Changay - Making a Comic Book in Puerto Rico

Hello there!

Sometimes it is funny when you go online and find a few things that brings a lot of memories. I remember a time in the early 90's when I was back in college at the Univerity of Puerto Rico, Arecibo campus (UPRA). I remember meeting somebody at the Radio studios inside the Communications department. His name is David Alvarez, he was doing a recording for a class project and he was there with another student name Jose Alvarez (no relation between the two of them) Jose was a very talented PR person, who at this time I think he may have gotten into politics.

David was a cartoon artist and he wanted to do a comic book. His cartoon Zacha y Anyelín was published at a local newspaper in his home town, Manatí. Funny thing was that I used to be a fan of the cartoon, butI didn't realized that he was the artist until a few weeks later. I told David that I wanted to be a writer and I was working on a Sci-Fi epic. David invited me to a reunion with some other collaborators who wanted to creat a studio named G.A.P. (Golden Artist Productions).

The day came that they all made a reunion to brainstorm ideas about what to publish. Let's just say it didn't go as planned. Some of the other artist wanted to do a serious super hero comic, David was more inclined for toons, and I? I didn't have an artist yet for my Sci-Fi epic. The reunion became a heavy argument and at the end the nameless artist (I want to keep his name secet... to protect the guilt... I mean innocent) yelled "All who want to be on my group, come with me!" Four guys went with this person, leaving David Alvarez and David Martinez (a very gifted inker) alone in one corner.

Alvarez asked me if I wanted to go with them since I could find an artist for my epic Sci-Fi thing. I thought about that for a couple of seconds. I looked at David and out of respect, since he was the one who invited me into this, I told him that I wanted to stay... maybe I could be of use.

The next week, he invited me to visit his studio. It was a very small room, on his grandmother's house, inside the garage. In there both Alvarez and Martinez showed me some characters that they were creating. The character was named Changay (in spanish "gay" rhymes with guy). There were a lot of great characters, both heroes and villains. The idea they had was to make a comic strip, but I believed that this could be much more. Ideas came by, lots of brainstorming sessions came and went. The first issue of Changay came in 1994 (if memory serves me well) and it debuted at the 809COLLECT Comic Con at San Juan, Puerto Rico. In that convention, we met Colleen Doran and Jo Duffy, who made a great impression on me and gave me a lot of pointers on writing.

On Issue #1 I served in helping with the plot, since the story is what David & David had before I joined the group.My credits as writer started from issue #2 to #6 (last issue). It is funny, since my writing style is not in the humorous, David A. and David M provided most of the jokes. I did come with a few of them, but the humor was all them! Changay was the union of serious storylines, with very funny toon comedy.

Julie, a young and idealistic scientist creates a battle armor to fight against the raging crime wave at Pheonix City. Her bosses, a group of scientist named Isaac, Gutierrez and Alfa Chevere, wanted her to prove her experiment. She says that a common man could be a hero. And she finds her common man in Arturo Mozambique, a foul-mouthed black bird who works for the Electrical Company alongside his pal Trigoberto McKein (who later in the series he's revealed to be the grandson of WW II superhero RocketTiger).

Arturo, thinking that he was chosen to go on a hot date with Julie, fails all the test that the scientist put him through. The scientists decides to pull the plug on Julie's experiment. While Arturo is dressing up on his civilian's clothing, a very depressed Julie is cleaning the mess in her lab, when she activates one of the test... a death trap! At the last moment Arturo saves Julie, that was proof enough for her that her common man could be a hero! Julie decides to fund the expriment for herself (thankfully, her dad is a very wealthy business man). Little does she knows that her hero, Changay, will face the greatest criminal mind in Pheonix City... The evil Muckarom.

There you have it, that is the Reader's Digest version of the first issue of Changay! During that time, we all had a lot of good things, bad things and all in-between happening to us. I've met one of Puerto Rico's most famous cartoonists Vicente Aviles and one of my dearest friends and colleague animator Reynaldo Leon.

This was a great time for me and I do miss them all. We were just a group of friends and at the end we became a band of brothers. To David A., David M., Jovany, Yoani, and Reynaldo: You were the best in my life.

I hope to see you one day soon.

In the meantime, I'll be working on my new stories... and who knows... Maybe there are more Changay stories to tell. God knows, I left it on one hell of a cliffhanger!

-Edward Santiago
AKA Lord_Galvatron
Screenwriter
and Writer of Changay

PS. I'll give more details about our work later on and give you more stories on how we did Changay, and why the character name is spelled CHANGUY in english. This is NOT over yet!

Changuy is copyright David Alvarez