FOMO– New Novel Kickstarter

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FOMO.  Miss this Kickstarter and you will kick yourself in the ass.

Its me again, Mitch Hyman.  You probably know me for my comic book work and the popular film I produced based on that book, Bubba the Redneck Werewolf. Now, you’re probably asking how does a guy who writes about a beer swilling cigar chomping goofy ass werewolf go to writing an adventure tale based on a world-famous LGBT icon? Hell, if I were you that’s what I’d ask.

Actually, both are about something important to me and all of us these days… Acceptance. Bubba was just a dog catcher who caught the wrong dog and turned into this big hairy monster with a good heart who even the folks in his town still treated the same because at his core, Bubba was who he was. Chavela is the same.

She was not born in Mexico but she fell in love with the place and its people the same as I did. To quote her, “A Mexican is born wherever the F-ck she wants to be born.” Like I said, it’s all about acceptance and heart.

How I found Chavela goes back to my days in FM radio. I was in charge of a world music program that aired on weekends and so one day during my search for cool vocals and style I found a song called “La llarona”. So, I’m sitting there in the dark studio around 2 am and this voice comes over my headphones that chills me to my bones. It’s sweet but hard. It’s like someone vocally exposing their soul to the heavens above and a threat to the demons below. It was strength and afterward I went to find more of her music, and all had the same beauty and depth. I asked some Latin friends about her and found out she was like a lot of people who had depth and a social conscience. She was lost and found at the same time. She was an influencer before there were such things. The worlds of art, music and even politics were influenced by her. Frida Kahlo, the famous painter, was her lover and confidant. Politicians respected and feared her. The world of music changed in ways because of what her style brought to it. But best of all, she was a fighter. A fighter for rights for all people. An icon to the gay community and an ally to all oppressed folks.

She was also hilarious, dangerous and adventurous. Learning all this made her to me seem like someone who no matter what the odds were or how crazy a situation got, she could power through it. Nowa few years ago during the pandemic I was like all of you and locked down and so was Skyping and Zooming with friends I couldn’t visit with my buddy Adalisa Zarate was one of those. Ada and I had been going to San Diego Comic Con and doing panels on film making and story telling across our countries borders. What a lot of people don’t realize is that during the great depression bit these countries saved each other from starvation and fascist invasion.

In 1940, where this story takes place, the Vice President of the US had a secret plan and took a road trip driving his family to Mexico to be at the inauguration of Mexico’s new president. Along the way his niece and artist met Chavela and they both wound up on an adventure involving mysticism, ancient gods, nazis spies, romance and hilarious misadventure.

Simply put, I gave Chavela the adventure she was not only qualified for but deserved. I gotta say during my years long research I learned more about Mexican culture than I think I even knew of my own. And I even discovered I had family who left Europe in the early 1930’s to seek a new life and freedom in Mexico. So, here I am talking to you about an amazing woman who carried a pistol and a guitar and could use both to great effect when needed. So, Adalisa and I promise you an adventure that with keep you turning pages and a woman who was and still is the role model for so many millions of people. We are also proud to offer the book initially in Latin Spanish because Chavela would want it that way to honor the ones she loved most. The people of Mexico and Latin America. Yes, her life was tragic and she had struggles for many years, but still she survived and always got a standing ovation when she spoke or performed. You’ll do the same when you finish the last page and see just how sweet revenge can be and how bittersweet love between two people can turn out to be as well.

One last thing, this book is the only project that has been officially approved by Chavela’s family and loved ones and so it is highly collectible and does honor to those she left behind and loved. Adalisa was one of those as she was like a daughter to Chavela. That’s all I have for now. To see the stretch goals and how many wonderful and mainstream artists and others have committed to be on this project, just read the full proposal here on this page.

Now, to close this, let’s do this the way Chavela would want and this … ok you people, Let’s fund this F’in g project and go have a drink!

Viva Chavela!

Viva Chavela!

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Every country has their iconic voice in music and social awareness.

Singers and musicians have always been flag carriers for causes or for changes in society; marching under a banner as it were is just human nature. Chavela Vargas was all this and more to not only Mexico but quite a bit of Latin America.

