Francisco Ibanez

Francisco Ibáñez Talavera (Barcelona, March 15, 1936) is a Spanish cartoonist belonging to the second generation or generation of 57 of the Bruguera School along with authors such as Figueras, Gin, Nadal, Raf, Segura or Martz Schmidt. Creator of a multitude of humorous series, among which Mortadelo y Filemón stands out, many of them are perceived in Spain as an essential icon for several generations and many other later comic artists recognize his great influence.

Since the 1990s, he has focused almost exclusively on Mortadelo y Filemón.

Biography

Childhood and beginnings

Francisco Ibáñez Talavera was born in Barcelona on March 15, 1936, four months before the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, into a lower-middle-class family, made up of the father, of Valencian origin and an accountant by profession.; the mother, of Andalusian origin, and three brothers. From a very young age, he developed a great fondness for comics and American comedy films. In October 1947, at the age of eleven, his first drawing was published in the magazine Guys.

After completing primary education at the Guimerá Schools, Ibáñez began to study Accounting, Banking and Mercantile Expertise and in 1950 began working as a bellboy at the Banco Español de Crédito, work that two years later he began to combine with collaborations in the magazines Nicolás, Chicolino, La hora del recreo, Alex, Liliput, El Barbas and above all in the two humorous titles of Editorial Marco: La Risa and Hipo, Monito y Fifí. In them he created covers and series such as Kokolo (1952), Melenas (1954), Don Usura (1955) and Making the Indian i> (1955), the author's first of some success, as it was also reproduced in the weekly supplement of La Prensa in Barcelona. He also stood out among all the publisher's authors for a violence that he anticipated that of his future creations.

Professionalization

In the summer of 1957, Ibáñez, who already earned more as a cartoonist than as a portfolio and risk assistant in the bank, decided to dedicate himself entirely to comics and, in addition to continuing to collaborate with the publications of Editorial Marco, he became part of the staff of Paseo infantil, which disappeared shortly after and where he created series such as Pepe Roña and continued the series Loony by Alfons Figueras.

Simultaneously, in August Ibáñez began collaborating with the powerful Bruguera, which then urgently needed new cartoonists after the departure of its main artists to Tío Vivo. At Bruguera Ibáñez initially contributed pages of jokes about a certain subject or a sport for Pulgarcito and the headquarters of El DDT and Selecciones de Humor de El DDT, since as Armando Matías Guiu explained, "the joke was the first step to get a character in the magazines".

On January 20, 1958, already working exclusively for Bruguera, and after the approval of its artistic director, Rafael González, Ibáñez published the first installment of Mortadelo y Filemón in the magazine Pulgarcito.

Spanish post seal dedicated to Mortadelo and Filemón

Since then and during the decade of the 1960s, Ibáñez was creating and adapting some of his best series for different magazines of the editorial: La familia Trapisonda (Pulgarcito, 07/7/1958), the highly original 13, Rue del Percebe (Tío Vivo, 03/6/1961), The Sacarino bellboy (El DDT, 1963), Rompetechos (Tío Vivo, 1964) and Pepe Gotera and Otilio (Tío Vivo, 1966).

Maturity

Influenced by Franco-Belgian comics, in 1969 Ibáñez published Atomic Sulfate, the first Mortadelo and Filemón comic strip conceived as a long-running parody of the world of spies. The new model was successful both nationally and internationally and Bruguera exploited it by releasing titles such as Mortadelo (1970), Super Mortadelo (1972), Mortadelo Gigante (1974) or Mortadelo Especial (1975), sometimes without respecting their labor rights. The intensification of censorship also contributed to the abandonment of local social references.

Ibáñez, who personally became the father of two daughters in those years, then suffered the progressive commodification and industrialization of his star characters, which forced him to work piecework (up to 40 pages a week), abandon his other characters and resort to collaborators. The theorist Jesús Cuadrado summed it up like this:

The industry, the insatiable and saturnal father: His voracity, engulfed the vassal, ended with the creativity of Ibáñez, a great fabulator, a more than excellent narrator who was baptized with the same salts (or couples or similar, but always exemplary) than some genius of the Benelux.

