Henry Barajas and Rachel Merrill – The Gil Thorp Story
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Henry Barajas and Rachel Merrill are jointly interviewed about their collaboration on the Gil Thorp comic strip and the Death to Pachuco comic book
WILLIAM SCHWARTZ: How did you get the idea to make an “anti-celebration” strip like this?
RACHEL MERRILL: From what I understand, our editor Carrie Williams was the one who suggested the idea of the strip commenting on the general horror of the current political landscape on America’s so-called “birthday.”
HENRY BARAJAS: The Fourth of July strip is a jarring shift from the kids attending their prom to making a statement. I wanted it to be like an after-school special where the cast of characters addresses the powers that be who are listening and own the news outlets where the strip lives in and sits between strips like Garfield and Peanuts. It was meant to make you stop and pay attention to what’s going on around you.
William Schwartz for The Comics Journal interviews the Gil Thorp team of Henry Barajas and Rachel Merrill.
Gil Thorp is an old name in the newspaper comic industry, dating back to 1958 in its depiction of the titular high school coach dealing with various sports-related dramas, and it was often segregated into the sports page of the newspaper. The hiring of Henry Barajas in 2022 as writer and Rachel Merrill as artist in 2024, however, has brought the strip into a new era — something taken into sharp relief with the recent July 4 strip
How did you come to be hired for Gil Thorp in the first place?
MERRILL: I owe all that directly to Henry. Initially, he had planned to approach me about doing the interior art/collaborating on Death To Pachuco together, but he and Tribune Agency received word that Rod Whigham was planning to retire — and so Henry offered my name up to the head of acquisitions…
BARAJAS: My good friend, collaborator, and former boss Alex Segura passed my resume along. I used to work for the Arizona Daily Star and the Tucson Weekly before I moved to Los Angeles to break in the comic business. I was upfront with the kind of stories I wanted to tell. My pitch was Ted Lasso, but, in high school…
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