Carlos Giménez (cartoonist)

Carlos Giménez (born Madrid, March 16, 1941) is a Spanish cartoonist, usually attached to the La Floresta Group, one of the different studies in which you have participated. Together with other authors of his same generation, such as Josep María Beá (1942), Luis García (1946), Felipe Hernández Cava (1953), Fernando Fernández (1940), Enric Sió (1942) and Adolfo Usero (1941) he participated in the renewal of the Spanish comic. He is, in any case, one of the most important cartoonists of the so-called adult comic boom in Spain and one of the few who are still active.

Throughout his professional life, he has also been noted for his political activism (he collaborated with the PSUC) and his defense of the rights of scriptwriters and cartoonists.

Biography

Carlos Giménez is a cartoonist who has reflected his biography in his work. Thus, his childhood in the Social Assistance homes will later be reflected in his series Paracuellos, in Barrio his encounter with real life, with his neighborhood, when he left, an adolescent from Social Assistance, while his His first experiences as a draftsman during the 1960s can be traced to Los Profesionales.

Childhood and youth

Carlos Giménez lives his first years in the Madrid neighborhood of Ambassadors. Unfortunately, his father, a welder from Tomelloso, died shortly after he was born, while his mother fell ill with tuberculosis at the age of five. He will spend the next eight years interned in various Social Assistance homes, with brief periods in foster care by a family from Paracuellos de Jarama of whom the author still speaks fondly. At this time he discovers El Cachorro by Juan Garcia Iranzo.

He returned to his mother's home at the age of fourteen, converted into a guest house, and worked for the Sarmentero workshop in El Rastro, first as an errand boy and then as a decorator. Meanwhile, he continues drawing comics, now influenced by El Capitán Trueno de Ambrós.

In 1958, at the age of seventeen, he presented his drawings to Manuel López Blanco, author of The Adventures of the F.B.I., who hired him as an assistant for the funds and provided him with work for the Ibergraf agency. His first major series is Drake & amp; Drake with a script by José Mallorquí, who

for a matter of pride you have to leave, throwing away a job too well paid for at the time. After that it doesn't last long in Ibergraf and the job, at the moment, it's over. It's the end of one time and the beginning of another. Throughout Giménez's life, every change is a step forward, never a setback, as if he were tied himself to a goal interview.

The foreign market

In 1962, he shared the Manzanares studio with Esteban Maroto and Adolfo Usero, and made war comics for Editorial Maga and Buck Jones for a Barcelona agency. He then worked for Josep Toutain's Illustrated Selections-Creations, beginning in 1963 the western series Gringo , with scripts by Manuel Medina and drawing several romantic comic strips, all for the foreign market. Manuel López Blanco would say that his West & # 34; was from a fairy tale because instead of crows and vultures there were little birds and flowers. & # 34;

After finishing his military service, he married his girlfriend Meli at the age of 23. With a newborn son, his economic needs impel him to move to Barcelona. He shares studies and experiences with Esteban Maroto, Luis García, Suso Peña and Adolfo Usero, forming the so-called Grupo de la Floresta that makes some comics collectively.

His claims on copyright and his new awareness of the medium led him to abandon Gringo to develop Delta 99 (1967) based on scripts by Jesús Flores Thies, as well as some comics (Tom Berry and Kiko 2000) for the German market.

He settles with his family in an apartment in Premiá de Mar, a town located on the Maresme coast, about 20 kilometers from Barcelona. There another of her children will be born.

From 1969 to 1975, based on scripts by Víctor Mora, he produced the series Dani Futuro, which is considered his first major series. Started for "Gaceta Junior" it is suspended in 1970, being resumed in 1972 for the Belgian magazine Tintin. In the interlude he had started the series & # 34; Iris of Andromeda & # 34; and "Ray 25", as well as finishing Ulysses, a commissioned erotic series for the German magazine "Pip", which Giménez himself considers it absurd, And it is, as he also affirms,

In PIP the only thing that is not censored is sex, which is also rigorously obligated. It's just as bad that you're banned from getting out of the house like they don't let you in. I'd rather go in and out when I wanted to.

He is most proud of the short horror stories El Miserere and El extraño caso del señor Valdemar, both for the magazine Trinca and based on the homonymous stories by Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer and Edgar Allan Poe, respectively.

In 1973, he formed the group Premiá 3 with Usero and García, which adapted Treasure Island and captured a script by Mariano Hispano in Los cuatro amigos.

Starting in 1975, he carried out his own projects, beginning with Hom, an adaptation of Brian Aldiss's novel The Slow Dying of the Earth, during which he worked as an assistant to Mira Carmen Vila and Miguel Fuster in order to survive.

