Esquivel always assumed “Border Town” wouldn’t work at a major publisher, because it leans so heavily on Chicano identity and Mexican folklore. He acknowledges feeling a little angry when pitching the idea to Vertigo, because the publisher (an imprint of DC Comics) had already turned down prior ideas of his for a new series. But Esquivel says those initial ideas were more tributes to Vertigo tales of the past such as “Sandman” and “Y: The Last Man.” He was shocked when Vertigo gave him the green light for “Border Town,” but it stood out because it was so original.

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“I never thought in a million years that a company like DC/Vertigo would gamble on a story like that, because it’s controversial just being [a] Mexican [story] in America, and especially in comics,” Esquivel said. “I thought [‘Border Town’] was going to be a black-and-white self-published thing that I was going to do someday.”

The story takes place in the fictional town of Devil’s Fork, Ariz., on the border between the United States and Mexico while also serving as the border between reality and Mictlan, the Aztec underworld, home to various demons and monsters of legend that frequent the pages of “Border Town.”

The protagonist, Frank, a teenage newcomer to town, is loosely based on Esquivel and his experiences moving from Illinois to Arizona as a sophomore in high school. It was an experience that Esquivel says took him from an area that was suburban and “aggressively white” to a setting that felt like “jail in an ’80s movie” because of cliques that were so clearly defined by race. In “Border Town,” Frank quickly discovers that blending in on both sides of a town split by racial makeup is difficult, but he quickly forms a bond with other Latino outcasts at his school.

“Arizona is a big part of me,” Esquivel said. “The elements of the book that are based on my actual life read as the most over-the-top, and the ones with the monsters and stuff don’t.”

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The literary border of “Border Town” is between horror and the supernatural. When the monsters of Mictlan cross over to Arizona, they have a spellbinding effect on a town that is already defined by division. Whatever the locals fear, that’s what they’ll see when one of those monsters approaches them. An undocumented immigrant might see an ICE agent. An American minority could visualize a tiki-torch rally. But in the first issue of “Border Town,” when a child is approached by a monster, he sees the Batman villain Bane. Esquivel and Villalobos were looking to prove a point with that image.

“That was sort of our commentary that you have to be taught to hate,” Esquivel said. “Everyone else sees all these stereotypes, but the kid sees only [things from Batman.]”

Guiding the visual adventure of “Border Town” is the Frank Quitely-inspired art of Villalobos, known recently for work on superhero titles at Marvel. Villalobos has embraced drawing a different type of comic-book tale, one leaning more on horror and teen angst than capes and masks.

“I love superhero comics, and that’s mostly what my career has been, is just drawing people in tights punching each other,” Villalobos said. “And that’s really fun, but personally, media that I like to intake is not superhero stuff at all. It’s usually romantic comedies and teenage dramas and stuff like that, just because I spend my whole day doing superhero stuff. So it’s refreshing to be able to do [something different].”

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When “Border Town” came out last month, many readers focused on how it applied to Latino identity and border politics. At times, lost in the hype was the main story Esquivel and Villalobos are trying to tell, which is more about underworlds than political worlds.

“I don’t want people to feel like we’re doing this in opposition to anything,” Esquivel said. “I’m not putting out this book because Trump is president. I’m putting out this book because it’s a story I want to tell. Because Mexicans exist. We should have always had these stories coming out through all of these companies, and we didn’t.”

“To me [“Border Town” is] a horror story and the fact that it’s being so politicized is a little bit unfortunate,” he said. “I think our readers feel that way, too. But maybe that’s why [this story is] so powerful, because other people are getting to see what our life is like.”