As in the joke, today next to a Scotsman, two Spaniards and an Italian who draw and dedicate themselves to comics. I will speak better that they are after these four, of which three are already published and one is yet to come. They are Tom Gauld, Juanjo Guarnido, Paco Roca and Daniel Bligiardo, and those are his latest productions that are worth discovering.
Tom Gauld - In the kitchen with Kafka
To Scotsman Tom Gauld, known as "the cartoonist of book lovers," I found out by looking at random on the shelves of a large shopping center. A small-format book fell into my hands whose title and minimalist lines caught my attention. It was A policeman on the mona and I fell in love. I still need to see this Kafka cook in more detail, but without a doubt he maintains his essence.
Has been considered one of the best comics of last year and Gauld continues to unite in his comics the world of literary criticism and that of pop culture. Their Minimalist and witty vignettes and his unique graphic style characterizes all his work.
Paco Roca - The Black Swan's Treasure
The renowned Valencian cartoonist Paco Roca, of whom we all remember his Wrinkles, returned last year with this story in the purest style of classic adventures with ships, sunken treasures and pirates. And he took the Splash Sagunt Award for the best national graphic novel of 2018.
With Original screenplay of the diplomat and writer William Corral, in the The Black Swan's Treasure we have a fast-paced story full of intrigue that is based on real events. It also mixes that adventurous tone with the background of political ins and outs, power and international relations.
Daniel Bligiardo - The Sense of Pain - The Winter of Commissioner Ricciardi
It was my last acquisition and I am waiting for the second title because it has fascinated me. But of course, the literary reference is a excellent black series period of the Neapolitan writer Maurice de Giovanni. This comic book adaptation (the term "graphic novel" gives me a little creep), which came out last November, had to be up to the task and it has succeeded.
Getting the precise outlines of the characters and literary environments so perfectly defined in this hexalogy was a challenge. Well, the cartoonist Daniel Bligardo with the script of Claudio Falco and the supervision of De Giovanni They have achieved a version more than achieved of a story where, in addition, there is a supernatural component which is not always easy to accurately reflect.
In addition, Bligiardo also manages to recreate the exact faces of those characters and give the whole set of perfect blue and gray tones for this first title in the series. My imagined curator Ricciardi is the exact one that Bligiardo has drawn.
recommended one hundred percent not only to fans of the saga, but to any comic book lover. Oh, and highlight the interview at the end to Bligiardo, where he tells the whole process of inspiration and creation.
Juanjo Guarnido - The Buscón
These are two pieces of news from a few days ago and they cannot be better. Juanjo Guarnido and Juan Díaz Canales They are the most famous cartoonist and writer of comics on the national scene. And for a little over three years they have been in charge of taking the comic The Buscón in the Indies, a second part of the life story of the rogue called Don Pablos de Segovia.
It is a imagined sequel to Quevedo's original in which both have taken enough licenses, but always respecting that original and maintaining its essence. It will be published in September in France and a little later here, with Norm, your regular publisher.
For greater joy, the Granada cartoonist has also announced that there will be a next installment de his most famous creation, Blacksad. It will be a double volume whose first volume will appear in 2020 and the second one in 2021. We still have to wait a bit, but we have to celebrate it and those of us who are worshipers to the core of the blacker black kitty, cynical, tough and romantic from the comic.