Artofluisgarcia

Luis Garcia
THE ART OF
DAVID ROACH
Chronicles Des Sin Nombres page 1, Pilote 724 1973
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2
THE ART OF
4 INTRODUCTION: Miracles and Dreams
5 CHAPTER ONE: Beginnings
18 CHAPTER TWO: Romance in London
35 CHAPTER THREE: Life at la Floresta
44 CHAPTER FOUR: Warren
81 CHAPTER FIVE: The Chronicles
127 CHAPTER SIX: The Personal and Political
159 CHAPTER SEVEN: Ethnocide
173 CHAPTER EIGHT: Graphic Novels
189 CHAPTER NINE: Rambla
200 CHAPTER TEN: Paintings and Panels
3
INTRODUCTION
Miracles and Dreams

I
t is quite a rare thing, I imagine, to remember precisely where of old comics. It eventually became apparent that Luis had indeed
you were when you first discovered a favorite artist, but in the drawn romance strips for the UK, hundreds of them, many of which
case of Luis Garcia I know exactly where I was: perched on the were absolutely stunning. With the arrival of the internet the very
edge of a bed in a Spanish hotel room. As a teenager I used to first search I made on-line was for examples of Luis’ art. There were
buy comics especially to take along on holiday, saving them vast gaps in my knowledge, whole years, whole decades where he
up unread for a grand unveiling, one each day throughout had seemingly disappeared from comics completely and I had to
the length of the vacation. Warren comics were invariably part of understand why. As buying online became easier, I discovered his
that pile of wonders, and they were often copies of Vampirella, my work in titles like Rambla and Trocha, along with comic albums like
favorite comic. Our family holidays often took us to the Spanish island Argelia, Chicharras, and Etnocidio and all of them were astonishing.
of Mallorca and this particular year, when I must have been around I also learned that we were born 19 years and six days apart, both
13 or 14, one of my chosen comics was a rather battered old copy winter babies in the first weeks of January (Luis assures me that he
of Vampirella #43 which I’d probably picked up at a comic shop or knew I was a fellow Capricorn!). On the day I was born he was visiting
convention. Much of my life away from school at that time was spent London for the first time, along with his friends Enrique Montserrat
doggedly hunting down back issues and nothing felt more precious and Luis Martinez Roca. Looking at the dates also made me realize
than finding a missing issue of Vampirella. You can’t imagine the will that he was creating astonishing artwork as a teenager, comic strips and
power it took not to read it as soon as I’d found it, but somehow I illustrations that I could only dream of drawing now, as a mature adult.
resisted the temptation. The internet, miraculously introduced me to Luis himself (it must
To this day I can vividly remember the feeling of astonishment when have been through Facebook, though somehow our first introduction
I finally opened the comic and saw the artwork on a strip called “The seems hazily vague now, as if in a dream) and we began to correspond.
Wolves at War’s End” by an artist I’d somehow never seen before by I sent him copies of his British strips that he had never seen in print, he
the name of Luis Garcia. The images had a depth and a realism to them critiqued my drawings and offered suggestions on how to improve my
that seemed almost impossible for my young mind to grasp. I would art. I wrote articles about him that somehow rarely saw print, a book
pore over each panel for hours trying to figure out how this artist was collecting the best of his romance strips almost appeared, but never
actually creating these strips. It was seemingly genius, or alchemy, quite did, and over time we became friends without ever meeting.
or both. Over the next few years I discovered more and more of his This book is another miracle, a dream project for me that has brought
work, either original strips he’d drawn for Warren or, like the “Wolves” together artwork from all the various stages in Luis’ career for the
story, translated reprints from Pilote magazine, and each time I was first time anywhere, with most of the artwork shot from the original
captivated, thrilled and amazed. I dreamt of becoming a comic artist pages that Luis still has, or very kindly scanned by collectors around
myself and several of his strips found themselves in a pile by the side of the world. For the text I thought it would be fascinating for readers to
my drawing board as constant sources of inspiration and a perpetual hear as much as possible directly from Luis himself and so each chapter
challenge to somehow reach that level of artistry. By the time I was 21 alternates between my historical analysis and Luis’ own memories and
I had graduated from Art School and was drawing for the top comic recollections. His quotes are taken from our many emails over the
book in Britain, 2000 AD, but I was still pushing myself to reach that years, information Luis has given me for articles in the past and more
level of artistry, and still looking at those strips for inspiration. Three recent answers to my incessant questions conducted especially for this
decades on and those Vampi’s are even more bedraggled and coverless, book. Most of the art in this book has never been seen in America
and I’m still looking on in amazement with an ever-deeper admiration before, much will be new to readers
of Luis’ strips in them. of any nationality and a lot has never
In 1982 Heavy Metal started serializing Luis’ astonishing Nova 2 been published anywhere before. So
graphic novel and one sequence particularly caught my eye. We see the book will come as a revelation to
the strip’s star, Victor Ramos, drawing a strip that was clearly intended everyone who picks it up, much as
for a British romance comic, and the strip itself looked fantastic. I Luis’ work first appeared to me some
knew Spanish artists had drawn for British comics, I grew up reading 40 years ago. Magical, mysterious and
their work, but I’d never looked at a romance comic before and endlessly wonderful.
frankly they were almost impossible to find. However, the revelation
that Luis might have drawn for them was too tantalizing to resist.
So began my quest to discover what exactly the Spanish artists had
drawn for the UK, which culminated in the Dynamite book Masters David A. Roach
of Spanish Comic Art, along with countless lists and boxes upon boxes December 2019
4
CHAPTER ONE
Beginnings
L
uis Garcia Mozos was born in the small Spanish only enough for bread, garlic soup, porridge, crumbs, potatoes, and
village of Puertollano, a Mining town in the Central occasionally rabbit stew. For my first two years I was fed exclusively
Spain province of Cuidad Real, south of Madrid. on breast milk. In 1948 they moved my father to Santa Cruz de
Two years later his father, a railway worker, was Mudela. Renfe [the state-owned railway operator] gave its employees a
transferred to Santa Cruz de Mudela, another freight car for the transfer of furniture until they found a flat for rent.
agricultural town, also in Ciudad Real. Looking back There we lived: my parents, my sister and I, in a freight car parked on
many decades later, Luis considered the country he was born into: a dead-end road. Later, my father was promoted to a train waiter:
he had to travel in the last car of the train, watching the goods they
Peurtollano, a place in La Mancha, whose name I will always were transporting through southern Spain. We spent days without
remember, was a mining town where silicosis killed young people seeing him, and when he returned home, exhausted, he slept until he
who ripped coal from the earth for 10 or 12 hours a day, deep in was called back to work. That is, I saw little and almost never talked
the bowels of the mines. On the surface there was the exploitation to him. I remember, of course, the beatings that he gave me with his
of child labor; children who worked unloading coal from the cars belt, prompted by my mother’s complaints about my behavior.
that went inside and loading it into cars pulled by mules. The I studied in a primary school run by the Brothers de la Salle: much
mines where my father, at twelve, had already worked. Working Catechism, few Mathematics, much Sacred History, little Grammar,
conditions that never once troubled the consciences of the infamous and much History of Spain (the victors’ version of history, of course).
and greedy magnates of the French mining company SMMP Luckily they also taught us drawing, In that class Brother Manolo
(Société minière et métallurgique de Peñarroya), or that of the
monarchist, republican and Francoist politicians who ruled Spain
from the 19th century until the middle of the 20th century.
I was born on January 10, 1946 (the same year that an anti-
Franco guerrilla, “El Gafas”, robbed the bank of Puertollano taking
250,000 pesetas), in the steep alley of a working class neighborhood of
proletarian slaves. Calle de San Agustín, philosopher and Christian
theologian, writer of the Confessions and The City of God: ‘Know
yourself. Accept yourself. Get over it. And if you are to kill, do it for
the love of God.’ After growing for nine months fed and protected
in a comfortable temperature of about 37º, I emerged into the shack
where my mother gave birth to me, naked and without heating, the
outside temperature would have been about 3º below zero. It was
one o’clock in the morning and when I emerged into this world the
midwife greeted me with smacks on my buttocks to make me cry, to
show that I was alive and could begin to breathe with my little lungs.
The first perception of my new born psyche was that I was in a very cold,
aggressive and painful world. About 24 years later, on an acid trip in
London, I understood that being born into Franco’s society had made
me a possible psychopath; caused by a childhood abused by the priest
and his holy water, the teachers, the Brothers of La Salle, the doctor, the
Falangists, the authorities and my parents. As the poet Antoine de Saint
Exupery said, ‘Where do I come from? I come from my childhood.”
The only memory I have of my hometown is that of a pigsty where
the pigs ate wildly. At night I had a nightmare that I was being
devoured by those same pigs ... I woke up crying. My father was a loser
in the civil war, a ‘ defeated’ of “La Quinta del Biberón” (a brigade
of 17-year-olds enlisted by the government of the Republic to fight
against [Francisco] Franco), therefore he had to accept the work offered
by the ‘victors’: to hook up freight train cars. On the other hand, my
mother sewed and embroidered. Even with the two salaries it was Childhood photograph 1952
5
THE ART OF LUIS GARCIA
had a young assistant for a few months, whom I

later found in the world of comics, Luis Conde.
Brother Manolo was surprised by my ability to
draw and later advised my parents to move to
Madrid or Barcelona so that I could develop my
skills further. It was the only subject in which
we were not punished. In the others, if we didn’t
know the answer the Brothers beat us on the
fingertips with a wooden ruler or on the buttocks
with an olive stick. Brother Juan stroked our
buttocks and masturbated, reaching under his
cassock. Every day we endured a mass before
classes began and, in the afternoon a rosary at
the end of them. To this we must add the Via
Crucis, the Month of Mary and the first Fridays
of each month, in which they assured us that we
would go to Heaven even if we died with some
mortal sin. They prepared us to work and die,
if necessary, for God and for the Fatherland”.
Looking back on his earliest artistic inspirations

Luis has said that he learned to draw when Bruguera studio 1960, Luis second from right
he was eight or nine by copying the comics of
the great Spanish comics pioneer Emilio Freixas, comic book panels and glamorous film star portraits (Lana Turner
widely regarded as one the fathers of Spanish adventure comics. and Gina Lollobrigida among others), much as, coincidentally,
In 1956, his father requested a transfer and moved the whole his later friend Pepe Gonzalez had drawn at that same age.
family to Barcelona so that Luis could study at Art College. His
drawings from this early period show that he was clearly a prodigy From 1957 to 1960, while Barcelona, shaped me, I studied at the
of enormous talent. They reveal a remarkably sure eye and a facility Academia Mercurio until the third year of Elementary Baccalaureate
with the pencil which belied his young age. His artwork from (the equivalent, more or less, of the second ESO today). In addition to the
around the ages of 10 to 12 was a mixture of religious drawings Academy, from seven to nine in the evening I also studied at the School
(subjects such as Jesus and the Virgin Mary), convincingly copied of Arts and Crafts practicing charcoal drawing and copying casts of heads
and statues. Pedro, an older friend of mine from the building we lived in,
told me that “If I drew like you, I would go to the Bruguera publishing
house to draw comics”. At Bruguera, the comic artist José Bielsa (who
was the head of the Creacciones Editoriales studio in Bruguera at that
time) received me outside visiting hours because I was a child (I was only
13 years old). I showed Bielsa the drawings I had made in my village
and at the School of Arts and Crafts and he pointed out that comics were
not created with pencil or charcoal. ‘You have to learn to draw with a
pen and ink’. He gave me a pen, an inkwell of Chinese ink, and some
printing proofs of Capitan Trueno: ‘Copy them,’ he said, ‘and, when
you are finished bring them in.’ So, I copied them on our dining table.
At that time Editorial Bruguera was the biggest comic publisher in

Spain, having grown from its beginnings in 1910 (under the El Gato
Negro imprint) to dominate the newsstands. Its output included
immensely popular humor comics such as DDT, Pulgarcito, Tio Vivo,
and TBO (which gave its name to the comic art form itself in Spain:
Tebeos); adventure strips such as El Capitan Trueno (created by writer
Victor Mora and artist Ambros); girls’ comics like Sissi and Celia;
illustrated westerns, and children’s books. It also included an adult
fiction division which published the immensely prolific romantic
novelist Corin Tellado. Like many of the early American comic book
publishers, Bruguera had an in-house studio, known as Creacceones,
which could provide art work for their various publications as well as
produce strips for clients overseas. The foreign artwork commissions
were coordinated by the Belgian agency A.L.I. which acted as a
conduit between Bruguera and its clients in Britain and France.
However it gradually emerged that after A.L.I. and Bruguera had
taken their cuts, the artists themselves were often left with only a
third of the original fees, so inevitably many of their best artists
Lana Turner 1958 moved over to rival agencies. This fluidity of allegiances was a
6
On the Terrace of Creacciones Editoriales Bruguera 1960. Standing left to right; Guilermo Gesali, Francisco Puerta, Miguel Fuster, Jesus Redondo, Julio Fernandez,
Juan Antonio Parras, Gemma Sales, Luis Martinez Roca, Judith, Tomas Marco, Luis Casamitjana, Enrique Badia Romero. Sitting left to right; Antonio Piqueras, Jose
Maria Bellalta, Jorge Badia Romero, Luis, Juan Sole Puyal, J. Sebastian Tamarit.
feature of Spanish comics for decades, with artists constantly I was only a child she talked to me about her uncertainty over which
looking for better money and more creative opportunities. cartoonist she loved the most: Julio Fernandez or Rousado Pinto.
Enrique Montserrat, an Olympic gymnast in Beirut and champion of
In 1959, when I was 13 years old, I started drawing as an apprentice Catalonia in rings, recommended that I do physical exercise. Luis Roca
for Bruguera. And in 1960, I began my career in comics. For a child rarely came in (he gave me demonstrations of pen and brush techniques),
like me, seeing the original pages being created, was Nirvana. It and when he did, he spent a lot of time in the office with Mariemma,
was literally enchanting watching these professionals at work. The the secretary of the studio. In the end Gemma married Pinto and Roca
atmosphere was formal, but friendly and outgoing and nobody played married Mariemma. By contrast with Selleciones Illustradas, everyone
any cruel jokes. The other artists introduced me to the work of the great encouraged me at Bruguera and I felt loved by all of them. Along with
American masters of comics such as Alex Raymond, Stan Drake, Milton telling me that I was very quick to learn, some of them, like Romero
Caniff, and John Cullen Murphy. At Bruguera, I started drawing and Antonio Piqueras, even asked me to help them in their work. I
“Curiosities” (small illustrations for a section of the magazine dedicated remember my time at Bruguera with love. But what most of the artists
to curiosities about the animal world) for the magazines DDT and in the studio really believed was that being admitted into the Selecciones
Pulgarcito, and I also drew western illustrations for Marcial Lafuente Illustradas agency meant belonging to the elite of Spanish artists”.
Estefanía’s novels. Above all, I became friends with Luis Martínez
Roca and Miguel Fuster who I am still close to today. They were all At the age of 14, Luis arranged a meeting with Josep Toutain, the
very kind to me and the one who helped me the most with advice head of the Selleciones Illustradas agency (better known by its initials
was the head of the studio Paco Ortega (who had recently taken over S.I..) which was beginning to make great inroads into the British
from Jose Bielsa). Everyone treated me with great affection and they comics market. S.I.’s big attractions were not only its roster of brilliant
even nicknamed me “Crispin” after the child in Captain Trueno. young artists but also the opportunity to earn considerable money
Because of my technical ability with the brush, Jorge Badía Romero drawing for foreign clients across Europe, particularly in the UK.
asked me to do the inking on some of his romances, but imitating his Then as now British publishers were not widely regarded as generous
style. And, later, when I was already working for England, he asked employers (certainly not by the indigenous talent) but the difference
me to ink him on many occasions, minus the heads (I should add that in exchange rates between the Peseta and the pound meant that for
he always paid me well), This is one of the reasons why he was able to Spanish artists the pay was far better than anything they could find
draw so many romance comics for England. I don’t remember the exact at home. There was also something of a creative cache in working for
titles that we worked on at Bruguera, but I do remember that they Britain, a country that was entering a period of great creativity, in
were girls comics, possibly Claro de Luna. Jorge was also a good friend contrast to the oppressive environment in Spain under Franco. The
(he treated me like I was his son and liked to pick me up in his arms money they earned from comics enabled these young artists to buy the
as if he was lifting weights!), as was Gemma Sales, and even though latest fashions and be the first to hear the latest rock and roll records,
7
I was part of an inferior race. Consequently, they started slandering me.

