Hector Cantu

Check out Hector Cantu's appearence on NPR's Talk of the Nation

Hector Cantú is all about Latino youth. He is an award-winning journalist and co-creator/writer of the nationally syndicated newspaper comic strip Baldo, syndicated nationally by Universal Press Syndicate. Cantu is co-executive producer of the Baldo animated cartoon, which screened at the San Diego Latino Film Festival in March 2007. He also authored two Baldo books, The Lower You Ride, The Cooler You Are and Night of the Bilingual Telemarketers.

The comic strip's lead characters are quickly squeezing their way onto the American pop culture stage, from car-crazy teen Baldo and college-obsessed sister Gracie to tradition-protecting Dad, and lottery-playing Tia Carmen. Through sophisticated, gentle humor, Cantú brings a different perspective to daily comic pages, giving a peek into the daily lives of a Latino family.

The comic strip appears in 200 daily and Sunday newspapers, including The Washington Post, The Miami Herald, The Los Angeles Daily News, and The Houston Chronicle. Baldo is Universal Press Syndicate's fourth most-successful comic strip launch, after The Boondocks, For Better or For Worse, and Calvin and Hobbes.

In addition to writing the comic, he is an editor at Quick, a daily news tabloid in Dallas that targets young readers. He was managing editor of Hispanic Business magazine and previously wrote a newspaper column for Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service that examined business and marketing issues in Hispanic America. Cantú has also worked with other artists to bring various characters to life, including a line of vending machine stickers for Cutting Edge Industries in California.

Cantú has appeared on CNN, NPR, and the nationally syndicated television special, Hispanic America: The Year in Review. Quoted by The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and USA Today, he is an expert on the US Hispanic market.