A Tequila-Drenched Cover (Inks and Tones)

Here's a sneak peek at the cover for El Bigote: A Tequila-Drenched Reckoning! Artist El Chivo penciled the scene, and Matt Soffe applied the inks and tones - and is busy at work adding colors. We're almost there...

Latest El Bigote News and Notes...

Above: El Bigote Rides Out by artist Christopher Geary.

A quick update on all things El Bigote:

The script for the second issue of El Bigote, 'La Noche De Los Muertoads', is now in artist El Chivo's hands, and he plans to start penciling it soon. Artist Christopher Geary has begun work of 'La Terror Del Sessquatch', and artist Stewart Davies is busy on the first episode of a short spinoff series entitled 'Exorcismo', which will feature the skull-faced baddie of 'A Tequila-Drenched Reckoning'.

The reason for there being so many scripts in production all at once? El Bigote is soon going to go live as a webcomic!

From the start the plan has been to produce El Bigote adventures even while searching for a distributor, making limited print runs available for any fans we happen to (somehow) pick up along the way. And by limited, I mean limited - as in 200 copies per issue. Any more than that just wouldn't be possible on our budget (we are starving artists, you know), and we'd be limited to publishing two or three issues a year; "distribution" would consist mainly of flogging comics at conventions across the country. With no money for advertising, a limited press run, and an uneven release schedule El Bigote wouldn't stand much of a chance to gain a readership.

But a webcomic will allow us to reach a potentially wider audience(fear not you long box puritans, those limited press runs are still going to happen).

And since we won't be hampered by print costs, El Bigote will be fully colored (though the printed version will be B&W). Colorist (and fantastic artist, letterer, bloke, and so forth) Owen Watts will be joining the El Bigote team to help us out with that!

Lastly, the biggest news is that 'A Tequila-Drenched Reckoning' is closer to being unveiled! ...but a separate post on that, later.

Behold a Pale Ostrich!

'I got hellfires a'burnin' inside me. Hellfires thet scorch flesh an' char bones. Hellfires thet blacken souls...'

2000AD art droid Grant Perkins - of whose absolutely bonkers style I'm a big big fan - drew the above pinup of Undead Quillslinger El Bigote and his faithful Ostrich. It'll appear in the A Tequila-Drenched Reckoning collection, and is set to be the cover of issue 4.

Be sure to visit Mr. Perkin's website...here!

A Skull-Faced Gunfighter with Burning Eyes.

'Tonight I played cards with a disgraced priest. We wagered confessions...'

Artist Stewart Davies drew the above pinup of El Bigote's skull-faced nemesis. It'll appear in the A Tequila-Drenched Reckoning collection, and will be the cover of a future collection...

A Tequila-Drenched Review...

Colin over at Too Busy Thinking About My Comics had this to say about El Bigote: A Tequila-Drenched Reckoning:

"I know how seriously Matthew McLaughlin takes his writing, and so I'm always taken aback to note how hard he works to make his scripts as entertainingly free from worthiness as possible. No lover of superheroes, he's developing his trade in a variety of sadly less-typical genres, from the grimmest of futuristic westerns to absurd rib-ticklers concerning medieval priests engaged in monster hunting. I admire his determination to carve out his own terse, smart and dryly amusing style, and I'm pleased to note the development of his latest venture, the fantasy western El Bigote, in which a Mexico plagued by the undead is patrolled by a ghoul-killer not given to excesses of negotiation or restraint. Matt's enthusiastic to be collaborating with artist El Chivo on the project and the result of their combined endeavours is, quite frankly, something of a hoot. You can find sample art and follow the properties progress forwards here at the El Bigote Facebook page, and there's an El Bigote site currently under construction here, featuring a splendid logo put together by the apparently tireless Bolt-01."

El Bigote: A Tequila-Drenched Reckoning will be available for FREE - both in print and digitally - very very soon now...

El Bigote: Wanted Dead or Dead Alive...

This Spanish-language teaser for El Bigote: A Tequila-Drenched Reckoning was done up for this past Day of the Dead. But don't let all the Espanol frighten you off - the comic is written mostly in Broken English. And Spanglish. And Bumpkin.

Welcome to Undead Mexico...

'For the Living a funeral, and for the Living Dead a party!' - Mexican Proverb.

You’re South of the Border now, the border between Life and the Afterlife. Welcome to Undead Mexico, where El Dia De Los Muertos never ends…

Living dead banditos and ghoulish conquistadores, cannibalistic muertoads and spectral sessquatches prowl Mexico’s haunted prairies – and it’s up to Undead Mexican Mustache-Quillslinger El Bigote to put them back in their tequila worm-infested graves!

Writer Locust, artist El Chivo and letterer Bolt 01 are set to uncork El Bigote: A Tequila-Drenched Reckoning on unsuspecting comic book readers.

A Tequila-Drenched Reckoning is a special stand-alone series preview issue aimed to introduce readers to and showcase the bizarre world of El Bigote, which just might be the only Gothic Mexican Horror-Western-Fantasy-Comedy comic book in existence!

Blending dark humor and cartoon violence with biting satire and the meanings of unlife, El Bigote is sure to be regarded as profound by someone and nonsense to everyone else.

'So where can I read El Bigote: A Tequila-Drenched Reckoning?' you inquire impatiently.

A special limited (100 copies) print edition of A Tequila-Drenched Reckoning will soon be available for FREE through the El Bigote El Blogote or the El Bigote Facebook Page (details will follow in a future post, but it’ll basically be first come first serve).

To make sure no one’s left out, the issue will also be available FREE digitally through…well…everywhere really: Clickwheel, Dropbox, Comixology, Myebook, ect. The plan is just to get as many people to read and (hopefully) enjoy El Bigote’s adventures.

Of course El Bigote's creators are actively searching for a Big Comics Executive off-kilter smart enough to throw lots of money at a weird little comic project and make them Rich Comics Superstars…

Buuut in the meantime, they'll continue to produce the comic independently.

The first full-length El Bigote story, La Noche De Los Muertoads, will be available mid-2012, and a series of episodic quillslinger adventures will appear in the pages of British Small Press anthology comics Paragon and AAAIIIEEE!!!.

Be sure to visit El Blogote for updates!