When I went to S.I. I was impressed by the quality of the artists
but then I was disappointed when I saw the strips. they were copying
from… though soon I was copying from the same artists myself! The
characters in the studio were diverse and sometimes reactionary.
The artists there were variously friendly, proud, jealous, stupid,
funny and even psychotic (in the case of Antonio Romero a seemingly
quiet, friendly, peaceful artist who later killed his own father with
an axe). At Bruguera, I had discovered Alex Raymond’s Rip Kirby
which really impressed me and then at S.I. a year later the artists
who influenced me the most for romance comics were Pepe Gonzalez
for the beauty of his girls and Jordi Longaron for his technique.
Soon afterwards, I discovered the work of Noel Sickles, who was
a great influence on Longaron, and Alberto Breccia who made a
Luis with Miguel Fuster at S.I. 1963
profound impact on my work with his drawing and technique”. I
don’t remember where my first works for S.I. were published, but
as well as allowing them the opportunity to challenge themselves it is possible that the romances were published in Confidencias.
artistically. So the appeal for a young artist like Luis was obvious.
S.I. itself was an interesting and unusual organization which had Luis’ first jobs for S.I. were a pair of Davy Crockett strips in 1961;
been created in the mid-1950s by Toutain, who had been a comic each around 20 pages long intended for international syndication,
artist himself. S.I. acted as an agency that would find work for its’ and they reveal an impressively muscular drawing style coupled with
artists at home or abroad and would facilitate the translation of a remarkably confident inking style. The inking still carried echoes
scripts where necessary. It also syndicated creator owned strips (such of Romero’s work but was also very much an S.I. style and could
as Johnny Galaxia for instance – which was repackaged in the UK easily have been mistaken for Jose Lombardia, whose Sinbad series
as Space Ace) something that was considerably rare at that time. The was one of the agency’s most successful syndicated strips. But even
studio itself was located in the heart of Barcelona on the corner of at this stage, he was beginning to experiment with textures and his
Avenida Diagonal and El Paseo de San Juan and occupied a whole brush work has an edgy vitality highly reminiscent of Breccia. By
floor of the building. Photographs from the 1950s and 60s show a 1962 he had moved on to the romance strips, which had become
large room, divided in two by a glass partition, filled with drawing S.I.’s specialty, and it is clear that he was beginning to absorb
tables arranged in pairs running alongside a wall of large windows. some of the influences around him. His impressive artwork on
In some respects, it resembled the notorious sweatshops of the Momentos Antes de la Boda, reprinted in this chapter, shows an artist
early years of the American comic book industry, though at S.I. the completely in control of his technique; he has seemingly thrown off
artists were clearly treated with a lot more respect. By this point his influences from Bruguera and the strip’s beautifully glamorous
in its existence the agency represented many of the best artists in women could easily be mistaken for the work of Pepe Gonzalez.
the country with established talents such as Jordi Longaron, Angel
Badia Camps, and Petronius working alongside emerging talents
like Fernando Fernandez, Felix Mas, Jose Maria Miralles, Florencio
Clave, Carlos Prunes, Ramon Torrents, Rafael Auraleon, and Enrique
Montserrat. But perhaps the star of the agency was Pepe Gonzalez,
a young artist with extraordinary talents who was widely regarded
as a genius and was already greatly in demand by British editors.
Looking back Luis has mixed feelings about working there:
I remember my first day at S.I. very well; I went to see Toutain, and
when he saw my charcoal drawings, In addition to some of the copies of
the comics, and the western illustrations for the novels I had drawn for
Bruguera, he welcomed me with open arms. When we left his office, he
exclaimed to the cartoonists who worked at S.I.: ‘Guys, I have found
another Pepe González!’ (Pepe had also made similar drawings to
mine before entering SI.). Already, on that first day, I saw a certain
jealousy in the eyes of the cartoonists because of that phrase: ‘Another
Pepe González’. Among the few cartoonists who behaved kindly to me
at S.I. were Florencio Clavé, Javier Puerto (the artist who introduced
Pepe Gonzalez’ work to Toutain), and Pepe himself, at first, along
with a few more whose names I can’t remember now. But most of the
cartoonists, thanks to Toutain’s announcement, had, already began to
hate me. Toutain told us that if we were going to draw romance comics
for the UK then we should imitate Pepe’s technique and style because
the English publishers liked it very much. So, when in a few months I
learned to draw like Pepe, something that most of them had not achieved
even after a long time of trying, their hatred grew. In addition, another
problem was that I was not Catalan and spoke with a Manchego accent
from Castilla-La Mancha, which meant that, for some radical Catalans Bruguera illustration 1960
8
When I started working in Selecciones Ilustradas at 15, among the many

other artists working there I met Pepe Gonzalez, who was seven years
older than me. A few months later he left to do his compulsory military
service, which in those days lasted over two years. When he finished his
service and came back to S.I. we started a friendship that lasted for a
few years. My relationship with Pepe developed when Florencio Clavé,
proposed that we should form a group of graphic experimentation in 1964.
From then on, we produced the magazine Altamira. Apart from Clavé
himself, the founders were Pepe, Fernando Fernandez, Rafael Lopez Espí,
Jose Maria Miralles, Carlos Prunés, Javier Puerto, Enric Torres, and
myself. At first, I did not know that Pepe was gay, and he hid it by going
out with the sister of Fernando Fernandez’ girlfriend (and later wife)
María Rosa. Homosexuality was persecuted by Franco and was punishable
by several years in prison so anyone who was gay did their best to hide it.
At first, we connected through the shared experiences from our
childhood; we both preferred to stay at home drawing rather than playing
outside with friends. We copied almost the same drawing sheets by Emilio
Freixas and, above all, drew pictures of movie actresses, he drew them
in graphite, I drew them in charcoal. These similarities created a bond
between us, but as Pepe had in him the Peter Pan syndrome (he did
not want to grow) he was also very childish. I was reading Nietzsche
by then, and when I tried to talk to him about these books, he simply
did not want to know. On one occasion I suggested he should sign up for
a drawing class, but Pepe just wanted to do what came naturally and
without any effort to him. He could not stand anything that he had to
work for, he was satisfied with the natural talent that nature had given
him. That is one of the reasons why he did not learn to paint in oil.
Our relationship was not that of a teacher and his pupil. Naturally, he
Self-portrait, given to Pepe Gonzalez 1963
had more experience than me and, from time to time, he helped me by

telling me how to draw something, particularly girls’ faces which was
what he did best. This is natural among friends and later Adolfo Usero,
Carlos Giménez, and myself each gave the others our mutual support.
I drew the 1963 self-portrait for myself (I’ve always done charcoal
drawings in parallel to my comic work), and when Pepe asked me for
the drawing, I gave it to him as a mark of our friendship. I was so happy
because Pepe, the mythical genius of S.I. liked one of my drawings and
he wanted to have it for himself. It was wonderful for me. And I think in
return Pepe drew his own portrait of me (shown in Chapter 2) which he
asked me to finish in charcoal. Shortly after this he confessed to me that
he was gay. When I told Pepe that I had no interest in men, that sexually
I liked women very much, he got angry. From then on, Pepe broke the
friendship that united us, and began to speak badly about me, He made
up gossip, made threatening comments and talked mendaciously about
me. For me, who had thought that Pepe was my one real friend there,
it was very traumatic. That’s life. Luckily, we were able to rebuild our
friendship when he became friendly with my girlfriend Carol de Haro
in 1968. Years later the film maker Antonio Ribelles discovered Pepe’s
belongings, thrown out on to the street in front of Pepe’s apartment a few
days after he had died. Antonio tried to recover anything important he
could find there, and discovered my self-portrait among Pepe’s possessions.
He had kept this drawing, my gift to him, throughout his life.
During his first few years at S.I. Luis worked for such Spanish titles
as Romantic (Published by Ibero), Confidencias and Serie Corazón
(Ferma), and Serenata Extra; Confidencias del Dúo Dinámico
(Ediciones Toray) which featured covers by Pepe. He also drew a
significant number of charcoal and pencil illustrations, but for the next
decade most of his work came from one country — Great Britain.
Inking samples 1960
9
Romance strip for S.I. 1961
10
Davy Crockett S.I. series for syndication, 1961

11
Momentos Antes De La Boda. S.I. romance strip 1962
12
13
14
Les Plus Belles Filles de la Vie Parisienne,

supplement to La Vie 179, 1965;
190, 1966
15

supplement to La Vie 179, 1965
16

supplement to La Vie 190, 1966
17
T
he sheer scale of the great Spanish artistic diaspora
is a phenomenon which is still being explored by
comic historians; a movement of talent stretching
from the 1950s to the present day. This creative
exodus saw the work of a vast number of comic
book artists and illustrators spread out across the
world, though invariably created back home in Spain. Countries
such as France, Germany, Sweden, Italy, the U.S, and particularly
Britain saw their indigenous book and comics industries profoundly
changed by the influx of Spanish painters and comic book artists,
much of it emanating from the hotbed of creativity that is Barcelona.
Altogether, almost 400 Spanish artists are known to have worked for
British publishers at some point, primarily for the publishing giants
IPC and DC Thomson, with some enjoying careers lasting for several
decades. After the Second World War, Britain had a young, literate
population desperate for entertainment and once paper rationing was
relaxed in the 1950s the industry exploded. The nation’s appetite for
Luis with hi school friend Carmen and Pepe Gonzalez 1963
comics seemed insatiable and as publishers expanded their output the

search for artists to draw them became ever more desperate. When
a representative from the Belgian agency A.L.I. made contact with
publishing giant Amalgamated Press, and showed them the quality of
work from their stable of artists from Spain such as Jesus Blasco, the
company realized that the answer to their problems lay abroad.
A.L.I. were soon joined by the Cosmopolitan and D’ami agencies
from Italy, along with S.I. and Bardon representing artists from
Spain and by the mid-1960s it’s entirely possible that there were
more foreign artists working in the UK than local creators. British
publishers found that the Spaniards were particularly adept at drawing
war comics, of which there were an enormous number in the ‘60s
and ‘70s, and romance strips. From the late ‘50s, the UK had seen the
emergence of romance comics and magazines such as Marilyn, Roxy,
and Valentine from the Amalgamated Press (later renamed Fleetway
and then finally IPC); Romeo, Cherie, and Jackie from DC Thomson;
Mirabelle, Glamour, and Marty from Pearson; and, Boyfriend from
Love Story 487 City Publishing. These romance titles had initially been drawn by
18
Love Story 487
local artists, but they were soon supplanted by an influx of first Italian
and then Spanish artists whose work was imbued with a glamour and
sophistication which the British simply could not compete with. By the
mid-60s the romance comics were almost entirely drawn by Spanish
artists, one of whom was the young Luis Garcia who quickly became
one of the top romance artists in the industry, as well as the youngest.
Luis’ first published British comic strip appeared in Fleetway’s True
Life Picture Library 365 in 1963 and within a few months his work
could be found in Love Story Picture Library, Romeo, Boyfriend, and
Mirabelle. Between 1963 and 1965 he drew for a variety of British
romance titles, mixing lengthy 64-page stories in the digest-sized
monthly Picture Library comics with shorter strips for the larger
weeklies. His friendship with Pepe Gonzalez was reflected in these
earliest strips, though, in truth, he was only one of many S.I. artists in
thrall to Pepe’s style and gift for drawing beautiful women. Gonzalez
had only just established himself on the British comics scene a few
years earlier, working primarily for Valentine, but it was immediately
clear that he was an exceptional talent and certainly one appreciated by
the editors. Like Gonzalez, Luis could draw astonishingly well and at
times their work was almost indistinguishable from each other. “Miss
from Mersey” in Love Story Picture Library 487 which was published
in 1964 has often been mistaken for a Gonzalez art job but was in fact
drawn by the 18-year-old Luis, with only the occasionally uncertain ink
line suggesting it was anyone other than the great Pepe.
In this early stage of his career, Luis appeared only fitfully in
Boyfriend which was the glossiest of the early ‘60s comics. Boyfriend
was in many ways a template for the teen magazines to come with
its mixture of strips, pop features, and ever-increasing concentration
on fashion which it illustrated with stylish full color features. In
1963 it also began to run short romantic text stories accompanied
by illustrations similar to those in the leading women’s magazines,
19
Advert, Mirabelle 1970; First Illustration for Boyfriend 1964
and from 1965 on, many of these were provided by Luis. In fact, style, which would come to dominate British romance comics for over
he had begun to create these highly realistic, subtly shaded pencil 20 years had various sources.
and charcoal drawings the year before for the Spanish market so
was already extremely accomplished by the time Boyfriend started I never had a specific model in the early days for my romances, but
commissioning him. Between 1964 and 1970, he drew around 150 I would look at photos from fashion magazines and change their
of these illustrations, typically two per month, for Boyfriend (re- expressions to suit the story. Eventually, after years of drawing these
christened as Trend in 1966), 19 Magazine, Jackie, and the Spanish girls I could recreate them from memory. We were all also inspired by
Market. While some of the later pictures were rendered in color the the American illustrators and like the other artists at S.I. I bought the
bulk of the illustrations were created in graphite and point the way annual Illustrators book which published the best illustrations of U.S.
to both his ground-breaking comics of the ‘80s and his subsequent artists each year.
gallery work. These illustrations were uniquely Luis’ own technique
and set him apart from the other S.I. artists. Pepe Gonzalez’ 1964 Typically, the Americans who made the most impact on the
pencil portrait of Luis here shows an early example of Luis’ mastery of S.I. artists would have been Coby Whitmore, Joe Bowler, Lynn
charcoal as he rendered in tone over Pepe’s initial pencils, creating a Buckham, Joe DeMers and particularly Bernie Fuchs, whose constant
unique collaboration. experimentation would have inspired his Spanish admirers to push
Beginning in 1966 much of Luis’ commissions came from Mirabelle boundaries themselves.
where he began to throw off the influence of Gonzalez and firmly Luis spent 1967 living and working in a commune with a number
establish his own style. Here he was given lengthy serials to illustrate of artists who became known as the Grupo de la Floresta, drawing for
often featuring moody loners wandering around the country the ground-breaking Cinco Por Infinito strip, posing for fotonovela’s
(invariably breaking a different heart each week), the longest running and turning out yet more romances (all of which is covered in the next
of which starred the enigmatic songwriter Simon Slade. Probably the chapter). After leaving the commune, the artist returned exclusively to
finest example of his mature romance style was “Strange Memory” British comics again. In fact, throughout 1967 and ‘68 British readers
which appeared in the July 21,1968 edition of Mirabelle. The strip could find at least one of his strips in Mirabelle or Valentine practically
combined the immaculate draftsmanship and idealized figures of his every week, with some issues featuring two or even three stories by him.
Gonzalez period with the expressively dynamic brush lines of Jordi These were attractive, dynamically rendered strips that were by this
Longaron. The style was effectively a synthesis of the two schools of point drawn resolutely in his own unique style. But having experienced
romance art at that time, and in many ways his work of this period is both new genres and new ways of thinking it was becoming harder to
the very epitome of The Spanish Romance style. The emergence of this feel satisfied with endless variations of the same old themes.
20
owner of the company; a deaf,

mute nobleman who had lost a
son about my age in a motorcycle
accident. He invited me to spend
a weekend at his cottage and I
can remember sitting outside his
local pub drinking beer watching
a group of people wearing red
jackets and black hats sitting on
horseback, accompanied by a pack
of dogs chasing a fox. Another
time I went to the legendary
Speakeasy club with Maureen, a
journalist friend of the publisher
(and editor of Honey) and ended
up sitting near John Lennon,
accompanied by his then wife
Cynthia. Eric Burdon, lead
singer of The Animals, was on
stage, singing a celebration of
cannabis over a rhythm and
blues backing while pouring a
huge mug of beer over his head!
At the beginning of this period
Illustration for Boyfriend 339 1965
I drew countless romance strips
for Mirabelle, Valentine, and
The money I was paid equaled four times the salary of a bank worker Romeo, and illustrations for 19. I also drew a couple of portraits of
in Spain and I did really enjoy drawing romance comics but ultimately Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger which were printed up as posters and
it became very boring for me because I was beginning to discover other sold through ads in Mirabelle. My friends and I would set up opposite
genres and ways of drawing”. I continued working for Toutain until I Marble Arch selling these posters and I also started drawing open air
left Warren, but I also collaborated with other publishers throughout portraits. My friend from the age of 15, Maria Del Carmen Vila (better
that time. For example: I drew a western strip imitating the style that known as “Marika” who later became a prolific artist for Jackie, Romeo
Breccia did for England. And when Editorial Ferma published it many and Blue Jeans), also joined us from Spain. I found that by drawing
artists bought it (even Gimémez), because they thought it was Breccia, portraits on a Sunday I could make enough money to live on for the
until they saw my signature: ‘Luis’. I have always had the facility to rest of the week. I stopped drawing romances and illustrations and gave
imitate other styles and for that reason Jorge Badía Romero asked me at myself the full hippie experience: counterculture, Buddhism, Hinduism,
Bruguera to do the inking for his romances, but imitating his style. And free love, sexual revolution, marijuana, hashish and LSD. At the
later, when I was working for England, he asked me on many occasions beginning of my last LSD trip (a Vulcan; the strongest dose of LSD), I
to do the inking, imitating his style, minus the heads (he always paid me had a vision in three dimensions of the Battle of Thermopylae (from the
well). That is one of the reasons why Badía drew so many romance comics comic strip Mort Cinder by Alberto Breccia) on the grey carpet in front
for England”. of me. Someone said something that turned the trip bad, I lost control
and descended into paranoia. Everything happened very quickly: panic,
Typically, most of the foreign artists working for British comics were fainting, police station, light-headedness, hospital. It was a “’satori’, a
happy to draw their strips in their home countries, but some took the revelation, a complete break. The experience of the ‘Vulcan’ coupled with
chance to travel to the UK and work directly for the publishers over chronic flu forced me to return home to Barcelona.
there. Notable artists who made that journey included Hugo Pratt,
Alberto Breccia, Enrich, Felix Mas and Alberto Giolitti, and similarly During Luis’ stay in London, most of his work appeared in Mirabelle,
Luis made several visits to London as well. often strips that he could draw in several hours allowing him the
time he wanted to explore the countercultural demi-monde of what
Until the birth of my son Luis Alberto in 1991, my time in London was was then the most exciting city on the planet. After the LSD trip he
the most profound experience of my life. The first time I lived in the city resumed his working relationship with S.I. back in Barcelona and
was for a little over a month in the autumn of 1965 (with Luis Roca and he became a fixture in DC Thomson’s luxurious Jackie magazine
Enrique Montserrat). The second was in 1968 for two months. Sometime drawing strips and illustrations. Most British comics of the time were
in 1969 (I can’t remember the exact date), my girlfriend Carol de Haro poorly printed but Jackie boasted glossy paper and top of the range
and I separated; she went to work as a flamenco dancer in the United production values providing an impressive venue for the best Spanish
States and I went to live in London where I stayed for a year. At first, artists of the time such as Gonzalez, Mas, Romero, Domingo, Franch,
I didn’t know anybody there, but I was free to do whatever I wanted. I and Luis. Throughout 1970 and into 1971, Luis’ romance strips
started making friends amongst the editorial teams I was working with continued to appear in Jackie, Valentine, Romeo, and Mirabelle but
at IPC Magazines. Margaret Koumy, editor of the teen magazine 19 there was a definite sense that, having mastered the genre, he was ready
(and later editor of Hello) became my best friend and guardian angel. to move on to new challenges. His last British strip saw print in July
Another ally was Dick Lewis the story editor at Mirabelle; he was a 1971, by which point he had already moved on to the next stage in his
tall, fat gentleman who was very fond of my drawings. I also met the career; drawing from Warren comics in New York.
21
XXX
Luis in Hyde Park, London 1970
22
Illustrations for Boyfriend and Trend 1966-67
23
Boyfriend 323 1965
24
Johnny in Love Mirabelle Summer Special 1966

