Astro & Inez: La Novela

Writer: Lewelin Polanco
Artist: Juan Romera
Letterer: Sean Rinehart

Cover A: Juan Romera
Cover B: Elizabeth Beals
Cover C: Lane Lloyd

The adorable misadventures of Astro, a troublemaking pup, and his human, Inéz! Astro has no sense of boundaries, and his impatience gets Inéz into all kinds of shenanigans. Inéz is a hopeless romantic with a “slightly” dramatic personality. She’ll play bingo with your sweet abuelita, and then whine about how she was hustled.

Astro & Inez is a comics one-shot built around five short comics. They ostensibly tell stories about Inez’s relationship with her rascally dog, Astro, but in the background is a continuing love story between Inez and Elena, and how Astro intentionally and unintentionally helps move their relationship along.

The first of these shorts was written in my Introduction to Writing Comics class, where Lewelin quickly stood out as an immensely talented new comics writer.

As Lewelin continued to write more Astro & Inez stories, she brought me on board. The scripts were already good, allowing us to dig in deep and make them really shine. When it came time to make the comic, Lewelin had me assemble the team and oversee the process of putting together interior art.

With a background in design and extensive contacts in the art community, she was able to put together the cover art, logo and branding and marketing materials herself.

One final, interesting aspect of this comic is that Inez is Afro-latina, like Lewelin, and the two leads both speak “spanglish,” switching fluidly between English and Spanish, with no translation provided to the reader (a choice that I loved and supported).

Google Translate was a reliable friend while editing the scripts and lettered pages, and I brought in a copy-editor who spoke fluent Spanish to help with the final product (while ultimately deferring to Lewelin on any notes).