At this time, only one new character managed his own comics: Tete Cohete (1981).

In 1985 Ibáñez left the publishing house Bruguera, which had retained the rights to his characters, so all the comic strips starring them (and not just part) began to be completely developed by other authors, integrated into what which was called Bruguera Equip. Meanwhile, Ibáñez began working for another publishing house, Grijalbo, where in 1986 he created new characters for the magazine Guai!: thus Chicha, Tato and Clodoveo, unemployed by profession, were born and 7, Rebolling Street.

Francisco Ibáñez in a book firm in the city of Jerez de la Frontera.

Last years

After the publication in 1987 of Law 22/1987, of November 11, on Intellectual Property, which confirmed the ownership of the works by the authors, Ibáñez became part of Ediciones B and, since then, He went on to make about 6 new Mortadelo y Filemón albums per year, where abundant elements of the present and the fashions of the moment in which he created them appear.

In 1994, he helped a team from Ediciones B and BRB Internacional to produce the animated series Mortadelo y Filemón.

In 2018 he received a tribute from Spanish comedians recognizing his figure

He defines himself as a great defender of comics as art, having sold more than 100 million copies.

Tribute to Francisco Ibáñez with several of his characters

In 2020, La 2 dedicates a program to him from its series "Essentials"

Repeatedly, attempts have been made for the cartoonist to be awarded the Princess of Asturias Award, the citizen initiative started at the end of 2020 to have an award in the 2021 edition, having a special impact, which some thirty MEPs from various parties joined, personalities such as the writer Arturo Pérez-Reverte or the filmmaker Álex de la Iglesia, among others. However, the awards for the categories to which the candidacy were awarded to the artist Marina Abramović and the writer Glorian Steinem. On 4 March 2022, MEP Ibán García del Blanco, who already led the 2020 accession, presented a new candidacy with the support of 67 other members of Parliament European, from 15 countries.

Family

On May 27, 1966, he married Remedios Solera Sánchez and they had two daughters: Sonia (b. 1971) and Nuria (b. 1972). He also has grandchildren.

Style

Both Vázquez and Ibáñez are characterized by presenting a continuous succession of gags from the beginning to the end of the story, in such a way that in one panel the gag that is going to occur in the other is prepared. explaining Armando Matías Guiu

In Ibáñez after an appetizing fall in which the character is left unplug, made phosphatin, in the next vineyard it rises as quiet and follows as if nothing had happened to him. It cultivates the humor of the absurd, difficult to achieve; a spontaneous, brilliant humor, with uneasy, brutally comical situations. The humor of Ibáñez is overwhelming, it gets you in his tingling and takes you where he wants.

Thus, they set up a much more direct and explosive type of humor, more prone to laughter, than that of their predecessors, such as Peñarroya or Escobar.

Caricatures in his works

autograph

Ibáñez himself has caricatured numerous times in his comics, becoming one more character and even the main one in some. He presents himself on these occasions as a conceited individual who charges many millions for drawing and also (this is closer to the truth) who works a lot, although his own characters make fun of his ability to draw well. It was also common in his time at Editorial Bruguera that, in special issues, the newsroom was caricatured and the best-known workers and cartoonists acted as characters in a comic plot.

Works

Francisco Ibáñez at the Madrid Book Fair in 2007.

Throughout his long career, Ibáñez has drawn the following series:

Filmography

• The great Vázquez (2010) by Óscar Aibar, in which the actor Manolo Solo embodies the young historietist.

Exhibitions

• "FRANCISCO IBÁÑEZ, EL MAGO DEL HUMOR" (21/10/2014 at 18/01/2015), in the Circle of Fine Arts of Madrid.
• "The monkeys of: Ibáñez"