25
Mirabelle 27th July 1968
26
Strange Memory page1 Mirabelle 21st September 1968
27
Strange Memory page2 Mirabelle 21st September 1968
28
Simon Slade Mirabelle 19th October 1968
29
Bird In the Bush Mirabelle 15th February 1969
30
XXX
“Whatever Happened to Joe Craig?” Romeo 17th May 1969
31
“Snap!” Jackie 322 1970
32
Magazine illustration 1969; Jackie Illustration 1970
33
Illustration 1970
34
T
hroughout his comics career, Luis’ life was smaller studios often resembled communes as well, reflecting the
characterized by a sense of constant searching, of radicals, free spirits and visionaries that made up the Spanish comics
moving from place to place and group to group. industry at that time. The quest for artistic freedom naturally seemed
The ‘60s and ‘70s was a period of immense cultural, to spill over into alternative life-styles as well, along with the search
political, and artistic evolution, and this was for new venues and self-ownership of their art. The now legendary
perfectly reflected in Luis’ art and life. Far more collection of artists known as the Grupo de la Floresta was one of the
than in most other countries the Spanish comic scene was made up of first manifestations of this yearning for freedom. But Luis’ association
organized or ad-hoc studios, either tied to publishers like Bruguera, with this particular group of artists went back to 1965, several years
agencies like S.I. or Bardon, or made up of like-minded artists. These before the studio came into being;
I went to Madrid because the family of my first girlfriend (Maria

Natividad, who I’ d known since I was 15 years old) went to live there.
I was 18 years old by then, close to 19. At that time both Adolfo Usero
and Esteban Maroto were living in Barcelona though both were born
in Madrid. When I decided to go to Madrid to be with my girlfriend,
I asked Usero and Maroto if they also wanted to come with me, and set
up a studio to work there, they both said yes and we went to Madrid.
Maroto was drawing a western series for S.I. (Amargo) and Usero had
no job, but Víctor de la Fuente, who lived in Madrid and was drawing
war comics for the British market, gave Usero work inking his pencils.
We all worked together like this for several months.
At that time Carlos Giménez and Jesús Manuel Peña Rego (known in
comics as Suso), lived in Madrid (they had not yet moved to Barcelona),
as did Manuel Medina. Medina had begun adapting the romance
novels of Corín Tellado, which Bruguera had been publishing in
Barcelona, i nto fotonovelas for the Rollan Publishing House in Madrid.
Rollan had just bought the rights to adapt these books directly from
Corin Tellado herself. For one of the fotonovelas, Medina needed a
group of students for one of the scenes, and he asked all of us (Giménez,
Maroto, Usero, Peña, and I, along with other young artists from Madrid
whose names I don't remember now) to work as extras for that sequence.
Afterwards, Maroto became ill with tuberculosis and was admitted
to a sanatorium and because of my girlfriend's family and personal
issues, I broke up with Maria and moved back to Barcelona. According
to Medina, I was photogenic, and months later in Barcelona, he asked
me to star with Esther Riera, a professional model, in my first photo
romance novel: My Boyfriend Introduced me to Him. Apparently
after the Madrid story had come out, the publishing house had received
letters from young women, addressed to me, because they had liked how I
Iooked and this is how I started starring in fotonovelas. The second story
that I starred in was with a young model called Carol de Haro; we both
fell in love, and that was when Carol met my world of cartoonists
and illustrators.
The concept of a comic strip told in photographs rather than drawings

was first popularized in Italy, and in English speaking countries the
Italian name for comic; fumetti, has been co-opted as a name for the
photo comic genre as a whole. In Spain the format really took off
Portrait of Luis by Pepe Gonzalez 1968
35
Luis and Carol 1966
when Rollan began adapting the immensely popular romance stories of Los Tarantos organized a photoshoot of her to help promote the
of Corin Tellado, whose astonishing output resulted in around 5000 studio. Subsequently her photographs were put up in the window of
books in her long 63-year writing career. Rollan’s fotonovelas were the club. One day she was stopped by a boy named Gerardo who had
large sized magazines, often 64 pages long, with each page filled with seen these photos and told her that a publishing house was looking
beautifully shot black and white photo’s cut up and arranged into a for models and that she would be perfect for their fotonovelas. Carol
comic strip format. The stars of the strips were usually actors or models was initially uninterested but Gerardo persisted day after day until
and featured some of the most glamorous women in Spain such as eventually she relented and went along to Rollan. Her unexpected
Conchita Cura, Encarnita Pacheco, and Sylvia Tortosa along with career as a model and muse had begun.
the striking Margit Kocsis who later posed for Enrich for many of his Altogether, Luis starred in around 25 fotonovelas, many with Carol;
Vampirella covers. When Editorial Rollan obtained the rights to adapt while Carol herself featured in many more, becoming one of the most
Tellado’s novels in the mid-60’s Manuel Medina was the first person popular stars of the genre. Along with the Corin Tellado title itself,
chosen to adapt them. Shortly afterwards the production was picked either separately or together the pair also starred in Sayonara, Desiree,
up by S.I. where Manel Dominguez and Luis Ribas, among others, Selene, Gotica, Fanny and Hit. The fotonovelas were often beautifully
began to produce the magazines which became far more creative and shot and proved to be the perfect reference for artists drawing romance
imaginatively shot. Numerous S.I. personnel were brought in to star in strips (and later on even Warren’s horror strips) and with their striking
the photoshoots, including Pepe Gonzalez, Jose Maria Bea, and Felix good looks Luis and Carol were the perfect artist’s models. Carol’s
Mas, while Fernando Fernandez adapted some of the novels. photo’s in particular were widely used by artists to such an extent
The Corin Tellado fotonovela series provided to be immensely that she came to embody the ideal of the Spanish comic star girl and
popular and spawned an ever-increasing number of companion titles has since become widely regarded as a comic icon. Artists such as
and rivals. With so many pages to fill the search for new and attractive Esteban Maroto, Isidiro Mones, Ramon Torrents, Jose Maria Miralles,
models was intense, which is how Carol de Haro was unexpectedly Petronius, Suso, Fernando Fernandez, and Enrique Montserrat have all
brought into this new publishing phenomena. Carol had been used her as a model for their strips and both Pepe Gonzalez and Enrich
fascinated by dance from a young age and was visiting a Flamenco based their visions of Vampirella on her.
venue called Los Tarantos in Barcelona to listen to a Jazz concert, but Spain in the late ‘60s was undergoing the same schisms and changes
discovered that at the same time Flamenco classes were taking place to society as the rest of the western world despite having long been
on the second floor. Each time she visited the place Carol would under the rule of General Franco’s Falangist dictatorship. In 1967 a
surreptitiously sneak upstairs to watch the dancers, until one day the number of S.I.’s youngest artists (Maroto, Torrents, Adolfo Usero,
owner saw her and suggested she should join in and become a dancer Carlos Gimenez and Suso, along with Karol Blazer) struck out on their
herself. Carol told him she could not afford to pay him but the owner own and formed what was effectively an artists’ commune in the village
assured her that she could study for free. Even as a teenager Carol was of La Floresta three miles outside of Barcelona. Soon after, Luis and
strikingly beautiful with exotic, darkly seductive features so the owner Carol were accepted into “El Groupo Del Floresta”;
36
of the group’s activities and is the strip that best characterises their
collective spirit. Cinco Por Infinito was a beguiling mixture of science
fiction and fantasy which was to be owned by its creators with the
aim of syndicating it around the world, and was initially serialized in
Spain in Delta 99, published by Ibero in 1968 (the title strip itself was
drawn by Gimenez), running in 24-page instalments. Luis and Suso
left the strip after two chapters but the rest of the group carried on
together for another three, before Maroto continued the rest of the
series on his own. Altogether, the strip ran for 20 episodes and became
a substantial success around the world, syndicated by S.I. to Argentina,
Mexico, Brazil, Portugal, Italy, Sweden, Germany, and America (as the
Continuity Comics title Zero Patrol). The group also collaborated on
another series, Alex, Khan and Khamar which appeared in the German
Lasso and Roy Tiger comics, arranged through the Jose Ortega agency,
published by Bastei, and later reprinted as the Cobra de Rajasthan in
Trinca. The strip was another collaborative effort and featured Carol de
Haro as the Cobra herself; an alluring jungle queen in the best Sheena
tradition. Again, the artists each contributed their own specialities to
the strip, though this time the artistic line up featured Luis, Maroto,
Adolfo Usero, and Carlos Gimenez.
The photograph of Luis and Carol on the balcony in this chapter was
taken in 1968 after they left La Floresta:
After being with the group, we decided to live together in an apartment

in Castelldefels, a little town by the coast a few kilometres away from
Luis and Carol 1968 Barcelona. At that time Pepe Gonzalez became a very good friend of
Carol, he practically came every weekend to see us. The balcony photo
After finishing the fotonovela with Carol, and falling in love, we both was taken on the terrace of the apartment where Carol and I lived by the
went to La Floresta to visit and greet my friends, because they had artist Víctor Ramos who sometimes came along with Pepe when he visited
already returned to Barcelona and, by pooling the money they had been us. Pepe and I rediscovered our friendship thanks to Carol who posed for
spending on the small hotels where they lived, next to the Catalan artist him. When Pepe drew me (the 1968 portrait drawn with Sanguine in
Torrents, they rented the chalet that the Dutchman, Karol Blazer owned this chapter), he was 30 years old and at the top of his career. It was copied
(Karol worked at S.I. translating the scripts of the comics that we drew from a photo taken by Enrich. Later, Carol went to America, I went to
for the UK). Coincidentally, in the large chalet there was a room with London, and we no longer had any relationship with Pepe...”
a double bed, and I asked them if, Carol and I could stay there and
participate in the “commune” experience in La Floresta. They agreed so
Carol and I moved in to live with them. Carol was often used as a model
there, and we used both her fotonovelas, and photos that Suso and I took
specially of her. Carol has since remarked that she was amazed one day
when she looked at the work the artists were producing and realized that
she was starring in almost all of them.
It was a wonderful time, we lived in a villa surrounded by pine forests
which we called the Galleon and we even put a mast on the roof complete
with a pirate flag. The Galleon was a continuous party where you could
find the Catalan singers Francesc Pi De La Serra and Xavier Ribalta
or members of the Argentine group Yerba Mate playing Blues or Jazz.
Apart from the endless holiday we created as a group the strips La Cobra
de Rajasthan and the first chapters of Cinco Por Infinito. Maroto and
Suso wrote the scripts while the whole group contributed the artwork –
my speciality was close ups of female characters. Later that year, Carol
and I left the group and others gradually went their own ways leaving
Maroto to finish the strip on his own, for which he was to win the ACBA
award in 1971. Actually, El Groupo Del Floresta would prove to be
enormously influential in the area and after we left the youths in the
village formed their own communes.
Throughout this period each artist maintained their own individual

careers: Luis, Torrents, and Maroto were all producing a steady flow of
romance strips for the UK, Gimenez was drawing the western series
Gringo for international syndication (from scripts written by Manuel
Medina) and when he moved on to Dani Futuro, Suso took over the Carol De Haro
art chores on Gringo. However, Cinco Por Infinito was the focal point modelling photo 1960s
37
Drawings of Carol de Haro 1967
38
Cinco Por Infinito, Delta 99 2 1968
39
6A (EXTRA) LA COBRA DE
RAJASTHAN TRINCA 15 1971
(FULL PAGE)
La Cobra De Rajasthan, Trinca 15 1971
40
Fotonovela covers 1960s

41
XXX
Corin Tellado Fotonovela; Ahora No Te Voy a Olividar 1968
42
Carol De Haro as
depicted by, top row left
to right; Petronius, Enrique
Montserrat, Fernando
Fernandez, Middle row;
Esteban Maroto, bottom row
Pepe Gonzalez, Enrich
43
Warren
CHAPTER FOUR
O
n his return to Barcelona, Luis resumed his Warren magazines were created by James Warren, a life-long comic fan
romance work, mostly for DC Thomson’s Jackie who first got into publishing with After Hours in 1957, one of many,
and Romeo comics, which by this point were less than successful Playboy clones. His next venture was far more
featuring some beautifully crafted artwork. popular; Famous Monsters of Filmland, a movie magazine devoted to
In addition to Luis, a typical issue from 1970 horror films, conceived with editor Forrest J. Ackerman, which hit
might feature work by Pepe Gonzalez, Felix the newsstands in 1958 to great acclaim. Famous Monsters of Filmland
Mas, Ramon Torrents, Jose Maria Bea, Esteban Maroto, and Adolfo was one of those phenomena which somehow encapsulates the mood
Usero. Barely a year later, this same group of artists could be found in of its era, and its mix of knowing humor and unabashed enthusiasm
the U.S. in almost every issue of the Warren comic magazines Creepy, connected with a generation of monster movie obsessives. It also
Eerie, and Vampirella. singlehandedly created a market for horror magazines which was soon
filled with a number of rival publishers. But Warren’s first love was
The first Spanish artist to work for Warren was Carlos Prunes, who comics and by 1964 he sensed the time was right for a horror comic in
contacted the company personally without any intermediary agencies. the magazine format which would circumvent the all-powerful Comics
After this Toutain travelled to the U.S. and got work from the company Code ban on horror. E.C.’s legendary comic line of the 1950s was
for all of us. After returning home, I talked to Toutain and told him widely regarded as a high-water mark in comics history. With Creepy,
I did not want to draw any more romances; instead, I asked him to Warren was determined to create a new comic that could rival that
give me work in the Warren magazines. Among the strips I drew, one company’s ground-breaking achievements.
of the most memorable was “The Men who called him Monster.” On When Creepy first emerged, it was devoured by an expectant
the one hand, I identified with the protagonist (a werewolf), who had audience, desperate for material that was challenging, shocking,
a compulsion to harm others and fled to avoid this (a guilt complex beautifully drawn, and daringly transgressive. Which is exactly what
that reminded me of the times when I had been taught by the Brothers they got. For his own second era of horror comics, Warren’s early
De La Salle); on the other, I began to enjoy the narrative possibilities editor Russ Jones and writer/editor Archie Goodwin assembled a
of the story; medium shots, dramatic lighting, and so on. I could now highly talented group of artists including many of E.C.’s leading stars
investigate the narrative, technical and formal aspects of the comic such as Al Williamson, Reed Crandall, Johnny Craig, Angelo Torres,
medium. The system of work was similar to the UK market: we had no Wally Wood, Joe Orlando, and Jack Davis, along with the likes of Alex
contract; the scripts were translated and then we drew the strips. The Toth, Gray Morrow, Gene Colan, and Steve Ditko. Under Goodwin’s
originals were kept by the company and the only differences were that direction, Creepy’s strips were sharp, punchy, and witty, reveling in
we could sign the pages and sometimes collect royalties from sales to twist endings and wry humor. Visually, the title was outstanding
other countries. with many of the creators working at the very peak of their abilities
and Frank Frazetta’s stunning oil painted covers have since become
legendary in fantasy art. Spurred on by Creepy’s immediate success,
Jim Warren launched two further comic titles; Blazing Combat in
October 1965 and Eerie in March the following year. Blazing Combat,
despite its brilliant material, was cancelled after only four issues. Eerie,
however, was another hit, sharing as it did the same genre and creative
personnel as Creepy. For the next few years, both titles thrived but by
late 1967 Warren was in serious trouble; its star artists began to drift
away, publication became less frequent and reprints began to appear
with ominous regularity. Following a downturn in sales and a drain in
resources after the company’s warehouse moved to New York, Warren
publishing faced an uncertain future. It was holding on largely in part
to both Famous Monsters’ continuing success plus his thriving mail
order business under the Captain Company name, supplying fans with
all manner of 8mm films, publications, and other genre-related material
that could not be easily found anywhere else.
After several years in the doldrums, surviving on reprints and less
experienced, or less talented, cheaper artists, Warren decided that the
Luis, Alberto Breccia and Pepe Gonzalez best way to revive his fortunes was with a third title, one which would
44
of this incredible art, in a style that was best described as European.

