The Deep Thinker Who Makes Silly Comics
3 Questions With... Josue Cruz
I’m constantly seeking out comics that I’ll connect with (and share my favorites with you). So how did I come across Josue Cruz? I don’t recall. It was either at the CALA convention or that I was looking for what else writer Michael Sweater had done. The important thing is I found Puppy Knight! Den of Deception because I fell in love with Josue’s charming art and delightful character designs.
Josue and Mike have their follow-up, Puppy Knights: Quest for the Golden Bones, published by Union Square Kids and expected to be released in Fall 2025.
I reached out to Josue (pronounced ho-sweh) and they were down to answer my questions. I love the dichotomy of how intensely mindful Josue approaches the craft and the playful silliness of their work.
Enjoy!
Why comics? (What compels you to create in this medium?)
I didn't think of comics as the medium where I saw myself expressing my art. Even though I was into comic strips as a kid, I only ever drew a few gags here and there, never any of those multi-paged, stapled-printer-paper, Sonic the Hedgehog x Power Puff Girl crossover comics some of my other colleagues probably made growing up. I'd create super heroes, but I'd also create ideas for video games, or later on, work with my friends on board games. I think I was always an "ideas person", and felt that my art needed some sort of utility. This made sense once I started getting into Graphic Design, where I got my start creating gig posters for the music scene I was in, then working on my Design BFA, and then building a career in Marketing and Media Production. Comics were never an avenue for me until I was laid off from my first job and decided to move back home, go on unemployment, and explore comics as a medium to rediscover my joy for drawing. I realized comics were also something that can be utilized—a medium to share a story or an idea.
I had a hard time defining myself as an artist, because I always felt art had to have emotion and purpose behind it. I felt that my art was more self-gratifying, a way to entertain myself as it had always been the kid who brought their sketch book to family functions to be left alone. But as soon as I started working on short comics, I found how it was akin to journaling. The majority of how I write my short stories is through a kind of stream of consciousness writing, where I try to break down the ideas or emotions I struggle with, into panels. That's when it finally clicked to me that comics was the medium I needed in order to see myself as an artist.
What is something you do now that you wish you had either figured out or implemented sooner in your career?
Don't be so perfect.
I grew up with parents who really wanted me to color within the lines and write neatly, and while I understood they were trying to teach me to always put my best foot forward, it unfortunately developed in me a complex where everything I put out had to be perfect. Not to say that I was ever the perfect artist, but just by having that mentality makes you find imperfections in the lowest stake decisions. This was made worse when I started drawing digitally, as you have an unlimited amount of times to undo and redo a line. The first Puppy Knight book would have taken half the time if I just let a line be a line. Even during development of our second book, I was 70-80 pages in before I realized I had to move past the mistakes, otherwise I'd never get this thing done. I have panels in the next book I wince at because I know I could have done more, but I was better off pushing through instead of wallowing in something no one else would have probably cared for or noticed except myself.
What was the book/comic that you fell in love with when you were a kid/teen?
There are a lot of comics that have the "it" factor that I fall in love with and look back to constantly such as the Mignola/Chaykin collection of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories, or the Brandon Graham/Simon Roy/ Giannis Milonogiannis run of Prophet, and to name one more, Gabriel Bá and Fábio Moon's Day Tripper. Those I wouldn't really read until I was older, but to describe a comic that I fell in love with, would be to describe a book that left an emotional welt on my heart. I came across Daniel Clowes' Ghost World around junior year of High school. I was dating a friend of mine who worked at the grocery store next to the public library, so I started spending more time at the library while I waited for her to get off her shift. That's when I came across my first comics that weren't made for sunday funnies or fans of super hero weeklies—Asterios Polyp by David Mazzucchelli, Bottomless Belly Button by Dash Shaw, and Ice Have and Ghost World as my introduction the Clowes.
I don't know why I was so attracted to Clowes work at the time. Art style is such a big factor in how I choose my media (a fault of mine that I am trying to overcome), and I wasn't yet at the ability to appreciate the fidelity of Clowes' line work and artistry. But something about the uncanniness of the faces, or the loneliness of its setting reached into the possibly still soft part of the teenage skull, and embedded itself in the part of the human brain that governor's melancholy. The ending of Ghost World was very quiet, but I remember it leaving me with a lump in my throat. I was sitting in my room when I finished the book, and all I could think about was packing my own bags and running from home—I even had a place picked out! Mind you, I had a safe and loving upbringing, but it really was a testament to the power art can have, and how messages can pierce through the heart and make a lasting impact.
Final Thoughts
Puppy Knight is secretly about the struggle of trying to find meaning in a world on fire. Just kidding. I hope what people get out of Puppy Knight is the same joy I grew up with watching Saturday morning cartoons as a kid, long before the comics of my teenage years exposed me to the complex and incomprehensible nuances of life, and long after until my adulthood, taught me to just have fun with it <3
You can find Josue online at:
Thanks for sharing. It's always great to get a peek inside the brain of these talented artist/creators. Worthwhile to see what their paths were to get to the desired levels of success they have achieved. You don't always have to "re-invent the wheel", but you can share on the success wheels of others!