In the boom of adult comics in Spain

In 1975, Giménez began working for satirical magazines such as Mata Ratos, Muchas Gracias and El Papus, where he began series such as "Paracuellos"; the comic strips, many of them with scripts by Ivá, which would later be compiled under the title of "Spain One, Great and Free", and Barrio (1977). Until now, most of his works had been published abroad, and he was almost unknown in Spain. On the contrary, he will now receive & # 34; constant death threats from far-right groups & # 34;, since he was the first in the world of comics who began to tell things from the Franco era.

In 1978, he published "The Menéndez saga" in the youth magazine Primeras noticias and starts "Koolau the leper", an adaptation of a story by Jack London, which will appear the following year in Totem.

In his latest group work (the so-called Taller Premiá), he plans and funds Tequila Bang! against the Tenax club, while Adolfo Usero is in charge of the pencil drawing and Alfonso Font of the inking. In the end, he will recognize that & # 34; teamwork is not good when it comes to making comics & # 34;, because it ends up being meaningless and industrialized.

In 1980, he published "Once Upon a Time in the Future", based on stories by Jack London and Stanisław Lem's Star Diaries, in 1984, at the same time that Paracuellos continues, with the title of Social Aid, at Comix Internacional.

Participates in the creation of the magazine Rambla, where he serializes "Los Profesionales" (1982), focused on the economic relations that underlie cartoon production and "much more detached from the political context and criticism of the (Franco) Regime".

Recent work

Back in Madrid, to which he returned in 1983, he continued with "Los Profesionales" and she deals with sentimental relationships in series such as & # 34; Romances of walking around the house & # 34; and Historias de sexo y chapuza (1989), which is to be published in the French magazine "Fluide Glacial" before the crisis of the autochthonous market. In another register, that of action comics, it is worth noting works such as Bandolero (1987); "An eternal childhood" (1991), with a script by Godard, and "Jonás, the island that never existed" (1992-2003), whose previous publication on the Internet (which he pioneered) was a failure.

He became the father of three new children with Ana Salado: Pablo, in 1989, and the twins Kas and Lucía, in 1996. All his work began to be republished by Ediciones Glénat.

In 2005 he received the Grand Prix of the Salón del Cómic de Barcelona, as recognition for his entire career. He is also in charge of the script for the adaptation of & # 34; Captain Alatriste & # 34; (2005), drawn by Joan Mundet, and between 2007 and 2008, he made another of his political works: & # 34; 36-39. Bad Times", expressly focused on the Spanish Civil War. His last major work is a biography of Pepe González.

Style and influences

Giménez, like Alfonso Font, is characterized by "semi-humorous nuances" in his drawings. These are usually harmonious and pleasant, which helps to appease any misgivings, although they often express terrible things. Their greatest graphic influences are, according to Ludolfo Paramio, Milton Caniff and the Pilote cartoonists, while Mariano Ayuso and Antonio Lara they consider Frank Robbins as the first of their teachers. The latter theorist does not fail, however, to highlight "a concretion, a sense of finitude" inherited from Juan García Iranzo, a great inspiration in his childhood. Specifically, he learned to draw women from Pepe González, his partner in Illustrated Selections. In any case, Giménez considers himself "a storyteller and the story is what is important, not what I would like to draw". In this way,

Each issue requires a different approach, planning, concept and technique. If what I intend to do is to make laugh, by logic I come to a concept of things that are closer to laughter, that is to the comic drawing. If I want to reflect a kind world — like that of Dani Futurefor example—I resort to the softness of lines, ornamentation, styling and idealization. If instead, I work on a subject of "suspense", of mystery or terror, I resort to the tragic, the shadows, the dark. The concept of drawing must always be based on the type of story to be told.

In his scripts, he resorts to a discursive technique in which introspection and monologue abound, which allows him to unify material that is quite varied in terms of tones. There is, however, a certain sentimental and even sappy tone in his comic strips, which Giménez himself considers a trait of his own personal character and Toni Segarra indicates that it serves as a "counterpoint to those other much harsher and more sober sequences". He resorts to underlining a certain elemental symbology and, therefore, easily assimilated by any type of reader.

In his autobiographical works, he prioritizes reaction over action, emphasizing reaction through close-up, while in his adaptations:

"the planes open for the benefit of the depth of the field, thus allowing Giménez to boast of his great decorative technique and enter into a dangerous terrain where the dramatization of the silences passes to rest more in the landscape than in the characters".