Toutain also showed me paintings that he was selling as paperback
cover art to Dell and other publishers. I started to ask questions
about the art and Spanish artists. By this time, it was 6 p.m. and I had
completely forgotten about my date, I kept gazing at this art until I
lost my senses. I was staring at the Vampirella artist I’d spent two years
searching for. Josep Toutain and I then went to dinner at eight, we
negotiated prices, deadlines, banking arrangements, everything before
the waiter had served the main course. The company entered a new
phase and a new level. It was the new era of the Barcelona artists.”
Within a year or two, the Spanish artists came to dominate Warren’s
magazines. For them it was a chance to cast off the shackles of endless
romance strips; for their new audience it was artwork unlike anything
they had ever seen before. Prior to the Spanish invasion most American
comic book artists could trace the foundations of their styles to the
great triumvirate of Alex Raymond, Hal Foster, or Milton Caniff. The
Spaniards were different, they were in thrall to American magazine
illustrators, to the Italian artist Dino Battaglia and most crucially to
Argentinian comic legend Alberto Breccia. What Breccia had shown
them, particularly in his early ‘60s masterwork Mort Cinder, was that
comics needn’t look the way they had always looked- instead, anything
Vampirella 15 cover art by Sanjulian that makes a mark could be used to draw comics. Breccia’s strips might
contain line work mixed with collage, texture rubbings, scratches,
daringly mix sex and horror, to entice back his once devoted readers. tones, photographs or anything that came to hand. His impact on
Vampirella #1, cover dated September 1969, was edited by Bill Parente the S.I. artists was profound and no one felt that influence more
and featured a seven-page strip introducing Vampirella herself, written keenly than Luis who had been a devoted Breccia fan for years. S.I.’s
with tongue firmly in cheek by Forrest J. Ackerman and drawn by Tom artists embraced the freedom offered by Warren to experiment, with
Sutton, alongside six short horror stories — a format that remained many such as Jose Maria Bea, Ramon Torrents, Felix Mas, Fernando
more or less unchanged throughout the magazine’s existence. Frazetta’s Fernandez, and Rafael Auraleon creating art that was a vast leap
cover has since become famous among fans as one of comics’ great forward creatively compared to their previous comic work.
iconic images and typifies the characters appeal with its combination However, there can’t be many artists who have so profoundly
of horror and sexuality. However, it took two years for Vampirella transformed their approach to comics as Luis Garcia did in 1971.
to become the comic and the character that Warren was looking for. Immediately after finishing his final romance strip for Jackie he
Sutton’s artwork was still somehow lacking the alluring sexuality launched directly into his first Warren story which combined ultra-
that Warren had envisaged when he created the character. And then realistic drawings, rendered in various combinations of ink or graphite,
miraculously the answer he was looking for literally walked though his with the most extraordinarily rich array of tones and textures created
door in the form of an unexpected visitor from Barcelona. by sponges, cloth or even potatoes and with some pages physically
One day in 1971, Jim Warren was about to leave the office when scratched by a razorblade. While there are still the faintest echoes of
his secretary informed him that a Mr. Toutain from Barcelona had his old drawing style just visible under the new surface patina, readers
come to see him with samples from artists he represented. The could be forgiven for thinking they were two completely different
publisher had a date and was anxious to leave but reluctantly agreed artists. Throughout 1972, nine of these striking, experimental and
to see the gentleman for 20 minutes. As Warren recalled, “In comes arresting strips emerged – almost 100 pages in total, an extraordinary
Josep Toutain carrying a portfolio (imagine John Carradine with a rate of production for such accomplished images. However, while
heavy Spanish accent, only better-looking). He bows and says, ‘Mister many fans embraced the Spanish new look others at the time reacted
Warren, I am Josep Toutain, I do not speak English too well but I with confusion and hostility. For them it was too far removed from
represent a group of Spanish artists from Catalonia Spain, are you the artwork they had grown up with, its reference points were
familiar with Catalonia? It is the birthplace of Picasso, Dali and many too obscure and it was taking inspiration from traditions beyond
other great artists. I have artists who admire your magazines for many, their understanding. Some saw it all as self-indulgent, mistakenly
many years, and I have just come from Carmine Infantino and Stan caricaturing it as simply the product of cheap foreign labor with no
Lee. Now I would like to show you some samples of art.’ I said, ‘Oh, idea of how to tell a story (an opinion that still raises its head from
you went to them first? That’s all right, I understand. DC and Marvel time to time). From our perspective now it is clear that nothing
are a little bigger than we are- but before you show me this artwork, tell could be further from the truth, it was instead Spain’s’ Golden
me: did they buy any of it? He looked at me very shrewdly and said, Generation cutting loose after a decade restrained by the shackles
‘Not yet. They are thinking about it.’ So I thought, ‘Okay, let’s see what of endless romances.
all the fuss is about’.
“He put his large leather portfolio on the desk, opens it up, and I When I came back to Barcelona, in January 1971, I talked to Toutain
look at two samples of artwork. The first page was an artist named and told him I didn’t want to draw any more romance stories. Instead,
Pepe Gonzalez, drawings of women. The second page was by a man I asked him to give me work in magazines from Warren Publishing Co.
called Esteban Maroto, and I don’t say anything- I’m not registering And that is how, from one day to the other, in 24 hours I stopped doing
an expression. But by the time I was on the third page, I couldn’t hold romances and started drawing horror strips. When I started my first
back. I said, ‘this is exceptionally fine work, who are these people?’ He horror comic for Warren I was “ horrified” because I had never drawn
said, ‘they are the artists I represent.’ So, I’m looking at page after page that subject, my work for so many years had been dedicated completely
45
Warren was that it finally introduced their work to an audience back

home. It is an ironic dichotomy that the more talented an artist was,
the more likely they were to be picked up by one of the big agencies,
which ensured that most, if not all, of their work was then sold
overseas. Consequently. generations of Spanish comic readers were
denied the chance to enjoy the artwork by their nation’s most talented
creators. In some cases. these foreign strips were sold back to Spanish
publishers but even then, they were invariably printed without credits,
meaning that many of the top talents in Spain were almost completely
unknown in their own country.
However, within a few years of their inception, Warren’s strips were
widely reprinted in Spain; first in Ibero’s Dossier Negro magazine in
1968 and then in Garbo’s Vampus (which primarily reprinted strips
from Creepy) in 1971, Rufus (the Spanish version of Eerie) in 1973
and Vampirella in 1974. Such was the insatiable demand in the country
for these strips that the Spanish public did not have to wait long to see
them. All of Luis’ Warren strips were reprinted in Spain within a year
of their first appearances in the U.S., in some cases barely a month or
two later. The result was that Spain’s Golden Generation were finally
recognized and lauded in their own country, becoming the stars that
the quality of their work had always deserved. These “Spanish Warrens”
occasionally featured new covers and interior illustrations, with most
Luis and Margit Kocsis 1971 issues of Vampus including a specially drawn centrespread poster by
various Warren artists, including Luis, whose Frankenstein poster in
to romance strips for young girls, and that style was useless for horror. issue #16 was a particular standout.
My previous job had been for Jackie magazine in Scotland. However, I In their initial negotiations, Josep Toutain had suggested a special
was very excited and I started wondering how I could approach the task arrangement to Jim Warren whereby his artist’s work could be
of drawing horror comics, what style could I use? I began to remember reprinted in perpetuity by Warren in America, but S.I. were given
my knowledge of drawing with carbon and graphite pencils, the pen the rights to sell Warren strips to the rest of the world. With their
technique I practiced in Bruguera, and the creation of the infinite long-established experience in syndication, this was something that
character in the Cinco Por Infinito series, along with exercises that I had S.I. excelled at and throughout the ‘70s they disseminated their
done with other tools. So I was not sure what style I would use, it was all artists’ finest Warren strips to markets across the globe, making them
very intuitive and exciting. I started to create my own style ... It was a truly global stars. But even as his career was reaching new heights of
magical experience, almost as if I had felt an inner voice telling me how recognition and popularity, Luis changed direction once again and
to do it. I began by drawing the script of “The Man who called himself a headed off to Paris.
Monster” for Creepy magazine, in which by a mistake in the translation
of the script, I drew the first interracial kiss between a white woman and
a black man published in a comic magazine in USA.
After coming back from London, Carol de Haro and I got back
together. I took some photos of her for my second horror story, “Welcome
to the Witches Coven”, which won the Warren award in 1972 for best
drawn story of the year. By then, Pepe Gonzales had also asked Carol
to be photographed for his stories and to pose for the famous life-sized
Vampirella poster. Carol accepted and Enric Torres (then known at
Warren as Enrich), a wonderful amateur photographer took lots of
pictures of her. Photos that he and other illustrators from Selecciones
Ilustradas used as reference for Vampirella covers and other commissions.
Pepe initially drew the poster in pencil which was then painted by Enric
Torres for the cover of Vampirella #19 and subsequently printed as an
iconic six-foot high poster. Carol was my Muse, the Muse of Pepe, Enrich
and many others. You will find Carol in many comics, covers and
illustrations, Maroto used her as a model extensively, you’ ll find
her everywhere”.
Carol’s memorably exotic features both epitomised and profoundly

shaped the way the S.I. artists drew women, and in many ways, she
can be seen as the muse of a generation. Enrich used her as his model
until she returned to the U.S. to resume her flamenco career and he
subsequently used several other models, including Margit Kocsis
and Encarnita Pacheco, but for many. Carol remains the
definitive Vampirella.
One of the interesting consequences of the Spanish artists’ success at Reference photo for The Men Who Called Him Monster
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“Welcome to the Witches Coven”, Vampirella 15
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“Welcome to the Witches Coven”, Vampirella 15
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“Death in the Shadows”, Vampirella 17 (color version from British Vampirella 1)
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“Spellbound”, Creepy 46
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“Vampi’s Feary Tales”, Vampirella 18

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“Song of a Sad Eyed Sorceress” Vampirella 18
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“Eerie’s Monster Gallery”, Eerie 43 53

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“The Men Who Called Him Monster”, Creepy 43 story by Don McGregor
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“Love is no Game”, Vampirella 20 story by Steve Skeates

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“Paranoia”, Vampirella 21
Story by Steve Skeates
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Frankenstein pin up Vampus 16
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The Chronicles
CHAPTER FIVE
H
aving established himself as one of the leading the corner, the rest of us arranged around the edge of the " horseshoe".
artists at Warren after only a year, Luis was ready Behind him on the wall hung a rhinoceros head with the huge wings
to move on and it was a journey that began with of an eagle. "It is my guardian angel," he said. At night, in the garden
a chance meeting. of olive trees surrounding a pool shaped like male genitalia, he asked
me to pose for him: ""Luis shall be the model for my painting of Saint
In 1972 I met the painter Salvador Dalí. I was Sebastian. Unfortunately, Dali’s wife Gala replied, "San Sebastian has
introduced to him in a hotel suite in the Ritz Hotel in Barcelona, where to be stronger, more muscular." Actually, what happened between Gala
Dalí, surrounded by models, had organized a party to sell a painting and me is that there was no empathy. I felt revulsion at her shiny black
to an American collector. Then we all went to dinner at the restaurant eyes, as small as lentils, and their neurotic thin wrinkles and I guess I
Via Veneto and later went for a drink in Pub 240 which was owned by also felt a sense of rejection. Gala was responsible for my not being chosen
my friend Luis Sagnier. I had an exhibition of my drawings there at as the model for the painting. When Silke finished her job with Dali, we
the time; charcoal portraits of the characters and musicians who played decided to travel to Paris, I had Pilote magazine in mind and just in
there. When Dalí saw my drawings, he told me: "You draw well, but case I was able to arrange a meeting there I took my Warren magazines
if you went out less often with the girls at night and spent more hours with me to show them my work...
drawing you would draw better." And I followed his advice. Silke
Humel, Dalí’s favorite model at that time, completely captivated me. Once in Paris Luis arranged to show his artwork to the editor of Pilote
Dalí invited us both back for dinner in the hotel he had in front of his magazine: Rene Goscinny, better known of course as the writer of
house and workshop. The dining room, small in size, had a horseshoe- the world renowned Asterix the Gaul comic strip. From its inception
shaped table, the tablecloth was the Spanish flag. Dali would sit in in 1959, Pilote had been a showcase for some of the best French and
Luis drawing Eidelweiss in 1973
81
Belgian strips, not just Asterix but also Lucky Luke,

Lieutenant Blueberry, and Valerian. It had also long
been a welcome home for Spanish ex-pats including
Antonio Parras, Jose Bielsa, Francisco Hidalgo, And
Julio Ribero. From 1966, Luis’ old friend Florencio
Clave also became a regular Pilote artist after his
political activities in Spain caused him to flee to Paris.
By the beginning of the ‘70s Pilote’s focus had begun
to shift to more mature, experimental strips such as
Phillipe Druillet’s Lone Sloane and featured early
science fiction work by Moebius. It became, along with
Italy’s Linus, one of the forerunners of the adult comics
phenomena which would later include Metal Hurlant
and its American counterpart Heavy Metal, along with
numerous Spanish titles in what became known as their
magazine boom.
When I entered Pilote’s building, I was received by

René Goscinny a red-faced, friendly, sympathetic, and
satirical guy who spoke Spanish perfectly because he
had lived for several years in Latin America. I told him
that I had brought some magazines with me so that
he could see my work. He replied: "It is not necessary
to show me the magazines, I know your work. You are
like the Spanish conquistadors who crossed the Atlantic
looking for El Dorado! Would you want to do a series for
Pilote? Do you prefer to work with a French or Spanish
Una Noche en Pub240 by Bebu Silvetti, record cover, 1972 scriptwriter?” Spanish, I replied, because that way we
could talk about the themes and the scripts. Finally, I had
indeed found my El Dorado of comics, on this side of the Atlantic, in
Europe. Silke and I left Paris and went to Premia de Mar (a seaside
town near Barcelona) to consult with my friends Carlos Gimenez and
Adolfo Usero. Carlos recommended the writer Victor Mora for the series
and happily he agreed. I met him in Premiá de Mar where he lived with
his wife Armonía Rodríguez. He was the best scriptwriter in comics at
that time. I already knew him through his work with Carlos Giménez
back in the Grupo de la Floresta days on Dani Futuro. "Victor,” I said, “I
don’t just want to draw the same character all the time, let’s make every
story different ... I do not know how, think of something to justify it."
"Okay”, he replied, “I’ ll think of something”.
Luis decided to stay in Premia de Mar and together with Carlos and
Adolfo joined forces to form a studio. They also gave themselves a
name; the Premia 3, and set to work on a number of collective and
individual comic strips. Luis and Victor Mora’s Pilote project was
christened Les Chronicles des Sin Nombres (The Chronicles of the
Nameless), conceived as a series of unconnected strips, each telling a
story from a different period and in different genres. The link was that
these were somehow all the same person, or at least each carried a sort
on continued essence throughout the ages. A universal
man, similar to Michael Moorcock’s Eternal Champion.
Not reincarnation exactly, but enough of a link that it
justified being part of a continued series. Pilote offered
Luis complete artistic freedom and it was here that he
established his own fully realized artistic personality.
The strips built on the realistic, textured approached of
his Warren work, but revealed an increasing assurance
in both storytelling and draftsmanship and are surely
amongst the most beautiful comic book pages ever
drawn. the originals were drawn quite large (around a
half imperial size) and rendered with extremely delicate,
fine ink lines. The artwork was never so tight however
82
and Carol as models as well as Enrich and marked a definite step

