LLEI D'ART 11

‘this sounds familiar’. It’s not the first time I’ve been asked this, but my first love is comics. Although many people find reading difficult, they know your cartoons off by heart… Kids are already terrified of letters –they don’t want to know anything about them. With cartoon strips it was different – their sandwiches went with a nice little drawing and from there on they went further and further into the world of letters. Mortadelo, with all his disguises, showed them thousands of unimaginable things and they learned. I have spent hours and hours with the dictionary of antonyms and synonyms to avoid repeating words. In Madrid an old lady told me that the day she didn’t show up to the signings would be the day something that happened to her. Some of her copies were over 40 years old. Pulgarcito (Tom Thumb) and Tío Vivo (Merry-go-round) were part of a wonderful period, with imagination, talent, technique… what else does a comic artist need? I’ll tell you more: all of these things – and although the first thing you see are drawings everythere – they are the least important thing. The important thing is the story, the script. If the script isn’t acceptable and doesn’t grab the reader’s attention, nobody is going to buy it. I have been a mediocre drawer, but I have always worked hard on my scripts. How does a cartoon strip go beyond its frame? When you make someone enjoy themselves and can’t wait to carry on reading your cartoons. The famous ‘to be continued…’ All of us who grew up with comics know that there were very popular characters that were as bland as anything; those pages that you always skipped. Why are they still being published? There was a big market that needed to be filled with publications. Of course there were two or three that were the big hitters that they knew were going to sell the rest of the comic. How would you describe yourself, as a ‘cartoonographer’? Well, no. There are people who consider me a draughtsman –can you imagine! A cartoonist, who does the drawing and creates the story. Inspiration always comes while you work… You have to keep flogging away at it. If no ideas come, pick up the encyclopedia, because the publisher is hurrying you up and the ideas just have to come. Where do you get so many ideas from? It’s the job, the habit. You pick twenty people and only one of them can sing. The others just yowl and screech. If you have something inside that helps you to create, you have to work at it, and not let it rust. You have to practice, like sportspeople; training every day to be on the top. The world nowadays gives you licence to trivialize even the most tragic things…I imagine that you need a very positive take on life. Yes, yes, totally. You take certain enjoyment in doing things, also on many occasions you can’t see your way to solving an apparently simple problem. I, for example, couldn’t fix a plug if I tried. How do you see the future of the comic cartoon strip? Not good. As many good artists as there may be, you need to have an audience or you’ll crash and burn. Before a child used to spend an afternoon with a comic, but now they have tablets, consoles and loads of TV channels. It’s all given to them in bitesize pieces. Nobody bothers to read anything. If at that age they’re not used to paper, they’ll find it difficult to get used to it. Can you see the end of the printed comic? It might continue in another format, with some printed version for nostalgia, I imagine. Things that people like tend to carry on: Mortadelo, Zipi and Zape, Super López , and so on. Everything else has practically disappeared. Perhaps the touch of naivety that we had is lacking… Sometimes the reader laughs at something that hasn’t got the slightest importance. At the cinema I have seen comic films that are true gems and that have never got a prize. Comedy films have never been taken seriously and cartoon strips are the same. Buying a comic is a cheap treat. One of the managers at Bruguera always used to say that times of recession was when we sold the most, because people wanted to forget about their pressing problems – they needed a comic transfusion. Like the old man on the bus and laughing at the newspaper because he was hiding a copy of Pulgarcito and was embarrassed to be seen with it. Would you like to see a selection of your best work in an art gallery – I’m sure it would all sell out. No, not at all. My reward is to see people waiting for me to sign their copy and see a child waiting in line totally forget what he was going to say to you because he’s so nervous. The rest isn’t important. Will there be another Ibáñez? What is the new blood like? Well, there are some real geniuses here. Some of their drawings could be in the Louvre, but the thing is that there is no longer the audience to sustain all that and there’s not much we can do about it. When something has happened, it is very difficult to go back. ¿Qué parte hay de Mortadelo en Ibáñez? What is there of Ibáñez in Mortadelo. I had a friend who told me I was like Mortadelo . I never saw him again ( laughs ). These are just things that people say. I think Rompetechos (Roofbreaker) is the person that is most like me more than any other – you take his glasses off and you can see him everywhere. Luisa Noriega 53