My brother and I draw since I can keep in mind. The first drawing my brother was happy with was truly 90 p.c performed by my father. He was seven or eight years previous, I used to be three years youthful. He tried to repeat the duvet of a Super Mortadelo with out a lot success. My father got here dwelling from work. My mom known as us to eat within the kitchen. He deserted the drawing with some frustration. He did not come out. We sit on the desk. From my seat I might see my father within the eating room. He had picked up the pencil. I started to take a look at him: I keep in mind him concentrating, with the tip of his tongue protruding of his mouth, whereas he completely copied that Mortadelo disguised as a soloist, that livid Philemon, that gap within the ground by way of which the piano had slipped. ..
Cover of a Mortadelo and Filemón comedian NIUS
We hadn’t completed the primary course when, with the completed drawing, he got here into the kitchen and handed it to my brother. “Here, bullfighter,” he informed him. My father all the time known as us “bullfighters”. And even though nearly half a century in the past, within the picture album of my reminiscences, my brother’s look of satisfaction and pleasure in that drawing has not but been erased…
There is an previous principle that claims that for those who like Mortadelo you can not like Zipi y Zape. And that for those who like Mortadelo, you want Asterix and never Tintin. Tintin likes these of Zipi and Zape. We had been from Asterix. And Mortadelo, after all. Very Mortadelo.
Over the years, my brother and I labored as skilled cartoonists for some time. Drawing saved us from wreck. It is troublesome to think about a Spaniard who likes to attract who doesn’t have an excellent debt with Ibáñez. Ours is unamortizable: with him we discovered to hint five-fingered arms, to nail individuals strolling, to make footwear that all the time had a gap within the sole…
With Ibáñez we additionally discovered that to flee – “run, Chief” -, there isn’t any place extra distant than Pernambuco or the Gobi desert. And that one can focus all his anger in a Chinese letter, a cranium, a braying donkey and lightning.
And additionally that the title determines the destinies: a man named Cachipórrez might solely find yourself being a gangster, somebody with the final title Carbúrez, a automobile mechanic, agent Cejijúntez, a dark man, Cardo Borriquérez, a gulf with restricted sensitivity impious assassin of 47 previous girls .
After the years and now that I’ve change into Mario Periodístez, I received to interview Ibáñez as soon as. The interview, in actuality, was an excuse. I simply wished to ask him to attract me a Mortadelo to present to my brother and with which to shut the circle of our childhood. I do not forget that Ibáñez chaotic and enjoyable. And, it is curious, however in my reminiscence, in that interview, Ibáñez just isn’t flesh and blood: in my thoughts he seems drawn by himself, with these clueless genius curls and that shine on his bald head with which he wore in some bullets
I might have wished to ask him to make me a Frankenstein from the album ‘Los Monstruos’, maybe the comedian I’ve learn probably the most instances in my life. It just isn’t an exaggeration to say that in my cultural heritage I might place it on a par with ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’, The Godfather Trilogy or The Beatles data. But I left pleased with the sketch of a Mortadelo signed by the maestro with an already trembling hand.
Cover of ‘The Monsters’ NIUS
So now I suggest that you do not waste your time studying obituaries about Ibáñez, not even this one. Better go to the storage room and search for a kind of comics: ‘The Atomic Sulfate’, ‘Magín the Magician’, ‘Valor and the Bull’… And learn them once more: his cartoons are genuine time machines. Open them and you’ll journey on to the paradise of misplaced childhood, when each day was Saturday afternoon…
Because perhaps we received older and forgot about being youngsters however we by no means misplaced our fascination for Ibáñez’s drawings: in one among his cartoons, within the background subsequent to a bunch of mice enjoying playing cards, the final embers conceal crouching of that boy we had been.
Needless to say, with him we’re shedding one other a part of that childhood of which just about nothing stays: Miliki is gone, Gloria Fuertes and Miguel de la Cuadra are gone. María Luisa Seco, Íñigo, Chicho, Kiko, Torrebruno, Curro Jiménez are not right here…
That is why it could be very silly to not acknowledge that the loss of life of Ibáñez represents an amazing blow to the center of nostalgia for a number of generations.
Cover of ‘Atomic Sulfate’NIUS
Mine is harm at the moment: When my father died in 2013, he and I had not spoken to one another for years. The loss of life of Ibáñez at the moment has given me again that picture of him just lately arrived from work, drawing for my brother that pianist Mortadelo, concentrated in that eating room of virtually half a century in the past, with the tip of his tongue between his lips and nearly all his life for in entrance of…
And I believed that I do not know what I would not give to return for a minute to that kitchen from 4 many years in the past, when a father was a hero who might repair something.
And I used to be a baby who didn’t know that life is a path of no return. And that forgiveness is a practice that may by no means be late.
This reconciliation with reminiscence and this cramp of gorgeous unhappiness at the moment, I additionally owe to Ibáñez. Like the arms and footwear. So, sapristi, thanks for the whole lot, grasp.
But run, Chief. Although there are sorrows from which we can not escape even by fleeing to Pernambuco…
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