up artistically from the earlier Warren stories while still using the
heavy scratching technique that characterized the S.I. artists’ earliest
American strips. This was followed by the epic Winter of the Last
Combat which again featured Luis and Carol but took his art to new
heights of realism, with pages exquisitely composed tonally through a
masterful use of textures. Thematically, the mediaeval milieu evoked
comparison’s to Ingmar Bergman’s existentialist Seventh Seal film
while also perhaps nodding to Mora’s Capitan Trueno, the sword
fighting strip that first found him fame. The western-themed Mohave
Rose mostly abandoned the scratching but emphasized tones to create
panels of extraordinarily rich depth. It starred his old friend Marika
who by that point was herself drawing romance strips as part of the
second wave of Spanish talent working in the UK.
Parking at the End of the World was a downbeat, oppressive
description of a city after the bomb has dropped, with Luis’ art at
its starkest, mixing heavy shadows with panels drawn in a scratchy,
nervous line. Its star was Manuel Medina, his friend from the
fotonovela days a decade earlier. But by far the most intriguing of the
Chronicles strips was to be “Love Strip” which Luis illustrated with
his friend Carlos Gimenez. The story concerns a Spanish comic artist,
played by Gimenez, becoming gradually more and more appalled by
the banality of the British romance strips he is drawing. As a subplot
he discovers that his girlfriend, played by Carol de Haro, is having an
affair with the strip’s writer, played, in the best meta-fashion, by Victor
Mora, literally the strip’s writer. Inventively, the artist’s strips, which are
interspersed throughout the story, were drawn by Gimenez himself,
creating a fascinating contrast with Luis’ ultra-realistic approach.
The strip gives an intriguing insight into the days of romance strips
with scenes of the artist at work, reading the script and even leafing
through a fotonovela looking for reference. The backgrounds were
revealing as well, with Luis using the Premia 3’s own studio as the
setting for his fictional artist, while a nightclub scene was set in Pub
240 where his encounter with Dali had so unexpectedly led to the
series’ inception. Socially, the strip also explored life in the final days of
Franco’s dictatorship with scenes of book burnings and fascistic graffiti,
contrasted with the lifestyles and iconography of capitalism. It despairs
of both. Luis would later return to some of these themes a few years
later with Nova 2 and was heavily involved in the conception of
“Love Strip”.
that the whole thing closed up into lifelessness, the pages always I talked with Victor Mora about each story, discussing which period I
retained a lively, vigorous quality. In fact, in some cases the line work wanted to draw: the middle ages, the old west, etc ... and then he wrote
is held together and given weight by the almost tactile tone which is them. Sometimes we discussed the script, especially with “Love Strip”,
layered on top of it. This tone was established through a combination because it was my “trauma” about eight years doing romance comics for
of sponged–on ink and finer areas dabbed on with a thumb or finger. England. Instead of drawing the artist’s strips with my own romance
Other, diffuse lines were achieved by putting down a pen line and then style, to give a wink to the readers and my friends, I asked Giménez, who
quickly smudging it across the page with a thumb creating soft, abstract was interpreting my character, to draw them himself. He protested that:
feathers of ink. These textured drawings were then finessed and “You want me to draw in a romance style, but I've never drawn romance
distressed by scratches and cuts from a razor blade. In fact, a closer look comics”, but I insisted and he drew them. I indicated to Giménez the
at some of the panels reveal figures that appear to be nothing more space where I wanted him to draw the romance panels, but, I drew with
than a mass of smears, daubs and scratches which somehow coalesce glossy paper (on that story) and he drew on matte paper (for his brush
into a thrillingly substantial whole. The pages manage the almost technique), so he drew on the paper he used, and then we pasted them
impossible achievement of being at once astonishingly bold and at the onto my originals. In 1974, I returned to Paris, where Goscinny received
same time breathtakingly delicate. me very happily and smiling, with the originals to “Love Strip” in his
Initially, Luis and Victor Mora produced five Chronicles strips hands, blurted out: "You're a genius, I shall have to pay you more per
for Pilote over a 2.5-year period, each stylistically and thematically page”. Rene was a marvellously kind and big-hearted man”
different to the other, with each featuring models and echoes from
Luis’ life and from the world of comics. The first Chronicles strip, The first four Pilote strips were soon re-sold by S.I. to Warren and
Edelweiss, was the closest to a typical Warren story, a gothic ghost were printed in Vampirella throughout 1975, which is where the
story of sorts built around a shot down First World War pilot, an English-speaking readership first discovered them, unaware that they
eerie German chateau, and a beautiful young girl. The story used Luis had first appeared in France. For the Warren printings each strip
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was heavily rewritten by Gerry Boudreau, Bud Lewis, or Bill DuBay

and the art augmented with heavy new panel borders and redrawn
speech balloons. The subtlety of Luis’ work was inevitably lost to
varying degrees in both the French and Warren versions and only
now is the scanning process sophisticated enough to fully reproduce
his astonishing originals. Why the Parking at the End of the World
strip was never reprinted remains a mystery; it would have fitted in
perfectly at Warren. The Chronicles series was extensively reprinted in
Spain and throughout the world by S.I., though strangely they chose to
syndicate the doctored Warren versions rather than the more accurate
Pilote originals. However, Luis was personally able to sell his version
of the strips to Italy where they appeared in the prestigious Linus and
Alter Linus magazines in 1975. After several years diverted by other
projects, Luis and Mora reunited for two more Chronicles strips in
1979. The Infinite Shipwreck was a science fiction strip with nods to the
French New Wave (starring actor Jean-Paul Belmondo) while Stormy
Weather was a Manchurian Candidate-style political thriller starring
Luis and Adolfo Usero. However, in the intervening years, Luis had
become comfortable with the more collaborative writing process he
had developed with his friend Felipe Cava and the comparative lack of
communication with Mora convinced him to end the series. The early
Chronicles period had also featured collaborations on a pair of very
different projects as well, with Luis’ studio colleagues in the Premia 3.
During this period Carlos, Adolfo and I had a small cottage in Premia
De Mar a coastal town about 20 kilometres from Barcelona, where
they lived with their women and children. The Premia 3 collaborated
on two comic albums: the 4 Amigos (4 Friends) and La Isla Tresoro
(Treasure Island) with each taking the role that suited us the best. I
had proposed that we should collaborate on some projects together and
it was the screenwriter Mariano Hispano who proposed the 4 Amigos
to the group. I was also the person who was traveling around Europe to
sell the publishing rights, except in Spain where it was Giménez who
found the publishers and all editions since 1980. I sold it in the Nordic
countries and the Netherlands (we made copies on Instaprint, which
was the material that I took with me abroad), and I paid the others
their share. In any case, they were “ bread and butter" jobs which, in my
opinion, do not have great artistic importance and do not transcend
my graphic biography. We did not try to do anything new, they only
existed so we could eat and pay the expenses of the studio. Regarding
the way of working when we formed the Grupo Premía 3, it was the
following: Giménez laid out the pages and drew some backgrounds,
Usero drew it in pencil, and I did the inking, except for the first head
shots of the characters which I drew as well. I participated in all the
groups and magazine projects that were made in Barcelona in the ‘70s
Grupo Premia 3 photo: Adolfo Usero, Luis, Carlos Gimenez; Grupo Premia 3 by Enrique
Ventura; La Isla del Tesoro cover art by Grupo Premia 3; 4 Amigos by Grupo Premia 3, 1973
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and ‘80s, from the Floresta Group to Rambla magazine.

I left Premiá de Mar to set up a commune with Enrique
Ventura and Miguel Ángel Nieto. This was in Cadaqués,
near where Dalí lived, since I maintained a relationship
with him, where he invited me to the inauguration of the
Dalí museum in Figueras. And, for that reason, my place
was taken in the Premia 3 by Alfonso Font. Some years
later, we all got together again, along with José María Beá,
who joined us to create Rambla on my initiative.
From left to right: Famous collector of North American

art, who bought many works from Dalí, which motivated
Dalí's party because she came to buy a painting, I do not
remember his name: Dalí, a brunette model, I do not
remember her name; I; model that invited me to the
party of Dalí, precisely the same day, because she did not
want to go alone; Patrick, French male model who, years
later, married Carol ( Juana de Haro) ... the others would
be customers of the place, because the whole group went
to dinner, in Dalí's limousine, that is to say: Included
Luis Sagnier, who came with me to Dalí's party, we were
8 people who, before going to Pub 240, Dalí invited us to
dinner in the best restaurant in Barcelona, from that time.
Luis, Salvador Dali and Silke Humel
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Eidelweiss page 3, Pilote 724
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Eidelweiss page 10, Pilote 724
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La Rose du Mohave page 2, Pilote 17bis
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Parking at the End of the World page 8, Pilote 21bis
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Le Naufrage Infini page 7, Pilote 59bis

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Stormy Weather page 4, Pilote 78bis
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Stormy Weather page 9, Pilote 78bis
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Winter of the Last Combat, Pilote 738/739 1973 story by Victor Mora,
translated by Jose Villarrubia, lettered by Jim Campbell
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“Love Strip”, Pilote 2 1975 Story by Victor Mora, additional art by Carlos Gimenez,
translated by Ruth Bernardez, lettered by Jim Campbell
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CHAPTER SIX
The Personal and the Political
I
n 1974 I founded a new commune with Enrique Ventura main model and an Australian waitress from the hostel in Cadaques as
and Miguel Angel Nieto in the town of Cadaqués, near the the tempting siren. “Janis” was the first of several interruptions in the
home of Salvador Dalí on the coast, a few kilometers from the production of Pilote’s Chronicles series and was drawn simply because
French border. Ventura bought the food, I cooked, and Nieto the creator wanted to draw a strip about a hippie, partly because he
washed the dishes; others ate, drank, smoked, sang, and played was one himself ! The strip was drawn with the same realism and
guitar. We were often visited by other artists including Carlos tonal depth of the Chronicles series, and while it did not appear in
Gimenez, Adolfo Usero, Jose Canovas and Miguel Fuster (the latter France at that time it was printed in Vampirella #45, in the middle
two were regular contributors to British girls’ comics of the time) and of its Chronicles translations, every bit as heavily rewritten (by Budd
also participating in the festivities were many women: Spanish, French, Lewis) as they had been. A short while later he took a trip back to his
German, British, Australian... It was the sweet charm of the middle- childhood home and was so overwhelmed by the experience that he
class bourgeoisie with a soundtrack by the Beatles. Ventura and Nieto felt compelled to put it down on paper, which he did with the help of a
worked for the magazine El Papus and their salaries covered the expenses script from Felipe Hernandez Cava.
of the commune.
In 1975 I returned to Santa Cruz de Mudela, to see the place where I
Life on the commune freed Luis from the usual economic imperatives had spent part of my childhood. I had not gone back there since I was 10
that govern the work of most artists and allowed him the chance to years old, before my family went to live in Catalonia. The experience of
retreat from the demands of constant comic strip work for the first rediscovering my childhood was, for me, Proustian. Both my memories
time in over a decade. The first work to come out of this new commune and the excitement of the day were very strong because I remembered
was “Janis”, a near-wordless daydream of a strip, which perhaps both the good and bad experiences of my childhood. For that reason, I
inevitably turns into a nightmare, for which Luis used Ventura as his felt a real need to draw Chicharras as an insight into my childhood, a
historical memory of the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, from the
child's memory, my memory since childhood. And without meaning
to, I created the autobiographical cartoon for adults in Spain. Carlos
Giménez, saw me create and draw Chicharras and after lettering it
he declared that he too wanted to draw comics about his childhood
and months later he started to work on Paracuellos. Chicharras was
coincidentally the first time I signed my work Luis Garcia Mozos. I
changed the name of Santa Cruz de Mudela to Santa Cruz de Almagro
to avoid any potential problems....
Chicharras is a profound meditation on the past in which we follow

Luis as he walks around the village revisiting the key moments of his
childhood. Memories intrude as moments from the past weave in and
out of the present day, suggesting that the past is always living with
us, affecting who we are and how we see the world. Visually there is a
continuity with the ultra-realist approach of his Pilote work though
with a looser, sketchier line and a masterful use of white space — you
can almost feel the heat and dust. Beyond its sensual appeal, however,
Chicharras was significant in another way: it was the first time that a
mainstream artist had created a wholly autobiographical comic strip. In
this Luis had more in common with American Underground Comix
artists such as Justin Green and Robert Crumb though their work at
the time was still laced with humor and flights of wild imagination;
whereas, Chicharras was a far more mature, reflective piece. Having
drawn it without any thoughts of getting it published, the strip’s first
public appearance was at a 1976 exhibition called Approaches to
Social Comics organized by Pedro Taberno. The strip was displayed
along with pages from “Janis” and “Love Strip” and work by Gimenez,
Ventura, and Nieto and Adolfo Usero. Chicharras was eventually
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El Papus 200
printed two years later in the thirteenth issue of Antonio Martin’s drawing primarily for Valentine in the UK, but he was also a member
well-regarded comics fanzine Bang! and then finally reached a wider of the clandestine PCML group – The Marxist-Leninist Communist
audience in the Spanish Totem magazine (issue 22 in 1979). This way Party. Clavé brought some of the artists together to publish the
of working would then set the pattern for much of the rest of his career. experimental magazine Altamira and one night arranged for a showing
In what now looks like a revolutionary move, from this point on Luis of Sergei Eisenstein’s banned Soviet masterpiece Battleship Potemkin.
would create almost all of his work for himself, embracing a future as After the film had ended, he tried to encourage the group to discuss the
a serious artist. This extended to finding publications for his work as movie but one by one they drifted away, fearful of being associated with
well, where whenever possible he would sell his strips himself, often anything so politically inflammatory. Soon after this Clave’s British
physically travelling to each country and editor, but sometimes relying strips mysteriously dried up and it later emerged that under torture
on the old agencies to disseminate his work globally. one of his colleagues in the PCML had given his name to the Policia
Armada and the artist had been forced to flee to Paris. Like Luis, Clavé
Sometimes in my house I find magazines with my comics and found work in France with Pilote magazine but in the ‘70s he returned
illustrations in them that I did not remember being published. My to Spain and met up with him once more in Marika’s apartment.
comic strips were published in about 14 countries; for example, in such Clavé put a pistol on the table and ordered that: "It is time for armed
disparate places as Yugoslavia, Australia, and Turkey. But in many struggle, we must act against revisionism and capitalism. Do you want
cases, I do not have the publications because for those countries that I to be activists in the Marxist/Leninist Communist Party?” Perhaps not
could not travel to in person, I had to ask Rafael Martinez from Norma, surprisingly the pair declined.
or Toutain, to sell them and then pay me. Following the artistic breakthrough of Chicharras much of Luis’
work in the ‘70s concerned itself with issues that were either personal
From 1939 until his death in 1975, Spain was ruled by the military to him or political, often taking up the causes of suppressed minorities
dictatorship of General Francisco Franco and the country was not to or the working class. As with Chicharras, he would sometimes draw
experience full democracy until 1978. For the artists of Selecciones strips as the mood took him and then find a venue for them later
Ilustradas, growing up in Barcelona they would have experienced though the first of these issue-led strips was commissioned by a visitor
a society where dissent and free speech were crushed, where to the commune: Michel Choquette, who was gathering material for
concentration camps and forced labor were common punishments what became the Someday Funnies. This was a project that started
and where even their own language of Catalan was suppressed. In this life as an idea from Rolling Stone to get a few artists to muse on their
environment, free thinkers and dissidents were naturally attracted to memories about the ‘60s, and grew to become a sprawling monster of
the left, something that was highly dangerous under Franco’s stridently a book taking in 169 creators and which only saw print in 2011. One
anti-communist regime. One of Luis’ first introductions to leftist day in 1975, Luis and Carlos Gimenez were talking about the recently
politics came in 1964 from his fellow studio member Florencio Clavé. released Metal Hurlant magazine which featured the ground-breaking
At that time Clavé was one of Spain’s most prolific romance artists, work of French artists Moebius and Phillipe Druillet among others.
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us to finance the magazine. And when Felipe

Cava found out, he told me, “wait a few days,
I have to get about 90 pesetas for a job, and
then I’ ll accompany you.” I waited a few days
and we both started the trip.
The trip was exciting, but I only managed
to sell Giménez's works in the Nordic
countries, and my own work to Linus,
in Italy. With what Toutain paid him,
Gimenez barely had enough to live, but with
the millions of sales that I made for him,
without my charging him any commission,
he bought a three-story villa with a garden
and had money left over in the bank. While
Cava and I were traveling in Europe,
Antonio Martín had already spoken to
many cartoonists, scriptwriters, critics,
and theorists, and he had complicated the
magazine's direction by turning it into a
group project. When we returned, we met a
large group of people, the majority of whom
belonged to the Communist Party of Spain,
and in the first meeting they proposed to vote
on a new name for the magazine, because
Black Flag, they claimed, would sound like
an anarchist publication. We all proposed
different names and I proposed Trocha,
because in Castilian it means the beginning
of a new path and, for the majority of those
present it was voted on and accepted, Trocha
it was.
Now that there were so many members
of the Trocha collective committee, we had
to decide on everything with discussions
and voting. And, after almost two years of
meetings, we finally published the magazine.
But before that there was an important
crisis: when we voted for the people who
had to be in the newsroom of the magazine,
the elections were manipulated by Antonio
Martín. For instance, he did not want
El Papus 199
Armonía Rodríguez, the wife of Víctor Mora,
They decided that they too should create their own magazine which to be elected and asked us not to vote for her.
was initially conceived as a project called Bandera Negra (Black Flag) And both Antonio and Armonía were in the Communist Party! This
but eventually grew to involve a whole committee of contributors in is the political party that, in the beginning, had been Stalinist (Ramón
what finally emerged in 1977 as Trocha. Mercader, of the Catalan Communist Party, had killed Trotsky in
Mexico on the orders of Stalin). When the manipulation of the votes was
The night I proposed to Giménez that we should make our own discovered, some left the project, among them Giménez who was very
magazine, like Metal Hurlant, but I was not intending to make a close to Armonía. After many cumbersome and exhausting meetings,
science fiction comic, I was simply referring to the spirit of the magazine; with many political discussions, we finally released Trocha! but it was a
a publication controlled by the authors themselves. Giménez, Usero, Project that ended badly, because it started badly.”
Font, El Cubri, Ventura, and Nieto and a few others. But we needed
someone else who knew how to edit, and it occurred to me that Antonio The initial meetings to establish the political parameters and aesthetic
Martín would be perfect. He was a friend who often came to see us, so ethos of the magazine involved a committee that included artists such
I suggested the idea to him, and he said yes. I also thought that, as he as Luis, Carlos Gimenez, Jose Canovas, Marika, Alfonso Lopez, Jaime
was a comics historian and critic, he could also contribute to a section Marzal Canos, Adolfo Usero, Enrique Ventura, and Montse Clavé,
of the magazine with his writing. We attached the name Black Flag along with writers and theorists Andreu Martin, Antoni Segura,
to the possible magazine. But we didn't have enough money to finance Miguel Angel Nieto, and the collective El Cubri. When it finally came
the project, especially the married ones, because their wives didn't want out the magazine was actually titled Bang! Presenta su extra Trocha,
them to invest money in a risky project. Then, it occurred to me to suggesting it was somehow an offshoot of the fanzine in an attempt to
make a trip through Europe, with works by all of us, which I would sell disguise its radical contents. The first issue of Trocha appeared in May
without taking an agent’s commissions, and which would then enable 1977 (though Gimenez had already resigned by this point) and over
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The resulting magazine was modest in appearance,

