We recently connected with Alex Araiza and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Alex thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What did your parents do right and how has that impacted you in your life and career?

It wasn’t uncommon for my parents to have two or three jobs during my childhood. Time has thankfully brought us out of such desperate days, but to tell you the truth, it took me a long time to actually fully understand how dire some years had been. Money is an old and constant issue that continues to bite at our heels, but those earlier days were hell for my mom and dad. Despite the lack of wealth, though, I was fortunate to have parents that were still able to gift and reward their kids with love of art, science, and reading.

My dad doesn’t find expressing sentiments an easy task, especially where my brother is concerned, but he does try. He grew up in a household of eight, no money, and a father that wasn’t at all that warm. Before my dad even had us he knew he wanted to be a dad that gave much more than he received in his youth.

He took us to every museum in San Antonio. He took us to watch meteor showers out in the Texas warm countryside, and to stargaze with laser fanfare at the local planetarium. My dad was dead set on making sure we met culture, science, and nature no matter the barrier. I’m glad he did this. Such a pursuit helped me realize early on how fun education can be, but also that was much more than what school and 90’s television could share.

My mom. My mom is the one who ended up with three kids post a divorce. I love my dad and he did as well as he could, but my mom had the much heavier task of having to raise us in between the fun moments as well as the weekends.

Both of my parents went through a lot in their youth, but my mom is the one who immigrated from a war torn Nicaragua as a teenager and without her parents or brothers. Despite the hardships, and also having to sometimes be the “disciplinary” parent, she encouraged our compassion, cultivated our love of books, and believed with all sincerity every dream we claimed, even when one of us decided to stop talking about marine biology and started talking about becoming a screenwriter.

My mom took all three of us regularly to the library as soon as we could crawl. She had all three of us loving to read early on and this was the best gift my mom gave us outside of her unconditional love (and cats). (We really love cats.) The gift of reading did bring adventure, diversity, and new worlds to our imaginations, but reading is so much more than that. Context clues, vocabulary, history, and all the basics that a teacher might point to to justify summer readings, all of that is true and my god, do you notice when you’re an adult and find yourself excelling at adapting, problem solving, and of ever growing want to expand your knowledge,

I don’t know how well I fair in my other skills, but those three skills have brought me from writing to screenwriting to cartooning to painting to illustrating and so on and so on. I am ever fortunate to have had my parents. I am grateful for their constant encouragement, and the cats.

Alex, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

My name is Alex D. Araiza. I have a hard time not loving all forms of art. Currently, as far as the industry goes, I’m in the general visual arts industry. My last job was as an artist and project manager at Sequential Potential Comics (SPC). They found me through Indeed, which is something that hadn’t occurred before. (Getting a job through Indeed, I mean.)

My job as a project manager at SPC involved managing artists, drawing, editing, coloring, and lettering educational illustrations and comics. The last project I was part of was for Chatham House’ International Affairs Journal’s 2022 special issue. I drew and lettered a series of six black and white comic strips involving the “Do’s and Don’t’s of International Affairs”. I’m glad I got to participate in that project before being let go by my bosses. SPC could no longer support the cost of my employment. I would love to continue working in comics, but I’m also excited for any art job as I truly am satisfied with finding creativity in my own personal work.

The first time I was paid to work on a comic was when I was approached by Kristen Radtke from Believer Magazine. She was searching for cartoonists to produce work for the literary magazine and she found me through Mari Naomi’s Cartoonists of Color database. I was still in the early stages of recovery from some of the worst years of my life, but her reaching out really helped shake me from the general fog I was still working through.

She asked me to pitch her a non-fiction comic with a max limit of thirteen pages, and I came back with an autobiography comic discussing my relationship with my brother. Joey, at that time, was in jail waiting for a trial that was months away. This hadn’t been the first time he had been arrested, but this was the first time the family couldn’t afford the bail. There was nothing left in the coffers, and so we all had to wait.

He was in jail for missing a payment for the previous arrest. He got picked up a lot when he was a teenager and a young adult. When he was a teenager he ran away from home after getting kicked out of high school the week he was supposed to graduate. My brother’s life has been rough, but he pulls through every time.

