LLEI D'ART 11

The art of humour Francisco Ibañez Talavera The most serious vision of the world that exists is that of the comic Peter L. Berger The antithesis of good humour is not seriousness, but sadness. Healthy laughter mitigates suffering, gives us perspective on our surroundings and brings us a kind of internal piece, of ‘laughter catharsis’, as defined by Leopoldo Marchal. Dostoyevsky encouraged people to be catalogued according to their manner of laughing: If he laughs, it means that the man is good. Take notice of all his laughter’s features: for example, it can never seem to be stupid, as happy and naïve as it may be. As soon as you notice the tiniest speck of idiocy, it means that his intelligence is limited, even if all he does is spill ideas… Finally, if this laugh, even if it is communicative, is trivial in some way, know that this kind of man is himself trivial. Should you have ever noted something noble and profound in him, it will have been deliberately recherché or unconscious imitation. Yes, I understand that laughter is the surest proof of the soul. Look at a child; only children can truly laugh well – that is why they’re so charming. A crying child is unpleasant, but a laughing, joyous child is a ray of light from heaven and is the revelation of a future in which man will be as pure and naïve as children. We chat to Francisco Ibánez in publishers Ediciones B headquarters, courtesy of editor-in-chief, Manuel de Cos. Talkative and cheery, Ibáñez answers our questions. You were barely a kid when you used to read the comics that your family used to get the newsagent to keep back. It was what I looked forward to every night. The comics hadn’t been cut yet, and I had to read them without barely opening them. It was the golden age of weather heroes: Captain Thunder, Captain Lightning, Captain Storm…all that is over now. You held down various jobs. I always say that I was in a bank. ‘Working’ is something quite different because I always had some little sketch or other going on underneath the papers. What we liked was getting things published. Many of those works I did for nothing – it was something that had relative importance. We were waiting to see when our drawings would be published. In reality, everything started to change when the question ‘when?’ became ‘how much?’ That can be applied to everything. At the time where was very little. Young people don’t understand; they don’t understand that when I say there was ‘nothing’, there was really nothing. You enjoyed work – it was something we didn’t want to end. This recession will have brought something good, then? The recession has had a couple of positive points, bringing together friends, enjoying the little things that had been forgotten. At that time there weren’t that many get-togethers then because it was the golden age of the comic – there was a lot of work, and there was no time left over for anything. We had to do an incredible number of pages. I managed to do twenty pages in a week – it was madness. Any crises with any of your characters? Not with the characters, but with my marriage, especially when the wife asked why we needed so much money if we weren’t going anywhere. I used to draw at home – a mistake – because you barely left the house. I missed the little walk from home to the bank. Yes, but when you do the signings, the long queues make up for that, don’t they? Of course. When you see three hundred people queuing up with a copy under their arm, that’s lovely, because there’s not only the kids, but the 20-year-old man, the 40-year-old bloke and the 80-year-old grandad who says that without your comic life isn’t worth living. I was thinking of the newspaper man from Cuéntame (a popular Spanish TV show) brought to life by the great Tony Leblanc. Quite the character… Well of course, the truth is that people don’t speak to each other anymore. They speak to the gadget that they’re carrying around, about to knock themselves out, and what on earth for? Five minutes ago there was none of this, but that’s how it is now, you need to accept it and move on. ‘13 Rue Barnacle’ would be a perfect sketch for television –it reminds me somehow of the show ‘Aquí no hay quién viva’ (a popular Spanish ensemble comedy). Have you ever considered being a scriptwriter? On occasion I have come across TV series and I’ve thought Ibáñez was born on the 15th March 1936 in Barcelona, and before moving on it graphic stories he worked in the Spanish Credit Bank until 1957, when he decided to dedicate himself exclusively to working for Editorial Bruguera. On the 20th January 1958 the first story of Mortadelo and Filemón (known as Mort and Phil in English-speaking countries) was published in issue 1394 of Pulgarcito (Tom Thumb) magazine. In the 1970s Ibáñez created some adventures that became classics of Spanish cartoon strips: ¡Valor y al toro! , El caso del bacalao , Chapeau el Esmirriau etc. The increasing popularity of the characters means they have been translated into eleven different languages and that Ibáñez dedicates himself more and more exclusively to Mortadelo and Filemón . In 1994 he received the Salón del Cómic (Comic Fair) Grand Prize in recognition of his work and in 2002 the Gold Medal of Merit in Fine Art 2001. 51