small, black and white, and printed on rough
newsprint, but full of ideas and excellent art
with Jose Canovas, Adolfo Usero and guest
contributor Alberto Breccia particularly Shining.
Luis contributed artwork to six issues, combining
western strips that had previously appeared in
France and Italy with a number of new story’s
specially drawn the comic: En el Escalón más Bajo”
(On the Lowest Step), El Grito (The Scream) with
a script by Cava, and Gim written by Andreu
Martin. They were hard edged, contemporary
strips drawn in a harsher, more rough-hewn style
reflecting the more political, troubling subject
matter. El Ojo de Cristal (The Glass Eye), also dated
from this period but was not published in Trocha/
Troya for some reason. It was a chillingly brutal
second World strip that was important for Luis
because it was another attempt at working in a
different style; the brush technique from his old
romance strips but used in an entirely different
way. Trocha/Troya was sold throughout Spain and
was one of many radically political, anti-capitalist,
anti-fascist, and anti-establishment comics and
newspaper titles being published at that time,
which also included Butifarra, El Viejo Topo, Cul
de Sac, El Cuervo, El Jueves, and El Papus. Luis
contributed to several issues of Butifarra and El
Papus in 1977 as well as a special project issued in
support of El Papus after its offices were bombed
by right wing factions.
I worked for several issues of El Papus. We were all

very politically aware, but I was in the most radical
left-wing party in Spain, along with Cava and
Clavé. The others in Troya collaborated with the
Communist Party which, according to my party,
meant they were revisionists and traitors to the
peoples’ struggle (now I remember everything in a stupor). My reaction
the next 10 months, seven issues in total would appear though a clash was to collaborate with El Papus, which felt especially important after
of names with another publication meant it had to be renamed Troya the attack. I didn't do much work directly for El Papus magazine.
with its third issue (a double-length edition numbered 3/4). However, when we set up the commune in Cadaqués Ventura, Nieto
and I decided that to pay for the weekly rent, food, and parties, we would
Our intention in creating Trocha during the Spanish political transition do it between the three of us; Nieto wrote the scripts, Ventura pencilled
was to help the country move away from the ideology of the dictator the strips, and I inked them. That is, indirectly, I worked a lot for El
Francisco Franco. The group of professionals who founded Trocha were Papus. After the bombing, all of us involved in the production of Trocha
all left-wing with many sharing a Marxist /Leninist /Maoist ideology. were also afraid of an attack. I was asked to contribute to Butifarra,
We put all the money into the collective: 50,000 pesetas from each one of by Alfonso Lopez who was the magazine’s artistic director, as well as a
us. We thought it was the best solution for the poorest of the land; equal contributor to Troya.”
rights and duties for all people. Soon, I discovered that in Communist
countries the conduct of political power was similar to the behavior of While Luis’ focus was very much on these personal projects, he
Nazi political power. The two ideologies (radical Communism and nonetheless took on more commercial commissions from time to time
Nazism) even shared a similar popular iconography: the fabled leader, including illustrations for several encyclopaedias edited for Planeta
great and powerful, directing the " broad masses". Then came the political by Antonio Martin. These included volumes about the occult and
disenchantment in the majority of the members and sympathizers of the history of Latin America, illustrations from which are featured
leftist parties in Spain. Trocha’s circulation was about 20,000 and in this chapter. Their intensity and uncompromising tone suggest a
luckily, we had no problems with censorship because we were in that clear connection with his more overtly political strips. This whole
transition to democracy. However, one day my apartment was searched period was collected together in Chicharras, an album published in the
by the police when I was out. I knew it had been them because when I dying days of the Rambla publishing empire, which included “Janis”,
made a complaint they said there no point in investigating because” we Chicharras, the Trocha/Troya strips — The Eye of the Chrystal, the
will not find any thieves “. This sort of behavior was apparently typical of Trocha strip that never was — and, strangely, one of his most beautiful
the Spanish police system at that time, breaking into the homes of people western strips; The Law of the Land, which represented another of his
on the left and then pretending they had been robbed”. key preoccupations of the era- the persecution of the American Indian.
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Janis, Eureka 1974 Script by Luis Garcia.

Translated by Ruth Bernardez, lettered by Jim Campbell
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Chicharras, Bang! 13 Script by Luis Garcia.

Translated by Jose Villarrubia, lettered by Jim Campbell
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Black Tide, Someday Funnies

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El Ejo De Crystal page 1 Cimoc 1
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El Ejo De Crystal page 4 Cimoc 1

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En El Escalon page 1, Trocha 2
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En El Escalon page 7, Trocha 2

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Le Cri Scop Magazine 5

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Illustrations for an Encyclopaedia of Latin American history, published by Planeta 1976
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Illustration for Enciclopedia Planeta de las Ciencias, Ocultas y Parasicologia, Planeta 1977
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S
ome projects are the results of careful, long thought out where a meeting with Fulvia Serra and Oreste del Buono of Editorial
planning, while others happen through osmosis or just Corno proved to be highly fruitful. The pair had seen Luis’ work
sheer coincidence. The 1979 strip collection Etnocidio in Pilote and bought all the work he had with him: four Chronicles
(Ethnocide) was one of the latter. The roots of the project episodes, “Janis”, and Tecumtha which were soon reprinted in issues
began when Luis drew an adaptation in 1975 of the of Linus, Alter Linus, and Eureka. In fact, Tecumtha’s first printing
Ambrose Bierce short story “An Occurrence at Owl anywhere was in Alter Linus #1 in 1976.
Creek Bridge” (retitled Tecumtha), which he subsequently asked After this first collaboration on Tecumtha, Cava would go on
Felipe Cava to dialogue (and which starred Carlos Gimenez as the lead to become Luis’ most important collaborator for the rest of the
character). He had first met Cava in 1972 after Luis had been awarded decade, working on numerous strips and magazines together. Felipe
the Warren prize for Best Strip of the Year. He had been invited onto Hernandez Cava was born in 1953 and grew up in Madrid going
a Spanish TV news program in Madrid to take part in a live interview on to become a prolific and creative writer and artist. Cava’s earliest
and Cava accompanied a comics critic to the studio where the two work appeared in Bang! and the El Cuco newspaper supplements,
were introduced to each other. Later Cava travelled to Barcelona and and he went on to work in comics as a writer, critic and as part of the
came to Premia de Mar to visit Luis in his studio. Cava was also a El Cubri artistic collective. Like Luis he was also extremely active in
regular visitor to the studio in Cadaques and travelled with Luis on the radical underground circles. Throughout the ‘70s, his work appeared
aforementioned road trip across Europe to raise funds for the Black in Comiclo, Butifarra, Cul de Sac, Por Favor, Cimoc, and Cairo. He was
Flag project. Ultimately, they met with little success except in Italy also one of the principal creators involved in Ikusager Edicions’ Images
from History series of graphic novels. As a frequent collaborator with
Luis, he appeared in most issues of Trocha/Troya, 14 issues of Rambla
(as El Cubri) and co- wrote the Argelia graphic novel for Ikusager. He
went on to become a key figure in experimental and alternative comics
throughout the next few decades, appearing in such ground breaking
titles as Madriz (where he was the artistic director) and Medios
Revueltos, along with writing numerous books, articles and curating
exhibitions. He was perhaps the collaborator whose humanist and
political views most closely echoed Luis’ own preoccupations.
Tecumtha was soon followed by a second western strip; Le Bataillon
de Saint Patrick (the Battalion of Saint Patrick,) which was conceived
and written by Cava and became their first conventional collaboration.
At around the same time, the French publisher Valliant, creator of the
bestselling Pif Gadget comic, visited Luis in Barcelona to invite him
to contribute to a new adult comic magazine they were planning. Luis
subsequently visited the publisher in Paris where he met with writer
Jean Oliviér who suggested that they worked together on a strip for
the magazine, which became yet another western: Cheval Fou (Crazy
Horse). Vaillant’s proposed magazine was to be called Bazar, the first
issue of which was to feature “Janis” alongside French strips such as
Barbarella, but after an initial test press run of only 150 copies in 1976,
the project was abandoned. Later that year, however, the publishers
(under the new imprint of Editorial De La Grille) tried again with
Scop magazine which finally did make it onto the newsstands. Luis
was present in four of its five issues with the Bataillon strip appearing
in issue #1, Cheval Fou in #2 (where it was also featured on the cover),
“Janis” finally saw print in France in issue #3 and El Grito/The Scream
was featured in issue #5 (several months before its Spanish debut in
Troya). Luis was well represented in French comics in the late ‘70s
as Bataillon was soon reprinted in Pilote #53, only two years after its
premiere in Scop and his lyrical adaptation of Jack London’s short story
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The Law of Life saw print in Pilote #61 in 1979 (sandwiched

by his late pair of Chronicles strips in issues #59 and #78). The
Law of Life (as Ley de Vida) had first appeared in the Spanish
Totem magazine, which featured a panel based on Carol De
Haro from the story as its cover. It was the last time he was to
draw her in any of his strips.
The last of Luis’ western collaborations with Cava, De Un
Genocidio…De Un Etnocidio (Of a Genocide… Of an Ethnocide),
sprung from an unexpected source of inspiration when he was
visited by a representative of the Indian nation. It transpired
that he had seen several of Luis’ western strips in France and
wanted to commission him to draw a strip that would examine
their history and explain their ongoing struggle for justice and
recognition in contemporary America. Luis was also invited
to Switzerland to attend a conference which aimed to raise
awareness about the plight of the indigenous peoples around
the world. The delegates there were able to give him reference
photographs for the strip including photos from the massacre
at Wounded Knee. All his western strips relied heavily on
reference to give them their sense of authenticity with Luis
using numerous daguerreotypes and paintings of the old
west to create imagery that feels astonishingly authentic and
convincing. Etnocidio and several of the other westerns first
appeared in Spain in Trocha/Troya where their support for an
oppressed minority and palpable sense of injustice fitted in
perfectly with that titles’ radical ethos. Most of the westerns
were also reprinted in Italy with Etnocidio... and Cheval Fou
appearing in Alter Alter in 1979 while Battalion and Law of
Life were reprinted in Italian Totem.
By the end of the decade, entirely by accident, Luis had
drawn enough strips for a western themed collection, held
together with a unifying sense of rage and indignation at the
brutality and violence meted out against the Indian Nation.
The collection was first published in Spain in 1979 under
the title Etnocidio, followed a year later by a French version
entitled La Morte De L’Indien (The Death of the Indian) from
Pilote publisher Dargaud, though disappointingly neither
included The Law of Life.
The last story I made about the North American Indians was the
adaptation of The Law of Life and although it could have been
Included in Etnocidio it was not possible because Jose Maria de
la Torre, the publisher of Papel Vivo, had no money and had
to wait for the sales of his previous book to publish the next one.
The book could only have 48 pages (a signature of 32 pages, plus
a half signature of 16 pages) and the Law of Life could not fit
in it. Another reason why that story in particular was omitted
was that De la Torre was a member of the Communist Party
and The Law of Life, for him, was the least revolutionary of my
westerns. However, I did put a panel from the story on the cover.”
Artistically, the earliest westerns were on a par with the best of

Luis’ Chronicles strips, particularly Le Bataillon, which features
pages of extraordinary realism and power. Thematically, they
don’t hold back from the brutal realities of the old West,
depicting massacres and hangings with shocking frankness.
The Law of Life, by contrast, included more meditative scenes
of Native American life shown in exquisitely designed panels
of the most delicate pen work. The strip was finally collected
in the 1985 Chicharras graphic novel where it makes an
intriguingly anachronistic coda to the contemporary strips that
precede it.
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Tecumtha page 2, Alter Linus 1
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Tecumtha page 3. Alter Linus 1
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Battalon de San Patricio page 2, Scop 1

