Carlos Parra is a bit of a creative enigma. He keeps a vast amount of talent tucked away. The mystery is not whether he can do something, but how far his abilities will go. From comics to movies, Carlos is taking the creative world by storm.

Carlos, 33, was born and raised in Las Cruces. When he was 11-years-old, a friend gave him two comic books, one of which was The Avengers vs. the Lava Men #305 – a comic book that, you could say, ultimately charted the various courses Carlos would take in life.

“It wasn’t the most well-written comic but the art work was incredible,” Carlos says. “I was hooked.”

Carlos began taking weekly treks to Dave’s Paperbacks to pick up new comics, developing characters in his head, most he still has tucked away, and drawing throughout school. After graduating from San Andres High School, Carlos attended art school in Albuquerque, receiving his associate’s degree in commercial advertising. In 2005 he found himself back in a comic book shop with owner Ralph Contreras. The discussion moved from comic books to zombie movies, and Carlos discovered a new talent in the years that followed.

“We were talking about someone filming a zombie movie and I decide I would do it,” says Carlos, remembering the first zombie movie he watched – the black and white version of Night of the Living Dead. “I had always been intrigued by zombie movies . . . well, not so much that it intrigued me, but it really freaked me out. It blew my mind that there were these creatures still alive but you couldn’t kill them.”

Carlos took his love for zombie movies and began to plan for his own, first holding auditions.

“I wasn’t sure how many people would show up so I held auditions before I did anything,” Carlos says, unsure if quality actors would want a part in a movie without pay. “One hundred and fifty people showed up, which did and didn’t surprise me. It was a zombie movie, that genre itself is very popular because everyone wants to be in a horror movie whether it’s doing the killing or getting killed.”

Once Carlos saw he had the talent, he gave himself one month to write the screenplay. At month’s end he had a 133-page screenplay and roles for four main characters, six secondary characters and 75 zombies. With actors ready and an old abandoned farmhouse on North Valley as the main location, Carlos had to come up with equipment, which he did by utilizing his graphic design talents.

“I started a freelance design business and picked up some clients,” Carlos says of Parra Designs, which he still runs. “I was able to earn $3000 which financed the movie. I spent $1200 on eBay for a used camera, $700 for used lighting and $1000 for latex, blood, swords, gas to run the generators and steel pipes for camera stabilizers.”

Carlos, his wife Heather and his team filmed for 16 days, working weekends from September through October 2005 in the old farm house, the downtown mall and in empty lots.

“It was guerrilla filmmaking,” Carlos says referring to a form of independent filmmaking characterized by low budgets and simple props using whatever is available (Carlos did inform the police he would be filming with firearms which were no threat.) “I couldn’t afford blanks so we shot silent then added sound in the editing stage.”

Once the filming was over, Carlos focused on editing the film while working full time and maintaining a relationship with Heather.

“The editing took me three years – it was a monster I wasn’t prepared for,” he says of the 50 hours of footage he shot. “Everything was edited on a laptop. I literally had to play all the footage and download it at the computer.”

Through hours of writing, filming and editing, Carlos created Dark New World, a movie about a devastating plague unleashed by bio-terrorists that brings to life millions of the Americans it killed. While the zombies devour human flesh, stars Sam and Kat find refuge in an abandoned house with eight others. Zombies are taking over the outside world and the two wonder if they should fight to survive against zombies or stay and fight the monsters within their refuge.

To Carlos, the time and work was well worth it and when Dark New World was ready, he focused on yet another one of his talents – networking. Carlos called both the Fountain Theatre and Allen Theatres and asked them to show his movie on the big screen and both agreed. On Friday the 13th in March, Carlos introduced his movie at Allen Theatres in two shows – the last show selling out. On March 14, the Fountain Theatre also previewed a sold out show.

“I hit everyone with information on the movie. I don’t think there was a place I didn’t market it,” Carlos says of the postings he placed on social networking sites like MySpace and on fliers he distributed throughout the community. He was interviewed by the Las Cruces Sun-News, on KRWG public radio online and highlighted in Yahoo Movies. Dark New World is also listed in IMDb, the internet movie database.

The feedback he received for his low-budget, do-it-yourself movie was positive, but some reviewers wished he had more of a budget to add to the fantastic storyline. To continue the story, Carlos decided to turn his movie into his favorite form of media, a comic book.

“The comic itself allows me to continue the story without a budget,” Carlos says of the Dark New World comic which continued two months after the movie ended. “You are only limited by your imagination when creating a comic.”

Carlos works with Ralph, now living in Santa Fe, sending the story via email and waiting for Ralph to pencil a page. Once Carlos receives the illustrations back he begins editing. This time as he works on Dark New World, he has son CJ, born in May to add to his list of accomplishments, and a still supportive wife to encourage him.

“Heather’s support has been phenomenal,” Carlos says. “She supports every crazy idea I come up with.”

Heather, a theatre major from Wayland Baptist University and actor in Dark New World, has proven accurate in her support for her husband of seven years. The creative talent and drive Carlos has unleashed is a gift to comic book and zombie movie lovers everywhere.