An Interview with John Rios
By Travis Ball 

His name is Rios, John Rios.   

He’s not your typical secret agent, but he is living a double life these days.  Rios, the creator of the comic strip Dead Days, said he is working one art to finance his other art. 

“What’s making my money right now is design.  What’s wasting my money is cartooning,” Rios said.  “I don’t mind it.  Actually, I really dig it.” 

At the advertising design firm Solutions By Design Rios helps companies develop their identities.  He designs logos, brochures, letterheads and business cards.   

“I graduated on Friday and started working on Monday.  It was awesome.  People were saying, ‘ahh, no vacation?’  Nope it’s fine,” Rios said.  “I’ll start working right away.  Give me a job.” 

In June 2004 Rios graduated from Fresno State University with a bachelor’s degree in graphic design.  He said like every college graduate he was also worried that he wasn’t going to find a job.  Now after two years with Solutions By Design, Rios, 25, said his portfolio is growing. 

“You can’t go anywhere really great unless you have at least two years experience in the design field, so this is a great launching pad for me.  It has given me my two years and after this I can basically go where ever I want,” Rios said. 

  That place Rios wants to go is not too far from where he is.  He said he wants to juggle being a designer and a cartoonist. 

“I want to be a designer cartoonist.  I want a job where I can incorporate my cartoon and design sensibilities together to make original things that fit my clients needs,” Rios said.

At work Rios may develop identities for companies, but outside of work he continues to develop his own identity through cartooning. 

“The characters are kind of both extensions of myself,” Rios said about the two main characters of Dead Days.  “One character is my more sensible side.  The other character is my ‘I’ll do anything if it makes me feel good’ side.” 

Rios’ Dead Days strip first appeared in The Collegian at Fresno State in September 2001, and soon gained an audience. 

“The Collegian got me started and really helped me refine my style,” Rios said.  When working at the newspaper he was drawing two to three cartoons a week.  “I was forced to draw and I was forced to draw well.”  He said his time at The Collegian helped him refine his style to something that looks clean. 

Dead Days remains alive on the Internet.  In October 2005 Rios created deaddays.net and has been showing his work on the deviantart.com website since February 2003. 

“Working a full-time job and trying to keep a consistent web comic going is really hard work,” Rios said.  He works eight to nine hours a day and does 10 hours of Dead Days a week.  “It’s tough to balance the two.” 

Rios stopped cartooning for The Collegian after he graduated, but they soon wanted him back.  He said they contacted him a year later to see if he was still doing Dead Days and if he was interested in selling them comics for the paper. 

“It had a fan base and they wanted to print it again,” Rios said.  They pay him by comic and he has sold to them for the last three semesters.  “I’m also looking into making them available to other colleges around the area or around the country,” Rios said.  “That’s still to be seen though.  I’m concentrating on printing my books right now.” 

In February 2004 Rios printed his first book, “All The Crap I Was Able To Cram Into 32 Pages.”  The book was basically a Kinko’s job he said.  In March 2005 “Joy Ride” was printed.  Rios’ second book was a lot nicer he said.  He went to an actual printer.  He printed 500 copes and sold them all on the Internet, locally, or at trade shows.  Rios’ is working on a third book that is due out shortly. 

The success of Dead Days is something that Rios can find just about anywhere. 

“It would be cool in newspapers.  It would be cool in magazines.  It would be cool as a cartoon.  It would also be cool as its own thing, as its own entity,” Rios said.  “I see it going a lot of places, but I don’t see me being disappointed in any place it ends up going.  It’s getting a lot of momentum, and whatever it does with that momentum I’m going to be proud of it.  It’s better than it going nowhere.” 

Although Dead Days doesn’t yet have a James Bond type of following, Rios said seeing his comic strip turned into a full-length feature film would be good. 

Comics are finding exposure everywhere.  Animated television shows like The Simpsons, Family Guy and South Park provide laughs with motion while still comics like Garfield and Calvin and Hobbes remain popular. 

Rios sees the Internet as another avenue for exposure. 

“Web comics have changed the medium dramatically.  They have gotten so specific these days.  I can see web comics giving regular comics like newspaper comics a run for their money,” Rios said.  “Because newspaper comics have to be generic in nature so everybody can relate to them, or else they won’t have that big of a readership.” 

Rios grew up in Del Ray and in Kingsburg.  He is the youngest of his family of six.  He said all his brothers and sisters have grown up to be successful – lawyers, bankers, computer programmers, policeman, and principals.  All he wanted to do was draw. 

“I had no fall back plan, man.  When I was a kid I started drawing and that is all I was into.  The little kid scribbling in the back getting beat up and that sort of thing,” Rios said. 

What would keep Rios from being an artist?  When would he stop drawing?

“When both my arms are severed in a tractor accident,” Rios said. 

“I never thought of myself as anything but an artist,” he said.  “If I ever did get both my arms chopped off in a tractor accident I would be screwed dude.  I’d starve to death.” 

For the sake of himself and his fans it would do Rios good to stay away from tractors, because Dead Days has gained more than a local audience.  He said half the books he sells over the Internet are around the U.S., but the other half are from any place imaginable outside the U.S. 

“If I didn’t have an audience I wouldn’t feel so jazzed about making the comics.  I really like the fact that I have a readership and that they are counting on me for their laugh,” Rios said.  “The pressure is fun, I like the pressure.”      

Rios said the reason he has a lot of readers is because they get where he is coming from with his jokes.  “They kind of tap into the same kind of images I tap into when I hear certain things.” 

Most of the stories from Dead Days are experiences that Rios’ has had or those close to him have had.  He said if he almost hits a car in real life he would have flipped the car in Dead Days. 

“It’s a cartoon, I can take it as far as I want,” Rios said.  “I try to reach into my imagination as far as possible.  I never try to present things the way they happened.  I take what happened as a starting point and then go crazy with it.” 

According to Rios, cartooning is hard work.  A lot of people think it would be fun to be a cartoonist because they think the chicks would dig it, he said.  When making cartoons creativity and humor are keys. 

“You have to love to do it.  You have to look forward to the time when you have an hour to sit down at your drawing table.  You have to be able to disconnect yourself from the world for a little while.  Funniness helps too,” Rios said.  “A cartoonist without humor would be so stoic and mechanical, it’s like, ‘what’s the point?’” 
 

Travis Ball is currently a journalism major at California State University, Fresno mere inches away from graduation. He rocks hard.