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Cheval Fou page1, Scop 2
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Cheval Fou page 4, Scop 2
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Ley de Vida page 2, Totem 14
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lthough the graphic novel format was only just John Wayne and Humphrey Bogart, with scripts by Felipe Cava,
beginning to emerge in America by the end of the and a pair of punk-inspired strips under the pseudonym of Johnny
1970s (with Will Eisner’s A Contract with God Weissmuller which were unrecognizable as his work. The project saw
in 1978 widely regarded as a significant starting print in 1980 under the Ikusager imprint, a publishing house owned
point for the artform), in Europe, the comic album by Ernesto Santolaya, who would go on to publish a string of critically
(effectively a long comic strip story published acclaimed and politically aware graphic novels throughout the ‘80s
as a square-bound, often hardbacked, book), was a long established and ‘90s.
format going back to the 1930s with Tintin. In Spain, Trinca magazine After completing his last couple of Chronicles strips for Pilote in
started issuing collected albums of its strips in 1971 and Spanish 1979, Luis began work on his first full length graphic novel Argelia
translations of Tintin and Asterix albums began appearing in the 1950s (the Spanish name for Algeria) whose inspiration came from a most
and ‘60s respectively. Soon after finishing his work on Troya, Luis unlikely source. An Algerian official by the name of Omar was looking
began to create artwork for his first graphic novel, joining the crew of for a comic artist to adapt a lengthy text of his which documented
Astronomia Pirata (Pirate Astronomy) an album project overseen by the history of Algeria under French colonial rule and its battle for
editor Carmelo Hernando. Luis contributed 11 pages to the book, six independence. This was intended as a sort of companion piece to Gillo
of which were his adaptation of "The Crystal Eye", a story by Curzio Pontecorvo’s 1966 film The Battle of Algiers, and it was felt that the
Malaparte (for which Hernando rewrote the texts from a Maoist comic book medium would be widely accessible for a mass, often rural,
perspective). His other contributions featured humorous strips about audience that might not have been able to see the film itself. Omar
knew Ramon Peinado, a childhood friend of Luis’, who was working in
Algeria which is how the initial contact with the artist was made. Luis
was subsequently invited to spend a week in Algeria to gather reference
and get a feel for the atmosphere and character of the country and its
people. Once back in Barcelona, Luis realized that the text was far too
long to be easily adapted into any sort of manageable story, so he let
it gestate in his mind, then laid it out into a 42-page storyline entirely
from memory.
The book was drawn directly for Algeria, shortly after the [1978] death
of the revolutionary president Houari Boumédiène. And since I only had
a few months to complete the book, and I also had to adapt Omar’s book
to write the script, I asked Adolfo Usero for help with the drawings. After
we had finished the book, Felipe Cava came to Barcelona and in my
house one night, we wrote the story together. I explained to Felipe, panel
by panel, what I wanted to say and he wrote the text. Felipe managed
to perfectly fill the spaces that Adolfo and I had left for the text and
then sometime later Ernesto Santolaya published it in Spain. A recent
French edition (reprinted under the title El Djazair) was published by
a communist married to an Algerian and with many Muslim friends,
but I don’t know what the reaction has been to the book because I haven't
heard from the editor at all (and he might still owe me some of the
royalties!). I don't know if it ever was published in Algeria, although I
gave my friend the original pages which he then delivered to the Algerian
government Ministry of Culture. Luckily, I had made copies beforehand
at Instaprint, a company which specialised in making reproductions from
the originals on paper, and these are the copies which were used for the
Ikusager and Ici Meme editions.”
The book was an artistic triumph with both artist’s styles merging
seamlessly into a totally coherent whole. The project was divided up
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There is a story in the Chronicles series, the last one, Stormy Weather,
in which I am the model. The lead character is a "Manchurian
Candidate" (people manipulated, psychically, to commit crimes). And
as I think Lennon was killed by another Manchurian Candidate, it felt
right to use myself in Nova 2 in a similar way. In the Nova 2 sequence,
Víctor Ramos (my alter ego) leaves his house and discovers the news
that John Lennon has been killed, and in the following pages, I am the
model for the character that sells him the revolver (the same model of the
weapon that killed Lennon).The character of the real Victor Ramos is not
the same as the fictional Victor Ramos in Nova 2 although both drew
romances for the UK. Today, the real Victor Ramos is still alive and in
good health. On page 15 the text mentions that Victor was an indirect
descendent of the Habsburg royal family which is something the real
Victor had told us when we were all working at S.I. I included it in the
story as a nod to the people who knew him and because it would make
the fictional Victor’s decline into a frustrating and miserable life all the
organically with each artist taking turns to pencil and ink sections more poignant.
with some panels finished by one artist entirely on their own, while I was influenced by the Beat Generation, as well as the cultural
others were pencilled by Adolfo and inked by Luis. In some cases, the phenomenon about which they wrote, particularly Jack Kerouac. I
entire page might be made up of different combinations from panel to quoted Allen Ginsberg’s poem “Howl” in the early section of the story
panel. However, on a few pages Luis found the time to create the entire as a tribute to that formative influence and to contrast our culture with
image on his own and of the two examples shown in this book, page the culture of the nomadic Arabs. The poem shocked me and changed my
31 is entirely his work, as is page 38, except for the policemen in its last life because it helped precipitate the hippie movement of which I was a
panel which were drawn by Adolfo. member. On the other hand, on returning to Barcelona from London, I
In December 1980, Luis embarked on what was to become his joined the Marxist movement. The words of John Lennon which I quote
masterpiece, Nova 2. The strip started life as a story with science in the book, “the dream is over," allude to my own experiences, because
fiction overtones set in the Sahara but as he was drawing its ninth page, the two movements, (as the Marxists would call them) had failed. The
Luis heard the news that John Lennon had been shot and the project character that I modelled for who sells the gun to Victor represents the
underwent a radical change of direction. The Sahara story abruptly end of my belief in Marxist revolution. These references to my own life
stops and our point of view pulls back to reveal that this continuity would have been difficult for the reader to understand. But in essence
had been part of a strip drawn by an aging Spanish comic artist by the when I quote that "the dream is over" in this case it is the Marxist dream
name of Victor Ramos. We then follow Victor as he wanders around and the gun that represents that movement turns out to be broken itself
Barcelona, buys a gun and then tries (unsuccessfully) to kill himself. when Victor attempts suicide.
The second half of the story, drawn in 1982 for the magazine Rambla,
tracks his life from the moment of conception, through a childhood
spent under the shadow of the Spanish Civil War, and finally his fate
at the hands of his psychoanalyst. Throughout, there are references
and quotes from such diverse figures as Allen Ginsberg, Velazquez,
The Beatles, Carl Jung, and Alex Raymond. Visually, it was a tour de
force bringing together all the various techniques and storytelling
innovations he had developed over the previous 20 years. After an
opening section of detailed pen and sponge work, the bulk of the book
is rendered in rich, delicate swathes of graphite making it one of the
most realistically drawn comics ever seen (and a pointer to a career
change yet to come).
But even in a strip as revolutionary and complex as Nova 2 (a story
which could quite rightly be called the worlds’ first existential comic
strip) there were meanings within meanings. The Victor Ramos of the
story was a fictional comic book artist driven to despair at the futility
of a life spent drawing British romance comics. As a model for this
artist, Luis chose an old colleague from S.I. who was coincidentally
named Victor Ramos and who had himself spent many years drawing
British romance comics for Jackie, Marilyn, Star Love Stories, Diana,
and numerous other titles. At one point, we see the fictional Victor
Ramos drawing a page of a British romance story entitled “Love Strip”
(in a knowing nod to Luis’ earlier Chronicles episode), though visually
this strip is drawn very much in Luis’ own classic romance style, rather
than the more cartoony style used by the real Victor. In some ways
Nova 2 could be seen as a continuation of the earlier “Love Strip”,
imagining what that story’s protagonist, Pablo, would be like a decade
further on in his life. But the subtexts and references went further
than that:
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Rambla magazine in the morning but in the afternoon, she went to the
university, to finish her psychology studies. So, in effect, in real life she
which was exactly the character she plays in the book. Her character has a
monologue in front of the mirror, looking at her childhood photos, and I
asked her to write, really, about her own childhood and her relationship
with her mother, which then became the text about the character's
childhood in my story. We follow Victor’s life from his inception, through
his mother’s pregnancy and the early years of his life during the Spanish
Civil War and here I was deeply influenced by an essay by Susan Sontag,
who explained the importance in the formation of a child's psyche of the
influences of society on the mother while she is pregnant.
When I was producing Nova 2 I had no prior, finished script, it was
always a work in progress. While I was drawing page nine, I heard
the news about Lennon's murder on the radio. And for me, it was a
catharsis which changed the course of the story, because it didn't feel
right to draw an adventure story when my generation’s future was over.
The script evolved as I was writing it, responding to what I had written
before and also reflecting my current readings, reflections, imaginations
and thoughts, running parallel to my own life. Moebius realized this
because when he talked about Nova 2 on Televisión Vasca (in the Basque
country), he said he had also worked the same way in some of his strips,
such as the Airtight Garage, working spontaneously without a script or
a plan for the whole story. I had intended to continue the story further,
but I took advantage of the editorial and personal disaster of Rambla’s
final days to start a new life from zero (“There is no harm that does not
come for good,” as my grandmother said, who always spoke with sayings).
Nova 2 was an experiment; it was intensely autobiographical and if
I hadn't dedicated myself to painting I don't know when I would have
finished it because it grew with me in parallel to my own life. I finally
The first part of Nova 2 was serialized in Nueva Frontera’s Totem gave it an ending because Joan Navarro, who was editing a reissue for
magazine and then sold across Europe, cementing Luis’ position as Glenat, asked me to finish it, but in reality, the end of Nova 2 is that I
one of the leading stars of world comics. On its completion, Luis and dedicated myself to painting. That is to say, that the act of painting is, for
Carlos Gimenez were invited by the Mexican government to visit the me, the continuation of Nova 2.
country to attend a seminar at Hacienda Cocoyoc to exhibit their
artwork. At the seminar they met politicians and a number of leading Luis made a decision in 1986 to turn away from comics and forge a
South American comic creators including Alberto Breccia, Sylvia new identity as a painter (a period of his life described in this book’s
Palacios, Jose Munoz, and Carlos Sampayo; and then travelled on last chapter), but there was still one final graphic novel to emerge.
to New York to visit Neal Adams and Al Williamson. The trip was This was Norte Sur (North South), published by Ikusager, a book
enormously successful with Luis selling Nova 2 to Heavy Metal editor exploring the inequalities and injustices between the rich and the
Julie Simmons Lynch and then gaining admission to the legendary poor and the weak and the powerful, which featured Luis as part of a
nightclub Studio 54. When published in 1982, it made an impact collective including Alberto and Enrique Breccia, Miguelanxo Prado,
including a lasting impression as noted when contemporary comics and Howard Chaykin. Ikusager’s Imagenes de la Historia series of
artist Dylan Horrocks tweeted in 2015: “Nova 2, by Luis García, had graphic novels had started off exploring historical episodes but quickly
a big impact on me when it was serialized in Heavy Metal magazine in developed a strong interest in social and political concerns. Altogether
the early 80s.” the series ran to 31 volumes and involved several group projects that
On his return to Barcelona, Luis immediately made plans to go dealt with the rights of children, The Declaration of Universal Human
back to America, but instead became involved in the formation of Rights, and the inequalities between the sexes, so it was a project that
Rambla, another comic magazine. This was conceived as an artist-lead was always going to appeal to Luis’ strong social conscience:
project that would provide its creators with the perfect venue to create
their best work. Luis decided to seize the chance to continue Nova 2, I created my contribution to Norte Sur when I was already in Madrid
looking back at the forces that governed Victor’s life and lead him to studying painting and some of the pages actually are paintings, one of
the state of mind we saw at the start of the story: which is now in the Museum of Valencia. The comic was commissioned
by Santolaya, who by then was an acquaintance and friend. It was his
In the first part of Nova 2, the story reveals the wanderings of a idea to bring together artists that he liked for the book. You could say
man beset by his loneliness and frustrations. Victor is guided by his that Alberto Breccia was a friend as well (although because of his age,
unconscious mind in both sections of the story and in the second part I think he looked on me as more like a son), and when we presented the
we see the explanation of why his character turned out like that. In the book at a signing in Logroño, he was surprised by my work. He said,
second part, I show that Victor was born same day as Francisco Franco “But you are doing painting, painting!" He meant that I was not like
started the Spanish Civil War (war makes a country schizophrenic; a lot of other artists who, according to Breccia, only made large-scale
Spaniard against Spaniard, even relatives on different sides, facing illustrations to sell, as if they were paintings, in art galleries”.
each other). That's the explanation I give to my character, a diagnosis of
Schizophrenia given by the young psychoanalyst at the end of the story. Painting has indeed occupied much of Luis’ time ever since and it was
Gemma García, the model for the psychoanalyst, was my secretary at to be another 17 years before he would draw another comic strip.
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Argelia page 38
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Nova 2 page 24
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Nova 2 page 50
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I
n the wake of the first adult comic magazines Pilote and Linus, Spanish editions of Pilote and Metal Hurlant. The Nueva Frontera
and their successors Metal Hurlant, Alter Alter, L’echo Des magazines primarily reprinted older Spanish strips and the cream of
Savannes, and Charlie Mensuel, other European countries French and Italian talents, but occasionally featured newer Spanish
also began to create their own adult comic strip titles. In material and Luis in particular had become one of the stars of Totem.
Spain the comic magazine format had proved to be successful When Norma Editorial entered the field with Cimoc and Cairo in 1981
since the launch of Dossier Negro in 1968, particularly after it was clear the country was going through a publishing renaissance,
it started reprinting Warren material in 1971. This was followed by a and this period later became known as the Magazine Explosion. So,
series of further Warren reprints from Ibero and Garbo and the eclectic it was not entirely surprising when Jose Maria Bea, an old colleague
Trinca magazine which featured entirely new work by some of the from the early days of S.I., suggested to Luis that they should team up
best Spanish artists such as Victor De La Fuente, Antonio Hernandez to create their own magazine: Rambla (named after Las Ramblas, the
Palacios, Jose Bielsa and Esteban Maroto. When Garbo closed in 1978 main thoroughfare in central Barcelona).
Josep Toutain decided to start printing his own line of newsstand
magazines which mixed reprinted material from Warren with new After returning from New York to my house in Barcelona, a n apartment
strips by Spanish and international talents. The first Toutain title, 1984 of about 300 square meters, I thought about leaving all my things at my
(which appeared only a few months after Warren’s American 1984 parents' house and moving to NY. Because with the money I had made
magazine), proved to be a massive success and was quickly followed from selling Nova 2 to Heavy Metal, plus other stories and the royalties
by Creepy in 1979 and Comix Internacional in 1980. Similarly, across that I still received from the Chronicles (for sales in other countries and
the county in Madrid, Roberto Rocca’s Nueva Frontera was releasing books published by Pilote), I had enough money to be able to live there
its own line of comic magazines starting with Totem and Blue Jeans for two or three years. And while I was dreaming and getting excited
in 1977 and going on to include Bumerang, Vertigo, Caliber 38, and about returning to New York, Beá came to visit me at my house. He has
a great capacity for persuasion and suggested that I should
speak with Giménez, Usero, Font, Ventura, and Nieto about
creating a new magazine. This proposal revived my original
idea of making a magazine inspired by Metal Hurlant and
I was excited all over again about the project that, years
before, Antonio Martín had destroyed. I contacted each of
the artists and after a meeting we decided to start work on
the magazine. But we needed a partner to provide capital
for the project because they didn't want to risk their own
money. So, I travelled to Madrid and proposed the idea to
my editor at Totem, Roberto Rocca. It seemed like a good
idea to him and he came to Barcelona to sign a contract with
us (which is why the first six issues of Rambla were published
by Distrinovel, a publishing house owned by Rocca).
The initial line up included significant contributions from

all of the founding members who each brought some of
their best material with them; Bea contributed the surreal
science Fiction series La Esfera Cubica, Font produced
the first series of his space detectives Clarke and Kubrick,
Gimenez unveiled the first instalments of the acclaimed
Los Profesionales, his nostalgic look back at the early days
of S.I., Usero drew a beautiful new mediaeval strip called
Maese Espana and Luis began to serialize the second part
of Nova 2. Some of the strips in these early issues had
been rejected by Josep Toutain and El Vibora magazine,
but nonetheless it was an exceptionally strong line-up,
Luis at work on Rambla aided by attractive new material by Ventura, Nieto, and
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Trocha, a few established professionals enjoying the freedom to express

themselves and an ever-growing band of diverse new talents. Bea was
a considerable presence in each of the first 25 issues, contributing
numerous episodes of his feline sf hero La Muralla, and a torrent of
strips, drawn under the influence of Alex Toth, using the pseudonym
of Sanchez Zamora. By contrast, after seven episodes of Nova 2, the
demands of publishing the magazine reduced Luis’ artistic output to
covers and illustrations, though many were stunning. His classic strips
were an integral part of the magazine however, particularly in its later
issues, with reprints of Argelia, the Chronicles, and numerous Trocha
strips ensuring he was a significant presence in most issues. Among
the established artists, Esteban Maroto, Joan Boix, and Fernando
Fernandez all drew attractive strips for Rambla, Antonio Hernandez
Palacios was represented by a beautiful Manos Kelly serial and the great
Enric Sio contributed some the best, and most explicit, artwork of his
career. Ramon Casanyes, previously best known as one of Bruguera’s
top humour artists, contributed a number of gorgeous cartoon strips
Editorial team drawn by Adolfo Usero and some astonishingly realistic covers as well.
Under its new direction, Rambla was an entirely open showcase
El Cubri. However, despite its stellar contents, initial sales proved to for its contributors, with no restrictions on content (which was
be an enormous disappointment, with the comic only selling 30% of often outrageous and sexually daring) and no preconceptions about
the 70,000-print run. Faced with the prospect of dwindling financial genres. The sheer number of unsolicited submissions to Luis and Bea
returns the other Premia 3 artists each abandoned the comic; Font prompted the expansion of their publishing empire to include Rampa
took Clarke and Kubrick to Cimoc, Gimenez moved Los Profesionales Rambla, and Rambla Quincenal magazines in an attempt to print the
over to Comix International, while Usero drew several biographies best of them. Many of Luis’ old colleagues from Trocha also became
for Bruguera and a graphic novel for Ikusager. They were not alone as regulars in the various Rambla magazines; El Cubri, Alfonso Lopez,
Distrinovel pulled the plug on the magazine after only six issues. and Marika were all enthusiastic contributors while Ventura and
Nieto appeared in almost every issue of Rambla with new or reprinted
As sales did not cover the expenses of the magazine, our salaries and strips. The various publications also featured a number of the best
the profits of the editor, Giménez, Usero, and Font left ("rats are the international artists such as Alberto Breccia (represented by numerous
first to flee the sinking ship") and Roberto was no longer interested episodes of Mort Cinder), Altan, and Guido Crepax. Strangely, in their
because he was losing money. However, Beá and I talked and agreed to short lives, the Rambla titles serialized no less than three seductively
continue producing the magazine, because without the great salaries of beautiful adaptations of Casanova, by Crepax, Sio, and M. Paiva.
Giménez, Usero and Font, and the profits that Roberto had expected, Rambla is perhaps best celebrated today for the many young artists
the magazine’s sales, might just be able to support our two salaries. We whose work it showcased, in several cases publishing them for the
concluded that, between the two of us, Beá and I, we could continue very first time. Joan Mundet’s semi-autobiographical strips were an
doing it, but naturally we needed other collaborators. ever-present feature of Rambla after its tenth issue and while he had
been around for several years, they were by far his most visible comic
The second era of Rambla started with issue #7 under the new book appearances up to that point. Ana Miralles is now one of Spain’s
publishing imprint of Garcia y Bea. With Luis acting as editor and most successful comic artists on the international stage but made her
Bea handling the art directing, the pair began to assemble new creative comics debut with three strips for Rambla. Luis Royo has similarly
personnel which mixed their own work, some old friends from become enormously popular as a fantasy illustrator and got his first
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break at Rambla where his strips appeared in 24 issues of the

various publications. The avant-Garde surrealist Herikberto
was also another Rambla discovery with contributions to
almost 30 issues across the line including several startlingly
unique covers. Other young artists featured in Rambla’s pages
included Pasqual Ferry, J Torres, Marti, Federico del Bario,
Antonio Navarro, Lolo, and Buixadera and their diverse
artistic voices are surely Rambla’s enduring legacy. At its
height, Rambla’s sales reached 29,000 copies a month, but the
strain of publishing on a shoestring took its toll. Bea left in
1984 after 25 issues, though the Garcia y Bea imprint carried
on until issue #33 when it was renamed Ediciones Rambla.
Things came to a head in 1985 when the cost of paper rose by
50% and many of the comic magazines, including Rambla,
suddenly became unviable.
Bea and I endured two years together, and I had one year
alone, but the market crisis and the saturation of similar
magazines that had occurred in Spanish comics meant that,
sooner or later, everyone had to close their publications. We
persisted with Rambla but the economic crisis deepened and
Beà left the magazine. I continued alone for a year as Rambla’s
publisher until number 35 but then for economic reasons, I
had to close the magazine and the publishing house in October
1985. Apart from the discussions we had as group members,
and the various subjective reasons they might suggest (I prefer
to omit my own subjective reasons), the fundamental reason
why they all left Rambla was economic: if the magazine had
made a lot of money no one would have left.
I created the Rampa Rambla title to be able to publish the
avalanche of new artists that came to the publishing house.
Rambla 24 original cover art And, since it didn't sell well, I lost a lot of money. However,
I was excited, remembering the opportunity they had given
me at Bruguera, knowing that these artists were happy to see their strips
published, which for some of them was the first time in their lives. And
yes, I am proud to have discovered and released new comic artists, from
the generation after mine.
At Rambla my job was Editor in Chief and I had to deal with the
artists, the printers, paper suppliers, banks, and so on. I was on the
phone, in the printing presses, receiving draftsmen, correcting the
printer’s proofs, arguing with the engravers (those who made me the
photoliths for printing), and even making maquetes for the publications.
It was terrible. I think the chronic fatigue syndrome I have since suffered
from is because of all the jobs I did at Rambla. I combined the editorial
chores with drawing magazine illustrations and the strip Nova 2. If you
take into account that in addition to Rambla I was also editing Rampa
Rambla, Rambla Quincenal (bi-weekly), Rambla Rock (a magazine
specializing in pop and rock), Rambla Comics USA, and collections of
black and white and color books, I was producing four to six publications
every month. For all that work, I just had a secretary, Marika, who
helped me to screen unsolicited comic strips, along with her husband who
did the accounts. I slept for only two to four hours a day. In the Rambla
project, I lost everything, even the money I had saved to go to New
York. The others lost nothing. Remembering that time can sometimes
make me feel deeply upset. However, I also feel proud and sometimes
an experience is worth more than financial success. Because what I like
most in life is to learn and with Rambla I learned to be an editor (and
not to trust everyone who claims to be my friends). When I had to close
the company I was so stressed I rested for two months at Carol de Haro’s
house in Granada. And finally, in January 1986, having just turned 40
years old, I started to paint, an art form which I have dedicated myself
exclusively to ever since.
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Rambla covers
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Rambla 9 original cover art (taken from Nova 2)
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Rambla 14 illustration
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Yellow Bugi Bugki, Rambla 11
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Rambla Quincenal 4 Contactos original artwork
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Rambla Quincenal 5 Contactos original artwork
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Rambla 11 illustration (top)

