''El Arsenal'' is a Mexican

comic book A comic book, also called comicbook, comic magazine or (in the United Kingdom and Ireland) simply comic, is a publication that consists of comics art in the form of sequential juxtaposed panels that represent individual scenes. Panels are of ...

series, created by writer Salvador Vázquez and artist Daniel Pérez. The comic was first released in 2005 and is published by

Arcana Studio Arcana Studio is a Canadian animation studio in Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada. Founded as a comic book publisher by former Coquitlam, British Columbia school teacher Sean O'Reilly in 2004, in 2012 Arcana opened its animation division. Ov ...

Story

The world is divided by chaos. Due to a nuclear incident that activated the

San Andreas Fault The San Andreas Fault is a continental transform fault that extends roughly through California. It forms the tectonics, tectonic boundary between the Pacific Plate and the North American Plate, and its motion is Fault (geology)#Strike-slip fau ...

, Mexico's

Baja California Baja California (; 'Lower California'), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Baja California ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Baja California), is a state in Mexico. It is the northernmost and westernmost of the 32 federal entities of Mex ...

peninsula and

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

are separated from the

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Car ...

n continent. The situation in

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the southe ...

is apparently worse as former countries fight to regain their independence after the region is invaded by

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

. "El Sistema" (''The System'') is the only remaining power, an underground organization that recruits and controls mercenaries and bounty hunters who act as soldiers, assassins and messengers. El Sistema has but one rule; Supply and Demand. This is the world of El Arsenal, a story about mercenaries, the backbone of El Sistema, the organization that rules the world. Without them, rivals organizations could hardly harm each other and seize control. Because even in this world, where chaos reigns, no one dares attack first, as they know that someone else is always prepared to strike back without mercy at the first sign weakness. Mercenaries must get the job done, as discreetly as possible.

References

External links

Official website (archived)

Interviews

In The Future Only Cockroaches... Vasquez on El Arsenal

Newsarama Newsarama is an American website that publishes news, interviews, and essays about the American comic book industry. It is owned by Future US. In June 2020, Newsarama was merged with the website GamesRadar+, also owned by FutureUS. History N ...

, June 7, 2005
Know Your Enemy: Vazquez talks "El Arsenal: Unknown Enemy"

Comic Book Resources ''Comic Book Resources'', also known by the initialism CBR, is a website dedicated to the coverage of comic book–related news and discussion. History Comic Book Resources was founded by Jonah Weiland in 1995 as a development of the Kingdom Co ...

, June 10, 2005 Arcana Studio titles Mexican comics titles {{Comics-stub