The Boy Who Created The Boy and the Thing and a Lot of Other Things

Like any comics professional, Mariano Velasco has an origin story. It was 2012. He was a mild-mannered student at the University of Colorado Denver with empty swaths of time between classes—too short to bother to head home to Northglenn/Thornton, where he'd grown up, but too long. So he ended up at Euclid Hall, a much-missed restaurant and bar just across Speer from the Auraria Campus, where a friend of his was head chef. "I had these big breaks with nothing to do," Velasco recalls, "but I had a first-generation iPad. So I just started drawing characters." 

After some experimentation, Velasco says he developed his character, which he just calls "the Boy." From there, he decided to make it into a kids' book, which would eventually be called The Boy and the Thing.

And that process — like a lot of creative processes — fell into a slow back-burner of a project over the years. Velasco finished his degree program in music and business at UCD, worked for a bit with Larimer Lounge and the Boulder Theater with acts like Devotchka and '70s singer-songwriter Leon Russell. "But once you have a kid," says Velasco, "you can't really go on the road and do stuff like that anymore."

Turns out that having that kid — a daughter in 2020 — put Velasco on his new creative path. "It got me back into the process," he says, "and by 2022, when she was about two, I thought it was time for me to finish that book so I could read it to her. For about six months, I worked on it every night until it was finished. I owe all of what I'm doing now to her coming along."

Velasco says he tried to place The Boy and the Thing as a book to traditional children's publishers, but they passed. "They didn't like the black-and-white," he explains — but that was central to the aesthetic that Velasco was going for. So he ended up self-publishing that book and shouldering the marketing duties himself.

It's those marketing attempts that have led to Velasco's multiple-revenue-stream approach to his medium. "I started the online comic strip just to get some attention for the book," he admits. "But after a few days, it was turning into an actual thing. That's been going on for almost two years now. Six-hundred days in now, with a new comic out each day."

And the inspiration kept coming from Velasco's kids over that time. "The little alien sort of became a stand-in for my daughter, and the littler guy ended up being my son [who was born just a couple of years ago]. So the strip has become sort of what I experience with them on a daily basis."

Velasco says that transition in terms of focus has helped him in continuing the strip, too. "At first, it was tough knowing what to write about," he says. "But after a while, I got into this rhythm of just writing everything down. I text it to myself or to my wife, but I don't send it. I just take a screenshot of it and then delete it. Once in a while, I'll accidentally send it, and my wife will be like, 'What the heck is this?' She hates it," he laughs. "She's like, 'You know you have a Notepad app for that.' But it works for me, so I figure why mess with something that's working? All I have to do is remember not to send it."
But the book and comic strip are only the beginning. In 2024, Velasco also partnered with Something Brewery up in Brighton, a favorite haunt of his — sort of his new Euclid Hall — to collaborate on a beer. "We ended up doing something for Halloween," says Velasco, "and we went back and forth on it. My stuff is largely black and white, and they wanted something more colorful, so we ended up with something that includes both elements." Velasco says he hopes to do it again come Halloween this year.

That's not all. He's also created a game called Mio’s Grand Adventure, designed for ages four and up. "I started it because my daughter — again — asked me if I could make one. I'd programmed a bit in college and was able to come up with this jumpy game. It's fun by itself, but players can also win prizes like stickers, shirts, hats, and books from The Boy and the Thing. It's all different characters, but in a shared universe," he explains.
Not only that, but The Boy and the Thing has been adapted into a read-along YouTube video, narrated by Seinfeld's J. Peterman himself, John O'Hurley. "He just had the perfect voice for it," Velasco says. "He reminded me of the narrator of The Grinch [Boris Karloff]." It also helped that Velasco was a huge Seinfeld fan. "I listen to six episodes of that show every night in order to fall asleep," he grins. "I put in my headphones and just hit repeat."

With all these cartoon irons in the fire, what's Velasco's ultimate goal? "I'm a Jim Henson/Disney kind of guy," he says. "I want to animate stories. I used to make puppets, too, and I'd love to have a variety show for kids, like Sesame Street. The sky's the limit."

Check out Mariano Velasco's many cartoon endeavors at his AllMyLinks page.