Chicharras (coleccion Rambla) original cover art (bottom)
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Contactos illustrations from Rambla Quincenal 3, 4 and 5

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T
Self-portrait in Gorafe, 1985
he fallout from the collapse of Rambla led Luis to In addition, I drew storyboards for advertising agencies, but only on
re-evaluate both his life and his entire approach to weekends. During the week I studied painting by copying Velázquez in
art, a process which began with his first drawing as a the Prado Museum (which I later sold in order to have some money to
“free man”, away from comics. live on) and I also painted flowers in the botanical garden next to the
Prado. In the afternoons, I painted life models, such as Maria, at life
The self-portrait in Gorafe, was drawn in the town size in the Circulo de Bellas Artes de Madrid, and at night I studied
where Carol de Haro lives in Granada, I did it while I was recovering the history and theory of painting. For a month, I also attended one
from the stress of having closed down the publishing house and the of the workshops held by Antonio Lopez Garcia. I had the conviction
bankruptcy. I spent a few weeks with Carol and then returned to that if every day I worked twice as hard a young student, then my 10
Barcelona to spend the Christmas holidays with my family, after which years of studying painting would be the equivalent of twenty, as if I had
I went to Madrid to start a new life from scratch. Initially I drew begun to paint ten years earlier. It was a misleading equation I made
illustrations for advertising and children’s books which I did for a living every morning to cheer myself up because I was aware that I had started
and to be able to pay for the small studio where I lived and painted. painting too late.
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Luis painting the When the newspaper El Pais asked me to write something for their
portrait of the Fenoll
children, 1987; Luis and Sunday supplement explaining why I had left comics and was now
his son Luis Alberto; painting, I wrote an essay called "La Luz" (The Light). The supplement
Brochure for Luis’ first
group show at the devoted 16 pages to my work which included reproductions of pages from
Ensanche Gallery 1988 the Chronicles and Nova 2, accompanied by a wonderful text by the
critic Javier Coma. The owner of Galeria Ensanche in Valencia saw the
article which included a photo of my first commission, a group portrait
of Carlos Fenoll’s children, and offered me representation with his art
gallery. I accepted and with what he paid me for the exclusive contract,
I found that I had enough money to live on, so I stopped working on
children's books and advertising, and devoted all of my efforts to learning
how to paint.
In my first exhibition with Galeria Ensanche, a collective dedicated
to the drawing of human figure, many excellent Spanish painters were
involved, but nevertheless the gallerist put my artwork on the invitation
card. One of the paintings from my first exhibition, a 1989 life study
from the Circulo de Bellas Artes (The Beautiful Menegilda) was bought
by a prestigious Valencian collector and when he died, he gave it to
the Museo de Valencia where it still is, together with a drawing of my
parents from the Nort Sur album. The same gallery also organized an
exhibition of the originals of Nova 2, but the pages weren’t for sale, so to
earn money the gallery owner produced a portfolio of four serigraphs of
Nova 2 originals, printed at the same size and on the same paper as the
originals. There were 100 folders signed and numbered. Unfortunately,
shortly after this, the three backers closed the gallery because of a dispute
between them. Then I was introduced to an American art dealer (Croker
International) who sold paintings by myself and several other artists in
California, until he disappeared with all of our work. To this day we
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have heard nothing more from him.

By this time, I was married with a three-year-old son, so we came to
live in Barcelona in my mother's house since we had no money to pay
the rent for my apartment in Madrid. I had many problems with my
wife and we ended up divorcing; she went with my son to her mother's
house in Madrid, which is where we had first met while I was studying
painting. Now that I was alone, to ease the pains of separation from my
son, I went to Palma in Mallorca, but two months after leaving my son,
my mother died. I spent five years in Mallorca where I was represented
by the exclusive Horrach Moya art gallery. Early exhibitions there
included the group show “New Realism” in 1997 and a solo show the
following year. What I mostly did in Mallorca were graphite pencil
drawings which were a great success. Sometimes the clients paid me
for the drawing in advance, before I had even started to draw them. I
charged a lot of money for the drawing; the gallery had a lot of prestige.
I returned to Barcelona in 2002 and continued the project "paráfrasis
de prensa" (perhaps best translated as breaking news) which had
started in Mallorca, but which I could not paint because of the constant
commissions for drawings. When I finished the project, they were
exhibited at the Barcelona School of Journalism and, later, together
with another project; “Fama y Sexo en Internet” (Fame and Sex on the
Internet), they formed an exhibition to inaugurate the CMAE (Centro
Municipal de Arte y Exposiciones) in Avilés. Following these exhibitions,
I was in contact with the prestigious art gallery Alejandro Navarro in
Barcelona but became ill and was only able to paint a few pictures, take
on some advertising work, and two color comic strips. These were created
for the Semana Negra magazines published in association with the
Aviles comic convention. I was also able to draw a new black and white
story "The Face on the Hill" about Rwanda for a short-lived new comic
magazine called Dos Veces Breve.
Since leaving comics I have always lived by painting portraits. I have
clients who, in addition to buying my paintings, continue to commission
portraits. In recent years, I have also been a professor of painting

specializing in Velázquez's techniques, along with those of Anders Zorn
(the four colors of Zorn), which I have taught to licensed professors, and
even to the director of the Barcelona Academy of Art, Jordi Díaz Alamà.
I just wanted to learn to paint, but without intending to I have become
one of the few experts in Velázquez's techniques. In such a way that I
have taught these techniques to some of the best teachers in Barcelona,
because none of them knew them. The level of teaching in Spain is a
disappointment to me, I am self-taught and, besides, I am aware that I
know little about Velázquez.”
Looking at Luis’ artwork since leaving comics it is fascinating to

see both how he fits in to the various schools or movements of
contemporary art, but also how there are still such close echoes of his
earlier artwork. Granted that he was always one of the most realistic
of comic artists in the first place, but nevertheless there is a strong
sense of continuity throughout his artistic life, particularly in the few
strips he has produced since 1985, which often incorporate paintings
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into their narratives. One of the major challenges facing those who
we might broadly term “realistic” painters today is how to remain
relevant in a post-representational art world, how to create artwork
that has a resonance beyond the merely illustrative. It is something that
Lucian Freud and Jenny Saville, both favorites of Luis, have managed
to achieve and I think Luis has as well. In a painting like Ingrid on
Rothko’s Sofa, which is one of a series of portraits of a favorite model
I think there is the same intensity and exploration of the figure
that you find in Freud and Saville’s work. The use of soft swathes of
color flowing across the page is clearly an allusion to the work of
Mark Rothko, another pointer to Luis’ interest in the properties of
paint as a feature in itself. What is fascinating is that while they are
unquestionably pictures of the highest quality nonetheless there is still
a sense of continuity with his earlier comic strips. The many pencil
drawings of Ingrid clearly mark a continuation of his work on Nova
2, though here he has taken his use of graphite to another level of
realism. In some respects, they feel more contemporary now, with the
popularity of artists such as Saville and Casey Baugh who use graphite
and charcoal in a fine art context, than they did 20 years earlier when
they were first drawn.
In another parallel with his constant experimentation as a strip
artist, Luis’ fine art work similarly reveals an artist continually playing
with different media, subjects and problems. After returning from
Mallorca Luis created art work for two distinct shows; Breaking News,
a highly political, often brutal examination of politics, world affairs
and our contemporary consumerist society, and Fame and Sex on
the Internet which examined our growing fascination with celebrity
and pornography. Both series of pictures were shown together at
the Centro Municipal de Arte Y Exposiciones (CMAE) in Aviles in
what must have been an extraordinarily visceral experience. Breaking
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audience the more contentious material has been left out. However,
for interested readers the Pompa y Circunstacia collection stands as a
powerfully comprehensive record of those shows.
A series of lengthy illnesses curtailed this particular period in Luis’
artist career and when he returned to an active artistic life in the 2010s,
he embarked on a long series of portraits of friends and cultural heroes,
again in a variety of wonderfully expressive styles.
I paint or draw a portrait because when I see a person, in reality or in

a photo, it always produces some kind of feeling that I internalize and,
afterwards, I have to bring it out and express it (these feelings are not
always positive, because when I have painted serial killers and Stalin
I tried to express the psychopathy that I saw in their eyes, and in the
expressions of the faces). This was already happening to me as a child,
in my village, when I chose what to draw, but didn’t know why. When
a client asks me to paint a portrait, I always tell him I’ ll try, but if it
seems to me that the portrait won’t turn put well, we leave it, because we
would both be wasting our time. I choose the themes for emotion and for
internal impulses and intuitions. If I repeat the same style of painting,
I lose my enthusiasm and energy so I need to make paintings that, for
me, are a challenge, a problem that I have to solve. Many of my latest
paintings are made with references to black and white photographs
(Sargent, Poe, Van Gogh and Egon Schiele, among others), because
obviously when they were alive there was no colour photography. I am a
realistic painter who is always searching for different forms of realism.
For me, painting is a priesthood; a "religion" to which I dedicate
my life, it is therapy which helps me to live and understand the world
around me.
Esther
News contrasted paintings of political figures, world leaders, terrorists

and images of war crimes with canvases of fashion models, adverts,
sportsmen, movie frames, art from antiquity and enlargements of
viruses. Sex and fame juxtaposed portraits of leading public figures,
from Steven Hawking to Fidel Castro with disarmingly beautiful oil
recreations of internet porn.
These two series of paintings and drawings were rendered in
numerous styles and when shown together created the cumulative
effect of a narrative, much like a comic strip. Some of the pieces showed
the very clear influence of Freud in his use of caked-on layers of thick,
pallid oils, while some of the more abstract compositions had echoes of
Franz Kline or Nicholas De Stael. Work from these and several other
exhibitions, along with his most recent comics, was collected together
in a small volume called Pompa y Cirunstancia. The book, like the
CMAE show itself, was a disturbing, powerful experience as the viewer
is bombarded, pummeled almost, by a disparate, incessant array of
images. The book has the same disorientating effect as flicking through
the channels on a television, or disappearing down the rabbit hole of
endless internet scrolling, as images jar against each other creating
startling, unexpected juxtapositions. Here, Luis was exploring the
diminishing power of the image; in a world saturated with images they
all somehow carry the same weight and even the most extreme imagery
has now lost its power to shock. But even allowing for the ubiquity of
once taboo imagery, some of the paintings were almost too raw to look
at and Luis has admitted that they were a hard to sell for the genteel
clientele of the art galleries. A few of the paintings from the show, King
Juan Carlos and Bob Dylan for instance, are reproduced in this book,
but to be sure this career retrospective reaches the widest possible Luis 2019
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Advertising art, Madrid 1986
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Children’s book illustrations, 1982, 1987
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The Fenoll children 1988; Venus 1988
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Father 1989; child 1989; Luis Alberto Garcia 1991
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Rosa Amarilla 1990; Proceso de Rosa 1990; Amapolas Manchegas 1990
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The Beautiful Menegilda 1989; Elisa Moreno Gonzalez 1990;

ballpoint pen sketch 1988; Maria 1991
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Rocio; Black Pencil nude 1988
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Elisa 1990
212
Berta 1992
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Still Life
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Tap; Mallorca Sea
215
Ingrid, The First Time, 1999
216
Ingrid, Torso
217
Ingrid, Hands
218
Ingrid, Modest Venus
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Ingrid smiling, 2001; Ingrid On Rothko’s Sofa, 2000; King Juan Carlos
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Web Cam; Nude Ophelia 2012
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Experimentado Con El Terror (Experienced with Terror) 2006
222
223
224
El Rostro de la Colina 2008
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Velazquez studies
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Velazquez studies in process
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Argelia serigraph. 2012
228
The Clown; Leonard
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The portrait series; Icons, Walt Whitman 2013; Edgar Allan Poe 2019; Bob Dylan; Vincent Van Gogh 2018
230
The Portrait series; Artists, Frank Auerbach; John Singer Sargent; Lucien Freud 2019; Egon Schiele
231
The Portrait Series; Artists, Moebius/Gir; Miguel Fuster; Alberto Breccia 2012; Jana Brike
232
The Portrait series; Acting and Jazz, Al Pacino; Chet Baker 2018;
Jean Louis Trintignant; Battleship Potempkin 2013
233
Portrait Series; monochrome, The Seventh Seal 2013; Jose Luis 2013;
Juan Antonio; Jaume Vaquer 2011
234
The portrait series; las niñas, Emily 2013; Chinese Fashion 2013; Miss Banbury Cross 2013; Belle 2013
235
The Portrait series; las niñas, Sandra, Margaret
236
Life studies, Tania; Nude; Peggy Sue; Lola 2016
237
Self-portraits, 1993; 2012; The Two Faces of Janus; 2017
238
A Mid-Winter’s Night Dream
239
Marilyn, A tribute to Pepe Gonzalez 2019
240
Luis Garcia
THE ART OF
Written and compiled by David Roach, with Luis Garcia Mozos

From his humble beginnings in Spain, Luis Garcia became one of the brightest
stars to illustrate comics around the world. He catapulted to worldwide fame
when he began illustrating for Warren’s Creepy, Eerie, and Vampirella before
becoming a pioneering publisher and graphic novelist on his own.
Follow his artistic growth from romance artist to romance model, from
storyteller to existential explorer, from publisher to portrait painter.
For the first time ever, Garcia’s astounding work is explored, often in the artist’s
own words, in this career-spanning work. Three of his strips have been translated
into English for the first time giving you fresh insights into one of the most
atmospheric, dynamic artists of the 20th Century.

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Luis Garcia

Nick Barrucci: CEO / Publisher

4 INTRODUCTION: Miracles and Dreams

5 CHAPTER ONE: Beginnings

18 CHAPTER TWO: Romance in London

35 CHAPTER THREE: Life at la Floresta

44 CHAPTER FOUR: Warren

81 CHAPTER FIVE: The Chronicles

127 CHAPTER SIX: The Personal and Political

159 CHAPTER SEVEN: Ethnocide

173 CHAPTER EIGHT: Graphic Novels

189 CHAPTER NINE: Rambla

200 CHAPTER TEN: Paintings and Panels

Miracles and Dreams

had a young assistant for a few months, whom I

Looking back on his earliest artistic inspirations

At that time Editorial Bruguera was the biggest comic publisher in

I was part of an inferior race. Consequently, they started slandering me.

When I started working in Selecciones Ilustradas at 15, among the many

Self-portrait, given to Pepe Gonzalez 1963

had more experience than me and, from time to time, he helped me by

Romance strip for S.I. 1961

Davy Crockett S.I. series for syndication, 1961

Momentos Antes De La Boda. S.I. romance strip 1962

Les Plus Belles Filles de la Vie Parisienne,

Les Plus Belles Filles de la Vie Parisienne,

Les Plus Belles Filles de la Vie Parisienne,

Luis with hi school friend Carmen and Pepe Gonzalez 1963

comics seemed insatiable and as publishers expanded their output the

Love Story 487

Advert, Mirabelle 1970; First Illustration for Boyfriend 1964

owner of the company; a deaf,

Luis in Hyde Park, London 1970

Illustrations for Boyfriend and Trend 1966-67

Boyfriend 323 1965

Johnny in Love Mirabelle Summer Special 1966

Mirabelle 27th July 1968

Strange Memory page1 Mirabelle 21st September 1968

Strange Memory page2 Mirabelle 21st September 1968

Simon Slade Mirabelle 19th October 1968

Bird In the Bush Mirabelle 15th February 1969

“Whatever Happened to Joe Craig?” Romeo 17th May 1969

“Snap!” Jackie 322 1970

Magazine illustration 1969; Jackie Illustration 1970

I went to Madrid because the family of my first girlfriend (Maria

The concept of a comic strip told in photographs rather than drawings

Luis and Carol 1966

After being with the group, we decided to live together in an apartment

Throughout this period each artist maintained their own individual

Drawings of Carol de Haro 1967

Cinco Por Infinito, Delta 99 2 1968

La Cobra De Rajasthan, Trinca 15 1971

Fotonovela covers 1960s

Corin Tellado Fotonovela; Ahora No Te Voy a Olividar 1968

of this incredible art, in a style that was best described as European.

Warren was that it finally introduced their work to an audience back

Carol’s memorably exotic features both epitomised and profoundly

“Welcome to the Witches Coven”, Vampirella 15

“Welcome to the Witches Coven”, Vampirella 15

“Death in the Shadows”, Vampirella 17 (color version from British Vampirella 1)

“Vampi’s Feary Tales”, Vampirella 18

“Song of a Sad Eyed Sorceress” Vampirella 18

“Eerie’s Monster Gallery”, Eerie 43 53