THOUGHT BUBBLE MONTH 2026! Professor Raco is the pseudonymous comic book writer and artist of Everybody’s Happy Nowadays, who in real life is a Mexican-American life drawing instructor, author, and artist based in Southern California.
Everybody’s Happy Nowadays opens with the character Nox filming a particularly eerie church on the outskirts of his town, while investigating reports of missing persons. He sees a ceremony taking place inside, and a weird creature coiled around the building. Nox gets caught spying and a mob of cloaked figures chase him from the church and overwhelm him…
The scene switches to Nox’s girlfriend, goth girl Gigi, arriving home, and being frustrated at being unable to reach him on the phone. Exhausted she falls asleep, only to be awakened by a vision of Nox saying he’s dead. Shocked, Gigi races over to his house to find him hanging from the ceiling. The police and a lone FBI agent show up to investigate, with the latter taking a special interest in Gigi. After the FBI agent questions her he goes back in the house. Shortly, Nox’s dog, Matcha, comes up to Gigi and starts talking to her!
Professor Raco’s writing on Everybody’s Happy Nowadays is such a fresh take on some very old pulp tropes, including murderous secret societies, otherworldly creatures, and mysterious disappearances. Everything is filtered through Gigi’s viewpoint – a strong, young woman with a sure sense of herself – and her bonds with her friends. Her open-minded attitude, as tragedy and weirdness continuously build up, is what drives the story forward.
However, the highpoint of Everybody’s Happy Nowadays is Professor Raco’s unique art. Fashion is not this reviewer’s specialty, but even so the clothes, hair, and overall style of Gigi and Nox, brings just as much to their characters as the words they speak or the situations in which they find themselves.
The colour by Raco and Fernando Caire is some of the sharpest we’ve seen. Each scene has its own colour scheme and effects like the opening scene with Nox and its slightly out of focus blues and greens indicating a frenzied conflict in the dark woods. The panel where Gigi finds Nox’s body is a bright magenta close-up of her face, standing out amongst the dark surrounding panels of her searching Nox’s house. It all works very closely with the linework to build tension throughout.
Everybody’s Happy Nowadays is a great character study, within a relationship story, wrapped in a supernatural mystery. Be sure to get your copy at Harrogate!
Professor Raco (W/A/L/C), Fernando Caire (Color assistant), Marcus McNeal (E/D) • Odyssey Comics, $16.99
Review by Gary Usher
Professor Raco and Nightside Publishing will be at table C6 in the 2000 AD Hall. Odyssey Comics is right next to them at table C5.
Thought Bubble 2026 runs from November 9th-15th with the convention weekend taking place on the 14th-15th. More details on the Thought Bubble site here.
Read all our Thought Bubble 2026 coverage so far in one place here.
Poster art by Núria Tamarit