Now, there’s a lot I would love to redraw in that Believer comic, but I’m still proud of that piece. That whole experience gave me a lot to sit with. I turned out a thirteen page comic in one month (do not do this, it is not good for your body), and I remember it hurting so much, but also it was cathartic and sometimes fun. It hurt pulling all nighters and it hurt to voice some of my deepest worries about my brother, but like all my personal work, it was therapeutic. A thirteen page plea for my brother to live- to live many many years.

My current project is neither a journal comic or a series of horror illustrations (which is what I actually draw the most, but you wouldn’t know it based on what I get paid for), but something even more exciting!

Educational posters! Tah dah!

Well, okay it doesn’t sound as fun as horror illustrations or journal comics discussing my ever wandering brother, but I’m really excited at least.

My goal is to provide political and social information in a fun and grabbing way that can reach people who aren’t as weirdly into politics as I am. (Yes, I love chasing my family’s woes with a good cup of “the world is burning” on the daily.) I’m going to start with questions like “What is a filibuster?” or “How much of our taxes go to private golf courses?” You know, stuff a lot of pundits take for granted as general public knowledge.

I’m not sure if the posters will have any reach. It would be nice, but if it also inspires other progressive artists and writers to help make knowledge more accessible that also would be cool beans.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

I went to Minneapolis College of Art and Design for film, but by my junior year I could already feel that I had chosen the wrong major. I love film, I love editing, I love screenwriting, but the jobs available to someone without any connections like me were all in the technical side, which I was woefully unprepared for. When I graduated I applied to all I could, but my lack of experience and evidence of abilities were missing for camera and sound.

It’s funny as up until graduating I was very good at volunteering myself out in between my classes, homework, and that terrible cashier job at the airport. I thought working hard and networking in that fashion would help post graduation, but it left little room for sleep and my own projects. When I graduated I couldn’t get my foot in any door, not even a full time position at Whole Foods.

For a long time I was floating through my post grad years cycling through part-time jobs. I was a part-time teacher’s assistant with Reading Corps, a cashier at the art store within the college I graduated from, a cashier at the airport, and a cashier at a high-end grocery store. Ever balancing two part-time jobs, unable to get any full time position I applied for. It was hell, but thankfully I still had a community with my college and high school friends. My friends are brilliant artists. No filmmakers, but plenty of talented illustrators, cartoonists, writers, and animators.

Most of us were in the same boat post graduation, so to encourage each other we started Plus Dog Collective. We used the collective to create zines together and fund convention tables none of us could afford to pay on our own. Because of the collective I found myself suddenly believing and understanding that not only did I enjoy drawing comics and painting, but people actually liked what I drew and wrote too.

Zines sold. Paintings sold. Illustrations sold.

Still, It took me a bit to let go of my film dreams. I was the first one to graduate from college in all of my family, but I went to college for film. I was in so much debt. I had to get a film job, or so I thought.

I can’t really pinpoint when I fully embraced letting go of film, but I know once I did it was like letting go of a giant boulder that actually didn’t need to be pushed.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

There are many, but for the most part I find myself chasing the need to inform. Of course, when it comes to my non-fiction work, that is obvious, but this holds true for my fiction work as well.

I find myself really concerned with how easy it is for people to forget the individuality of others. The houseless, the addicts, the mentally ill, people are so ready to vilify those society left behind. It’s easy to chase guilt with hate.

I don’t understand it. No one is an extra, everyone has a story. No one exists or was born from a vacuum. People don’t suffer because they choose to suffer. Can people understand individuality alongside the knowledge that the dominoes of the past do impact who we become and what we become? Can we understand that we are everything that came before and are part of all that will come after?

I haven’t really brought up my horror work. It’s because I haven’t finished any of my horror projects to satisfaction. Every idea involves a horror story that has started to become more common in our fiction.

The chase of a fully fleshed out and realized character coming up against a horrifying situation or monster you really can’t fight. A monster that you only are encountering because you happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. It’s more real, you know, horrors happening to you not because you are a bad person, but because there are some things in life that will come for you because that’s where the dominoes happened to fall.

I want to create a horror story that can really capture this feeling, but also maybe when I’m writing the ending for the story, and my brother actually happens to survive, I’ll want to imply that despite how impossible the monster seems there is a chance we can survive.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://alexdaraiza.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alexdaraiza/
• Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/alexdaraiza
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/alex_d_araiza
• Other: https://ko-fi.com/alotoftinycats Hive: @alexdaraiza