5. The Architects of the Queen’s Heroes

Read from the Magazine Edition

By Fernando Velez

How an unexpected act of kindness led to the architects behind a new generation of heroes.

At the heart of this universe is the team. A group of artists from underrepresented communities that had no experience making comics when we started, but had something far more important: commitment, hunger, and the belief that stories like ours deserved to be told. Stories that could give voice to people who had been pushed into silence or had forgotten they had one.

When I met Waiyen, he was working nonstop to send money back to his family in Venezuela. He was young, generous, and carried a responsibility most people his age never have to think about. After some time together, I started helping however I could. For too many, growing up queer in Venezuela is not easy, so we tried to find small ways to create change.

So we chose to help without hiding who we were.

We made shirts that said, “It’s queer people who are helping you,” and his family wore them while going into the streets, bringing food and essential supplies to people who were eating from trash or living with nothing.

Many of the same communities that reject queer people were the ones receiving that help, and still we showed up, even though they didn’t agree with us or accept us, we did it because they were human.

That experience shaped something fundamental within me, and it clarified what this universe would stand for.

The Queen’s Heroes was never meant to be a story about revenge or about becoming powerful enough to dominate the ones who hurt you, it was about choosing to protect humanity even when humanity has failed you.

Later, those who would become the creative team behind this universe carried that same philosophy. Many of us come from countries and cultures where being queer is still treated as something to reject, and yet we chose to build something visible, honest, and ours.

As the support continued we were working on the pilot of the comic — the first 17 pages. Artists were expensive in San Francisco, and we simply didn’t have the money to continue paying established professionals.

Meanwhile, more people in Venezuela were asking us for help. We sent what we could, but it became clear that donations alone weren’t a long-term solution. It helped in the moment, but it didn’t create stability or direction. It didn’t build something that could sustain itself.

That realization changed how I began to think about the project.

What we truly wanted to offer wasn’t temporary relief, but opportunity — a way for people to use their skills, to be part of something meaningful, to grow alongside a vision that was still forming while earning a decent income. 

So instead of continuing to send short-term support, we began looking for artists in Venezuela who wanted to join the project.

That decision reshaped everything. It wasn’t just about solving a financial limitation. It was the beginning of building a creative team connected not only by talent, but by shared experience, shared struggle, and shared belief in what this universe could become.

We began looking for talented people with skill, discipline, and vision who simply had no access to the industry. Artists whose work might never be seen beyond their neighborhood, not because it lacked quality, but because opportunity was not equally distributed.

At first, many artists turned down the opportunity once they learned the project was Queer, citing their religious beliefs. But we didn't lose faith, and one day, we found Doris and Daniel. They were the first.

That’s how we found Doris and Daniel. They were the first.

Doris Marcano started drawing as a child, making pictures for her grandmother. She remembers the smile on her grandmother’s face when she saw those drawings, and those moments stayed with her. Life pulled her into many responsibilities. She worked in a hospital. She carried weight. She survived. But she never let go of art.

When we met her and shared the idea of telling LGBTQ+ stories through comics, something clicked. She didn’t have experience in comics. But she had heart, curiosity and the courage to learn. What started as a few sketches slowly turned into a universe.

She listened to stories about the LGBTQ+ community — about discrimination, survival, resilience — and it expanded her understanding of what this project carried. It stopped being just illustration and it became a responsibility.

Over the years, her work has shaped the emotional texture of this universe. Line by line, expression by expression, she translated conflict, tenderness, rage, and hope into something visible.

When I was exhausted, she stayed steady. When the scale felt overwhelming, she focused on the next page.  She helped sustain the world they live in.

Then there was John — or La Petra, his drag name. He started with flat colors, then moved into inking, then into direction. He became someone who could take control when my mind was divided between too many responsibilities. He organized, managed, corrected, and elevated the work. He interpreted Kraven Comics and brought his own vision into it.

Elizabeth, Marifer, Geomar, Claudia, and others joined along the way. People who analyzed backgrounds, challenged composition, studied techniques, and pushed quality higher. None of us had formal comic training. What we had was a shared vision and the willingness to learn in real time. Together, we created standards we never thought we were capable of reaching.

More than a decade later, they are still here. Together, they have created over 800 pages of artwork for this universe. That longevity is not coincidence. It is proof that what began as a practical solution became the foundation of our creative structure.

It’s defined how this universe would be built. But I couldn’t forget the first team that paved the way to this creative journey. 

Brennan, who has been there since Kraven Magazine and today continues to greenlight the projects. My first writer and my editor. The person who understands how I think, how I feel, and what I mean even when my words are messy. Nothing gets published without his green light. If he says yes, I know it’s ready. What started as one article turned into a decades-long collaboration. He has edited not just stories, but my growth.

And Alex, from Venezuela, who at nineteen became the official graphic designer and art director of Kraven Magazine nearly fifteen years ago. Who also guided the lettering of the early episodes of this universe.

Life took us in different directions. Bringing him back now feels aligned with where the project stands today. We have grown and the vision has expanded. Having him here again carries weight because he understands the origin of this project and the standards it was built on.

Throughout these years, many people have touched this project. Some stayed and others passed through. Some taught us something small and others shifted everything.

That initial support evolved into the very core of our identity: a creative team shaped by the complexities of the Latin and Queer experience. We grew up in environments where faith, tradition, and social expectations often dictate the boundaries of freedom, pushing our identity to the margins.

That is why the tensions you see on the pages of The Queen’s Heroes have real roots. They are the graphic translation of what it means to survive within systems designed to strip away your voice; the art of collectively channeling rage without letting it turn into bitterness, and of dissecting how power operates—not just in governments, but within the culture that surrounds us.

More than just creating characters and filling pages, these artists became the true founders of a universe. This stopped being a project and transformed into our stance before the world: Latin and Queer creators reclaiming the right to build a mythology that is honest, visible, and, for the first time, absolutely ours.These artists worked with unstable electricity, unreliable internet, and limited resources. They redrew pages, took courses when they could, taught themselves what no one around them could teach, and supported each other through it all. The project was built under conditions most people in the industry never experience. We kept going anyway.

That is discipline.

Now, at a time when technology can generate images in seconds, the way this universe was built matters even more.

Every page was drawn by someone who has lived through instability, who has worked through limitations, who has chosen to keep going when it would have been easier to stop. The value of this art is not only in how it looks, but in what it carries — time, and lived experience.

Not everyone can do what these artists did.

This is the team I have had the honor of directing for over a decade, and this universe carries their fingerprints on every page. From the original Kraven magazine team to the new team in Mexico City, everyone who has touched these pages is an architect of this universe. More than just creating characters and filling layouts, these artists became the true founders of a legacy.