She was a strong believer in human rights for all and the inspiration for many other musicians, artists, actors and even athletes. A famous player, Jonathan Gonzales, who left USA Soccer to play in Mexico quoted her famously to the press by saying: “Un mexicano nace donde se le da la gana!”  Translated – “A Mexican is born where he wants!”

Simply put, Chavela felt that your heart is where your love, loyalty and identity dwell.

I have a branch of my family that emigrated to Mexico from Europe during the 1920s.  As they had been involved in agriculture, they saw that Mexico was becoming a very progressive country with innovations to feeding their people and the world. But, that’s not where my love of Chavela started.

My love for Chavela began when I was working in FM radio in the USA. I had worked in Rock and Pop, but I saw that Jazz was a place where diversity and so many styles and voices were trending and so like my relatives, I went to find new venues and pastures to cultivate.  I was lucky enough to get a job at a progressive station that wanted to feature world music as part of its programming. I worked my way up to being music director and host for a special show that became a major force. The show was “Landscapes” and featured Jazz and global music.

One day, a shipment of recordings came in and one of these was a CD of Ranchera music. The music truly spoke of the soul of Mexico and one voice on this collection was amazing and chilling. It was Chavela Vargas who had reignited her career after many years of being silent. The song was “Paloma Negra” and it was haunting and beautiful. I sat in the studio just transfixed and I featured her for several shows over the months after. The response was as magical as she was. My listeners would call and ask for her and they even said that proudly they were now learning Latin Spanish so they could appreciate her further. I thought that was wonderful, but I knew somewhere in my DJ soul that it didn’t matter because they fell in love with her before wanting to understand her completely. The point was that they felt her and embraced her like a warm hug hello and a sad good bye at the same time.

Today, Chavela has become a force of nature once more as she has begun to entwine her way into all cultures again. If you watched the Netflix series “Wednesday” based on the Addams Family, you heard her music. She was playing in the background of several scenes, and you could not miss her soulful lilting voice taking over the atmosphere of the scene.

Now, as to the book I’ve written, I wrote this a year before that show premiered. When I watched and heard her, I knew that there was still a magic that came from her that was unfaded. From there, the book began when a dear friend of mine and the person who illustrated the novel with quite a few cool one-page images to accent the story came into help. That person was Adalisa Zarate, a well-known comic strip artist from Mexico City that I met at San Diego’s comic con.

Ada, my wife, and I hit it off like we had always known one another, and we knew eventually we’d do a project together. You’d expected it to be a comic as we are both comic folks but when we were discussing Mexico/USA history, Chavela’s name came up and I found out that she had been like an aunt to Ada. Ada’s mother was close with Chavela. Ada told me how Chavela and Ada’s family had been LGBT allies and Chavela was the banner carrier for that along with other important social change. I respected that as I had sought to help friends over the years to find their identity or defend the one, they had always known. It’s what humans should do, and love is important and knows no gender or caste. Love is a pure force and is powerful.

So, that was when I decided that Chavela was more than she appeared.  Her sense of adventure and the risks she took and the defiance of her beliefs inspired me to see her as an action hero.

A hero of mythical proportions. She struck me as Jane Goodall, Lara Croft, and lady Gaga all rolled into one.  She was cagey, resilient, horribly flawed but filled with light and passion. If you want to know what the novel is about, I was able to boil it down to what I put on the book’s back cover.

But, a warning!

Adalisa and I packed so much into his book that a few spare paragraphs don’t do it or our hero justice. You’ll just have to be satisfied with this basic description until you can geta copy which will be first published in Latin Spanish in honor of the people she loved the most and that being the Mexican public. I thank them and all who believe that we are our own destiny and joining with others all around the world can make it truly the global village we all so truly want.

The book will be available to the public soon. Keep coming back here and when it is mass market available, I’ll give out all details. One last thing, no one has rights to her character or story besides Adalisa and me, so if you want the real deal, this is the place to come.

Be well and keep faith!

Mitch

 

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Chavela, Chocolate and Cthulhu” back cover synopsis:

One thing about Chavela thought Diana Hutchinson (who was Chavela’s latest romantic interest), was that the hard drinking and boisterous Ranchera singer had no filter when dealing with people. If she thought something, it was out of her brain and on her tongue with no delay. Her candor was refreshing and assured you that you always knew where you stood with her, but Diana now understood why Diego Rivera (Frida Kahlo’s husband and a great artist too) had said that Chavela’s greatest weapon was her mouth and not her pistol or the half dozen razor edged knives she had stashed under her red jorongo.

