About @whenuwerelittle
Justin Castaneda is a comic artist and children’s book creator from Chicago’s south side. He is the creator of the horror comic - picture book hybrid, The Murder Balloon, the comic one-shot Juju’s World of Play, and the hardcover children’s book, HEART. He is also the co-creator of the hit all-ages indie comic, Wonder Care Presents: The Kinder Guardians with Victor Dandridge for Vantage InHouse Productions.
He has worked on such comic titles as Aw Yeah Comics, Scratch 9, and the recent Deadman Tells The Spooky Tales for DC Comics. He has also contributed art to several art book collections for Printed In Blood including: The Thing Artbook, Ghostbusters Artbook, and the forthcoming Friday The 13th Artbook and Mars Attacks! Artbook.
From 2015 to 2022, Justin worked with the Chicago Public Library providing coloring sheets in celebration of Asian-American and Native Hawaiian/Pacific-Islander Heritage Month every May.
He won the 2015 S.P.A.C.E. Prize for Best Web Comic for Wonder Care: After School and was a 2017 One Page Comic Finalist in the Ghost City Comics Competition, as well as a 2021 Short Comic Finalist for Platform Comics.
He is a frequent sketch card artist for Upper Deck Entertainment & The Topps Trading Card Company working on licensed properties such as Avenger’s Infinity War, Stranger Things, Star Wars Masterwork, & The Alien Anthology.
In 2021 released a quasi-sequel to HEART in the form of a children’s board book called 2 HEARTS - a lovely counting book. Justin also illustrated the award-winning book, My Very Punny Dad, written by Ryan Milligan, this rhyme book about language and dad humor has sold over 2K copies online!
In 2025, Justin was a part of I, Comic: Volume 1 a project started by author Luisa Colón Thayer, that was created for incarcerated citizens and other justice-impacted individuals as a way to encourage literacy through creative interaction and engaging narratives.
2026 sees the release of If You Give a Kid a Comic and Kinder Readers Vol.1, the latest books in the Wonder Care cannon.
