all out of issue one, then they don’t feel comfortable buying issue three because they feel they’re going to miss out on something.”

Local readers can expect some of the books settings to take direct inspiration from the surrounding area.

“Growing up, I was always hanging around Downey, Bell Gardens, South Gate, Whittier; basically, that entire little area,” said Solorzano. “I wanted to write a story about the place I grew up, just ‘cause I remember growing up – especially when I went to college – no one really knowing what area that is; it’s just ‘L.A.’”

“It was just a fun way to highlight that area, but also if kids in that area read it then they can identify with it a little bit.”

The monsters of Latin folklore also will play a huge part in the story. Solorzano says, “he didn’t know how not to include that stuff.”

“That was a huge part of it for me,” said Solorzano. “Vampires and werewolves are fun, but we see a lot of that. We don’t ever see comics that deal with the cryptids and monsters that my parents told us about.”

“…there’s a lot of kids whose families talk about or mention these monsters. To me, La Llorona is as much a part of horror as vampires and mummies and all that; I ingested all of that stuff around the same time, reading about La Llorona in a Spanish paper literally a month after checking out a book about Lon Chaney Jr. and Bella Lugosi and all those old Universal movie monsters.”

The book is aimed for a younger audience, however can still be enjoyed by adults.

Lucha Cats can be found on social media at @LuchaCats, with books and other merchandise available on Solorzano’s Etsy shop.