In 1940’s Mexico, Nazi spies with their SS troopers discover a way to mix the old-world magic of ancient indigenous gods and vicious were creatures with new world science. Their plan was to try and end the newly formed partnership between the United States and Mexico. All this was for the glory of the deadly dangerous third Reich and global fascism.

With the help of Chavela Vargas, a rising star of Mexican music and social change, a young academic student who was the niece of the current Vice president of the US under Franklin Roosevelt who are about to form a passionate and powerful team that will take them on thrilling journey not only through Mexico but to regions beyond our universe. Fate is throws them into the very jaws or power mad nihilists and the dark entities they have vowed to serve.

 

 

My Summer Vacation

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Summer is almost gone.  Soon our thoughts will turn to my favorite time of year…Autumn!

Halloween, Thanksgiving, and cooler weather for those of us in warmer climates. Leaves and trees ablaze with color for those in the temperate areas. Pumpkin spiced everything and warm cups of favorite beverages. Yeah, Fall has lots to offer, and I love it all.

But, before all that, I had one of the best summers I can remember. Travel figured quite a bit for me.  All my efforts culminated with San Diego Comic Con (SDCC) 2022. The show had been on hold due to Covid.  It came roaring back this year. As I wandered the halls and streets of San Diego, I ran into many celebs.  I even had one come to a panel I was part of, more on that after a few more lines of my summation of the show in general.

It was unreal to walk past a display of sand sculptures on the street and see The Sandman himself, Neil Gaiman walking amongst the tributes to his wonderful comic, and now TV series. Walk a little farther and there’s Bruce Campbell and his “Pizza Poppa” cart mugging for the crowds. This time we were the ones who got paid by his hanging out with dozens of fans. Stephen Colbert hosted a panel. Patrick Stewart and Gates McFadden shared an on-camera kiss. All the current Star Trek shows were represented at panels and on the show floor. At night, the city became a city of heroes and villains all raising glasses and hell. If you’ve never been or have an original idea and concept you want to find a home for, then take your chances to get a pass.  Or if you are an industry comics pro with provable provenance, apply to get a pro pass and join the rest of us in the green rooms and at the tables to plan and plot. I make more deals and get more projects launched there than any place else. I don’t care how big some promoters tell you how big or important their show is, nothing else is SDCC.

I was honored this year to be asked to participate in a very unusual panel which now has had repercussions of positivity beyond what I thought would come. The story of this begins last November.

SDCC wanted to test the “batteries” as it were to see if the summer show to come could work with required vaccinations and other issues at the time.  I was invited to come to the “Mini” con and get to be part of the most controversial and hazardous panel they’ve ever done. It was a little minefield called: “What is cultural appropriation opposed to appreciation?” It was organized by my friend, advisor on Mexican culture and artist for my book, “Chavela, Chocolate and Cthulhu” … Adalisa Zarate.

Ada has been instrumental in bringing Mexican culture to the show including doing programming, as well as being integral in getting artists, film makers, and writers from her beautiful country to be now mainstays at the show. Even when racism and bigotry rampant under a certain disgraced US president, she persevered. And, because she knows I’m passionate and forward-thinking SOB and disliked that president with heat hotter than the hell, I represent as my Satanic alter ego from my film.  Plus, I like a good fight and to bring hope and understanding to a world desperately failing in brother and sisterhood as of late. The creator of Green Lantern, Martin Nodell once told me that I would have made a good lantern as I have no fear. I laughed and said that I’m too dumb to be scared.  LOL!

Ok, all that side, we did the panel, and it went over great! It was tense and there were a few moments where logic and reasoning had to brought to a steel edge, but it got so much attention that we were asked back this summer to do another along the same lines. What I did not realize was that it was going to be at the center of another controversy and help to clear said trouble. Here’s what happened…

The new Marvel universe offering in the Black Panther series, “Wakanda Forever.” It features a new Panther due to the untimely demise of the brilliant actor, Chadwick Boseman. This alone created controversy and hatred on line but then, another character being introduced started its own watery maelstrom. They cast Mexican Actor Tenoch Huerta to portray Namor, the Sub-Mariner. This caught many by surprise and not a pleasant one. Tenoch was under attack from even other Latins of other places outside Mexico for his role. They called him names beyond ones deserved and I was disgusted by it.