In the literary field, the greatest influence recognized by Giménez himself is that of Paco Candel, especially in Barrio. Both authors, Catalan by adoption, would become great friends. Felipe Hernández Cava considers that this autobiographical part of his work takes up the current of the Spanish novel of social realism of the 1960s, in addition to showing resonances with Ramón J. Sender (whose Requiem for a Spanish peasant he would come to adapt) and Arturo Barea. from The Forging of a Rebel.

Already in 1982, Antonio Lara considered him "a witness or chronicler of what is happening around us", in such a way that

His drawings, his series of comics, tell us of everything that worries him, but, given the curious circumstance that we are also concerned about the other citizens of this country, there is this curious phenomenon of interrelationship or mutual dependence between the author and his recipients or readers.

For Antonio Remesar, his "autobiographical" constitutes a sociological and even historical chronicle of the first order, not surpassed by the contemporaries "psychoanalytic dalliances of Valentina de Crepax, nor the chronicle of customs about the New York of the Depression of Eisner, nor the illusory adventures del niño Pratt por África". Five years later, Giménez defined himself as a storyteller who dedicated himself to filtering what was happening around him to reflect it in his comics.

His most personal works are also characterized by a certain Manichaeism that separates the characters into two camps, that of the "bad guys" and that of the & # 34; good & # 34;, although this can be justified by the very people and comics that he chooses to reflect.

In 1982, when asked about his favorite films, he cited Twelve Angry Men (1957), One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) and Star Wars (1977).

Jan collects his AACE award at the 2012 edition of the Barcelona Hall; behind you can see the sign of the association, work of Carlos Giménez.

Legacy

From the late 1960s to the early 1980s, Giménez represented the vanguard of comic book authors in Spain thanks to his "personal initiatives" and his "radical and convinced stances". In 1970, thanks to Dani Futuro, he constituted "the number one of our commercial cartoonists, in the fully positive sense of the term". A classic like Jesús Blasco believed in 1983 that he was "the most talented comic book storyteller we have".

Awards

• The best drawer, at the Club Amigos de la Historieta Awards 1977.
• 1985 Haxtur Award for "Best script" for his work First Lovegranted in the International Comic Hall of the Principality of Asturias-Gijón
• Since 1985 to 2011 he has obtained eight other nominations for the Haxtur Awards
• 1991 Haxtur Award for "Best Short Story" "Best Screen" for his work Taste of mint
• 2001 Haxtur Award for "Best script" for his work Signatures... Ar!
• 2007 Haxtur Award for "Best Short Story" for his work That day / Barrio 4
• 2007 Haxtur Award to the "Finalist most voted by the public"
• 2004 John Buscema Award: Love the Dedicated Comic to those who have made extraordinary contributions to the environment and to the recognition of it as art. Granted by the International Comic Chamber of the Principality of Asturias-Gijón

Work

• Gringo (1963).
• Delta 99 (1968).
• Dani Future (1969). Guion de Victor Mora.
• Hom (1974).
• Spain One, Great and Free (1976-77). Precise collaborations in the Ivá script.
• Paracuellos (1976-2022). 9 albums.
• Barrio (1977-2001). 4 albums.
• The saga of the Menéndez (1978).
• Koolau the leper (1978).
• Retals (1979).
• The Odysseys of Ulysses (1980).
• Once in the future (1980).
• Professionals (1981-2003). 5 albums.
• Carlos Giménez, a man a thousand images (1982).
• Romances to walk home (1983-85).
• Rambla upstairs, Rambla down (1986). A story of Professionals.
• Bandolero (1987).
• Stories of sex and veneer (1989-2000). 6 albums.
• An eternal childhood (1990). Guion de Christian Godard, colored by Marie-Paule Alluard.
• Taste mint and other stories (1994). Compilation of nine stories drawn between 1970 and 1992.
• Jonah, the island that never existed (1992-2003).
• 2000 and peak stories (2001).
• Flash-Back tribute to Calor Giménez (2003).
• Captain Alatriste (2005). Joan Mundet's drawing.
• The stories of Uncle Pablo (2007). Collection of comics published between 1997 and 2005 and edited in album in 2007.
• 36-39. Bad times (2007-2008). 4 albums.
• Pepe (2012-2014). 5 albums. Pepe González's biography.
• The scarlet plague (2015).
• Crisalis (2016).
• Time machine (2017).
• Discrimination (2018).
• Christmas song. A story of ghosts (2018).
• Endpoint (2019). Includes two stories, one of Dani Future and another Gringo.
• My friend Luis (2019).
• It's today. (2020).
• The immortal (2021).
• While the world agonizes (2021). A story of Dani Future.
• The little prince [2021).