Latina Cartoonist Draws on Her Heritage

When Martha Montoya began doodling incessantly at age 12, her parents called her a dreamer. But by age 15, she was already putting her comic strip characters to work, using them to teach English at the school her parents were operating on the poor side of Bogota, Colombia.

Sketches of the creatures--fanciful heads with legs and arms but no torsos--wandering through labyrinths helped show Montoya’s roomful of exhausted adults how to form sentences.

Today the tenaciously positive characters are teaching Latino immigrants about American ways, portraying the frustrating journey of assimilation with playful optimism. Los Kitos, named for the Spanish word for little dolls, are also a booming business for 35-year-old Montoya. Next year, she expects her Irvine company to reach $1 million in revenue, up from $45,000 in 1995, the year it was founded.

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Montoya is still working toward her ultimate goal: a mainstream animated television show that would earn Los Kitos a place in the cartoon pantheon with Snoopy and Bugs Bunny. Meanwhile, deals are rolling in at a remarkable clip, far outpacing her carefully crafted five-year business plan.

Montoya’s Los Kitos comic strip is syndicated weekly in 215 publications worldwide--13 countries in all--and runs daily in La Opinion in Southern California. Live characters appear at concerts sponsored by Spanish-language radio and television stations, where they sing, dance and pass out educational material.

Familiar to a growing number of Spanish-speaking households, the characters, with names such as Picarito, Kolito and Pigoleto, have also become hot commodities in the corporate world. So far, the U.S. Postal Service, BankAmerica Corp., Pacific Bell and State Farm Insurance have embraced them to help explain their services and woo the Latino dollar.

Montoya has also branched out into merchandising: Shirts and hats are in 14 Sears stores, and a “Beanie” Kitos bean bag toy is in the making.

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“When I started Los Kitos I knew the cartoon strip itself was a message to society,” Montoya said. “I knew I could push Los Kitos into corporate America to communicate with the community, starting with the Hispanic community.”

Montoya’s rise is due in large part to her drive. Mirroring the tenacity of her characters, she began her own immigrant journey as a live-in maid and worked her way up to business owner.

But her success is also fueled by the times. As the Latino population burgeons, the bilingual Los Kitos have become emissaries of communication with a Latin flair. They love soccer and play maracas. They also demonstrate the virtues of call waiting, automated teller machines and priority mail for a community that many corporations are just beginning to court.

“By 2010, the Hispanic will be the largest minority in the country. . . . [People such as Montoya] who know how to build relationships between the brand and the consumer are going to be making a fortune,” said Greg Bennett, president of Luna Bacardi Group, a Hispanic marketing agency in Santa Monica.

Montoya’s growing list of credentials also means that “Los Kitos have some sort of equity already,” said Alex Ruiz, director of advertising for diversity markets at PacBell, which uses Los Kitos in a quarterly Spanish-language newsletter.

Montoya, whose freckles and rapid speech give her the earnest air of one of her characters, said the Los Kitos message is meant to be thought-provoking and universal.

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“We all go through obstacles every day in life, but we have to overcome that,” she said. “How we look at those obstacles makes life simple or difficult. Los Kitos always look at them positively.”

Montoya blurts out with a laugh that Los Kitos lack torsos because “I don’t know how to draw.” But their minimalist anatomy focuses attention on their personalities. Picarito is always getting into trouble; Pigoleto is lazy; Kolito is perpetually enthusiastic; Pikito is tender; and Mima, the only female, balances the others’ erratic tendencies.

In one strip, Pikito knocks on several doors that slam in his face. He perseveres until, in the final frame, a door opens. It is a philosophy Montoya has employed herself.

With college degrees in biology and chemistry, she taught at her parents’ school until she read the story of Walt Disney. Determined to turn her characters into a commercial success, she left Colombia at 23 and found a job as a live-in maid in Newport Beach.

Bilingual since childhood, she quickly moved on to a job as a high school librarian. There she “read all the Warner Bros. books” and devoured biographies of Gandhi and Marie Curie, the French chemist whom Montoya credits as her role model of dedication and focus.

In her next job, as an international agricultural development consultant, Montoya developed programs to move Latin American produce to market here. Meanwhile, she researched her own business.

In 1995, she licensed her characters, purchased a directory of Spanish-language publications and contacted every newspaper in the country. For eight months, she peppered La Opinion--Southern California’s largest Spanish-language newspaper--with calls, until one day, a door opened.

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By mid-1996, dozens of publications were using her comic strip, but she was barely making a living. Her solution lay with the corporate world. Montoya landed her first deal with the post office. Next came Bank of America, which had launched its “Cerca de Ti”--”close to you”--campaign.

BofA senior advertising officer Kirk Copeland asked Montoya to design a bilingual coloring book that would keep the consumers of tomorrow busy. Parents who leafed through them would also learn about basic services.

“Hispanics were primarily intimidated about going into the bank,” he said. “We wanted to come down and be on a friendly level.”

Since last year, costumed Los Kitos characters have appeared at concerts and fairs and promoted local companies, including La Pizza Loca. Montoya launched a Web site--https://www.loskitos.com--and a kids club claims 1,052 members. She now employs her husband and four artists.

The corporate gigs have kept coming. State Farm recently commissioned a book of Spanish-language sayings with English translations. And the characters appear on bilingual child-abuse-prevention posters launched last month by the National Exchange Club.

Locally, Montoya won a job from White Memorial Hospital in East L.A. to help the public navigate a massive renovation project using Los Kitos signs.

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Her ultimate goal--an English-language animated TV series--also appears attainable. Advising her is Gary Selvaggio, a former executive with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc.’s animation unit whose credits include producing the weekly syndicated “All Dogs Go to Heaven” and turning Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles into an animated program.

Selvaggio helped Montoya develop three story outlines in which Los Kitos “learn to balance their parents’ rich traditions with the sometimes-confusing cultural mix that surrounds them.”

“I think she’s very close,” said Selvaggio. “She’s poised to get some major studio interest.”

An English cartoon geared to bicultural audiences would be “a first of its kind,” he said. But big syndicators “don’t quite understand the Hispanic market,” because they have only just begun tracking it demographically.

“We’re coming in with a program that’s really teasing these broadcasters,” he said. “They know there’s a niche out there, they just don’t know how it fits in with their plans. We’re trying to convince them that it does.”

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Among others, Montoya is talking with Film Roman, the independent producer of “The Simpsons” and “King of the Hill.”

“She’s . . . getting the kids aware of the characters,” said founder and Chairman Phil Roman. “That is creating the need. If enough kids see it and they want to see more, they’ll be asking for it, and advertisers will be asking for it.”

But for starters, he said, Montoya may have to lower her sights.

“There’s going to be a market there, whether it’s in Hispanic television first or in the American English-speaking market,” Roman said. “It might be that she establishes it first in the Hispanic market and grows the awareness the other way.”