"How I approach comics is like doing a movie, you're the writer, you're the director, you're the casting director, you're the special effects supervisor."
Hawai'i comic book creator Sam Campos says you're also the wardrobe person, the director of photography, the cinematographer, and more.
"These skills are part of storytelling, and it translated well when I ended up working in the movies and doing my own productions," Campos said
Campos has been the nexus for local comic book lovers for decades. He pulled together the group of comic book artists on view now at The ARTS at Marks Garage. "Pineapple Man and Friends" is the briefest glimpse of the fragile but fascinating history of comic books in Hawai'i.
Campos says he got to meet an early pioneer in the field, Gary Adachi, who published Moloka'i Comics in the 1980s. Themes have spanned local life, including cane workers' struggles all the way to fantastic Polynesian sagas.
When Campos first started doing comics seriously in the early '90s, there weren't many models here.
"Cuz being from Hawaiʻi, people think here, that we can't make it. And on the reverse end, like when you're in Los Angeles, people think we can't offer anything."
Campos dived into a character he had originally invented as a student at Kahuku High. Pineapple Man's national debut was set for the giant comic convention, San Diego Comic-Con.
"We had this big banner that said, 'Pineapple Man, Hawai'i's Own Superhero.' And you could hear people in the crowd making fun of us. They were not prepared for the Hawaiʻi I was presenting, much less the mohawk and the teeth."
Campos says, "They were expecting something like a pineapple with tennis shoes."
Pineapple Man, actually, was given the Warrior's Gift by Kukaʻilimoku. It's the same gift that was given to Kamehameha. Pineapple Man has the strength of ten men, and looks it. He sports that green mohawk and a leo mano, a shark-toothed club, with teeth taken from a shark-man.
"It can open a tank like a can opener. So now that he has this club that's got these teeth from a magical beast, now I got a character that can stand basically toe to toe with any Marvel character if given the chance."
Campos would love to see Captain America and Pineapple Man together, someday—it's quite an image.
Fans of the genre flock to anime and comic book conventions in Honolulu, or they did, pre-pandemic. Campos says the Amazing Comic Con partnered with his group, the Hawaiian Comic Book Alliance.
"Up until that point, they were the only guys that treated local people like they're something. So we did everything we could to make it a great event. That has spilled over into the other islands."
"There's now a Maui Comic Con, great people running it, There's a Kauaʻi Comic Con, there's one on the Big Island."
Currently, at The ARTS at Marks Garage, a vivid timeline of local comics. And many of its best-known creators are represented: Art Wong, Roy Chang, Mark Gould, Kevin Sano, Nobu Yuki, Nikko, Lorenzo Gomez Trinidad, Sheryl Vidal, Tymir Streeter, and Shane Petosa-Sigel.
Campos and others will be at Marks Garage, mini-comic convention style, from noon until 5 p.m. this Saturday, July 24. The show runs through July 30.
