Editor's note: Carlos Samaniego is the founder and editor of RedlandsNow. This story is about his other business. We are sharing it the same way we would share any Redlands entrepreneur trying something new.

Most people who work in tax resolution write guides.

Carlos Samaniego published a comic.
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This week, the Redlands Enrolled Agent and founder of Tax Debt Consultants releases "The Tax Underworld," Issue #1: "The Vulture Strikes at Night."

It is an eight-page noir comic about a woman named Denise whose bank account is frozen by an IRS levy after weeks of unopened mail.

The full digital issue is free to read at TaxUnderworld.com.

Samaniego believes it is the first comic book of its kind.

"I have been talking about this for years," he said. "Nobody wants to read forty pages about how a bank levy works. But people will read a comic.

If the story gets them to open the envelope a week sooner, it did its job."

Drawn close to home

Readers from Redlands will recognize the setting. The comic's locations include Mountain Home Village, where Samaniego lives in the mountains above town, and his office on West Colton Avenue.

That office sits across the street from where he worked a fast-food job, Long John Silver's, as a Redlands High School student.

He has lived in the Inland Empire since 1976 and in Redlands since 1979, when his family arrived, and he started sixth grade at Franklin Elementary.

The comic's detective character is Samaniego himself, and his dog Bruno makes an appearance as the quiet partner on the case.

The EMT years shaped the story

Before taxes, Samaniego served as a U.S. Army medic and spent close to eleven years on ambulances across Redlands, San Bernardino, Ontario, and surrounding communities.

That background shows up in how the comic is structured.

The three-step approach his firm uses with clients, Triage, Stabilize, Rescue, comes directly from emergency medicine.

"On an ambulance you find the bleed first, then you stabilize, then you fix the cause," he said. "It turns out tax trouble works the same way. The comic is built on that."

Why free

There is no order form and no catch. Samaniego said he wanted the digital edition read as widely as possible, especially by people who have been avoiding a notice.

A printed edition is coming.

The first physical run, called the Founders Launch Collection, is limited to 100 copies, each signed and hand-numbered.

Details will be announced once the books arrive from the printer.

A second issue is already in development.

Read it

"The Tax Underworld," Issue #1 is available free at TaxUnderworld.com.

Samaniego holds the Enrolled Agent credential and is an NTPI Fellow. Tax Debt Consultants is located at 1255 West Colton Avenue, Suite 535, in Redlands.