I am a huge Namor fan since I was a kid. I collected the original 1940’s books because I was fascinated with him. But, I’m also an open-minded person and got angry because they were not attacking the new mythology as much as they were attacking the actor portraying the character. I even had some heated conversations with friends from Cuba, Puerto Rico and South America who had worked with me in the past. We went at it like comic and film pros, not just troll fan folk. This was professionalism breaking down to me. I don’t give a damn if they never speak to me again or if my already crazy rep gets more mud on it, I was not going to watch bigotry bloom over something untested and not yet seen but disliked because they just felt the person was unworthy due to birth. I’m Jewish and have lived this idiocy for my whole life and fight like hell over it. The real reason for my anger was the ignorance of the character in the first place. Namor’s origin was that his father was a sea captain sailing the North Pole region when he encountered a woman of blue skin who was in trouble (Yeah, sound as like another water-born hero doesn’t it. well, the Sub Mariner was introduced almost a year and a half before Aquaman. I wonder if Jason Momoa had the same grief as he was dark and swarthy and not the blond hero, we all knew till the film series from DC). So, Namor was not “Caucasian”, because a teal hued mom ain’t gonna achieve that. So, let’s push forward to today.

This Namor is from a region off the coast of Mexico and South America and so it makes sense that he would be from an aquatic race consummate to the Olmec, Toltec or Aztecs. This is film and comics. We take liberties with mythology all the time. Wonder Woman is from Greek mythos but wears costuming honoring the USA. Now, are you getting what I’m throwing folks? It’s about the story and involving us enough to make us embrace it. But if we fight from the beginning and not even try then we are being ego and ethno centric ignoramuses. Here’s where you can close this page and go find something else to do if you want. But if you read farther, you are going to see something pretty cool. Go ahead and decide. I can wait.

Still here? Cool and welcome to the “global village”. I’m proud to know you.

So, Ada gathered myself, Erasmo Rodriguez- a radio journalist and clay cartoonist, also former contributor to Mexico’s MAD magazine, from Mexico’s film region of Guadalajara in the state of Jalisco, a brilliant comic artist Raul Valdes popular YouTube comedian Sebastian Finck and of course Ada herself. We took the dais and proceeded to talk of how we all can enjoy the world’s mythologies and learn from one another and do so without prejudices. As we were talking, cutting up and bonding, I noticed a really striking gent in the front row who was smiling ear to ear from our crazy antics. He was dressed as Mr. Fantastic and looking very cool. He applauded heartily when we finished and like a proper super hero disappeared to is next mission.  I had spotted Kang the Conqueror earlier and figured Reed had run to do battle with his long-time foe. Erasmo afterward when we were hanging out told me who the FF leader really was. It was Tenoch Huerta! He had heard from Erasmo what we were planning and came from his own panels and promotion for his upcoming debut film to see us.

Damn. Damn. DAMN!

Here was my favorite Marvel hero come to see us pontificate about his right to exist in our branch of the multiverse. I was so happy that I forgot my twenty-five years of being a pro not going fan boy and lost my shit. I’ve been partying with lots of film, comic, writing and TV celebs in the past but Tenoch was special to me as he was a good person and fighting the great fight for his role and himself as an actor to take his place in the Marvel and film universe.  With grace, good humor and intelligence I know he has, I look forward to seeing his debut in “Wakanda Forever”. And by the way, word reached me that if we do another panel like this, he is going to get the studios permission to join us on stage. If he does, I only hope Momoa doesn’t decide to challenge his Marvel rival. It won’t go well. I’m a tough bastard and have been a sport fisherman for most of my life.  If Aquaman thinks the Black Manta is a dangerous foe then he is about to meet the “Devil Fish” known as Mitch Hyman.

Now go read some comics, watch some film and TV and keep your minds fresh and open. I’ll see you all back here next month!

Be and stay well!

Note:  Here is the link to the SDCC 2022 panel.  Enjoy!