The comic is doing well.
In a publishing market that is trying to maintain the good run of recent quarters, graphic novels and manga increased their sales by 22% in the first months of the year, according to the GFK consultancy.
In this context, each author seeks his niche and some have found their place in the noir genre with a marked social tone.
A hybrid from which some of the most notable works in both genres have emerged in recent years.
In the old shipyards of Gijón, a white tent on Friday welcomed those who wanted to hide from the sun and enjoy the exhibition that shows 40 originals from the comic
Presas Fáciles
and another ten, unpublished, from the next graphic novel by Miguelanxo Prado (A Coruña , 63 years).
To the right, several bookstores, behind another tent, this one with a presentation;
on the other side, a bar from which came the smell of the grill, a little further down, the Ferris wheel.
This is the Black Week, which has been set in its 35th edition in comics and in the relationship established with criminal fiction.
We spoke with its creators to understand the keys to this trend.
The graphic books of Teresa Valero ('Contrapaso. The children of the others'), Marcello Quintanilha ('Tungsten') and Díaz Canales and Guarnido ('Blacksad').
“Now it seems that everything is more of a show, fireworks.
The forms have eaten the content.
It also happens with television and cinema.
For me, using the crime novel genre allows me to fictionalize what I am really interested in telling, which is that more social and more human part of things: what people are like, why they do what they do, how society reaches certain points in which it produces nightmares ”, explained this week Teresa Valero (Madrid, 52 years old).
Her work
From her Contrapaso
(Norma) is a story set in the convulsive Spain of 1956. Starring two journalists, it is an agile search for the truth in a dark case of child theft that the author uses to successfully deal with issues that strike a chord with contemporary readers .
“The comic is more collected, it gives more space to the author.
Its condition as a hybrid between literature and the image allows you to reflect on the characters and also deal with the social issue, ”says Juan Díaz Canales (Madrid, 50 years old), who attends EL PAÍS together with Valero.
His adventures of
Blacksad
(Norma), a detective cat in the United States of the fifties, have been multi-awarded (Angoulême, Barcelona show, the Eisner and the National Comic in 2014) and have a legion of readers in various countries.
Canales believes that his world of anthropomorphic animals (painted with strength and style by Juanjo Guinardo), detectives, mobsters, murderers, jazz singers, etc.
it makes perfect sense in that place and that time, a moment that saw the birth of a “modern mythology recognizable anywhere in the West”.
A world that the father of all, Dashiell Hammett, an author with notable forays into comics such as the
Secret Agent X-9 strips,
pulp
in its purest form, action everywhere with the classic line of Alex Raymond, began to design a few years before.
(It is edited by Planeta Cómic).
In Spanish, in 1975 José Muñoz and Carlos Sampayo published
Memoirs of a private detective
, the first story of Alack Sinner (Salamandra Graphic has a volume with the complete work), a seminal character of great influence on those who came after.
Poster for the 35th edition of the Black Week in Gijón, designed by Marcello Quintanilha.
The connection between one tradition and another, between the world of serialized comics and the creation of albums conceived as such, and from there to current books, has its greatest exponent in Miguelanxo Prado.
30 years ago, in this same Black Week, another exhibition covered the misadventures of his detective Manuel Montano, a very peculiar character.
"Well, in black I had the excuse because it was more of a parody," says Prado, National Comic Award winner in 2013.
Easy prey
(Norma) his darkest work to date, is a policeman with a strong tone of denunciation around some elderly people who decide to take justice into their own hands after being ruined by the preferential ones.
The investigation is led by inspector Tabares, who adds the most procedural part to the narrative.
“When I thought about this story, I was very clear that I needed a type of character that would allow me to debate the ideas that I wanted to transfer, but at the same time I wanted to remove as much as possible all the testosterone load that there might be.
I didn't want a vigilante cop,” she explains.
Marcello Quintanilha, another of the authors who has spent these days in Gijón, knows a lot about humanity in the characters.
in
tungsten
(The dome, prize at Angoulême 2016), the Brazilian author (51 years old) recounts an event in real time, very fast, violent and accurate, around some illegal fishermen.
It is played by Richy, a policeman who is not easy to define.
“I do everything I can to work the characters with all their weaknesses and all their qualities.
Richy is a character who knows what justice is.
It's interesting that he's been described as a corrupt cop, but there really isn't a single act of corruption that he's practiced in his entire history.
He is someone who acts in a brutal way, but the reality in which Brazil is immersed leads many police officers to act in a much more forceful way”, he defends.
Although the drawing is in black and white, there is much of what Quintanilha calls “color”,
a very characteristic element of the Brazilian noir novel and that helps to detail in a short space a harsh social reality.
In addition, Quintanilha has been the creator of the poster for this edition of the festival, a colorful and more classic design, which invades the streets of Gijón these days.
"It's been very exciting," he says in the tone that everyone talks about at this noir party.
A model and an aspiration
France continues to be the mirror in which to look at oneself, a recurring theme in conversations with cartoonists and screenwriters.
Francophones are a powerful market that everyone uses, to the point that they publish many times before in French than in Spanish.
“The difference with France is the number of readers, and the number of readers is higher because very strong policies have been made by the government in support of French culture, which are maintained no matter who is there.
It is very solid.
There is a kind of pact that is not verbalized but that is noticeable every time you go there for a festival and that is that people are very proud of the cultural sector”, says Valero.
It does not seem easy to reach something like this in Spain, but that does not mean that the graphic novel stops growing.
In the Black Week, three decades ago, they took the first steps to eliminate what Prado calls "the cursed line drawn on the ground" and begin to consider the comic as the literary work that it is.
Black stories, social criticism and detectives of all kinds and conditions have found a new way of expression.
A whole criminal association.
Four timeless jewels
Matamoscas
, Dashiell Hammett (screenplay) and Hans Hillmann (Illustrations).
In 2018, Red Fox Books recovered this wonder: a story by the father of
hard boiled
written in 1929 for
Black Mask
with the images of the German illustrator, a tribute to the genre in which he was involved for seven years.
Story and images are as distinct as they are powerful.
The Hunter,
Richard Stark (scripts) and Darwyn Cooke (illustrations).
Donald E. Westlake is the man behind Stark, one of multiple pseudonyms for this great and funny writer.
This story is the best way to enter the worlds of Parker, a vengeful criminal, a change of perspective that is accompanied by the elegance of Cooke's drawings.
It is published by Astiberri, who also has volumes with all of Parker's adventures for whoever wants to.
Sin City
, Frank Miller.
It is a bit hard to talk about crime novels, the criminal underworld and its relationship with comics and not give in to this monumental, violent, excessive and germinal work.
Not all stories are on the same level, but the series that begins in 1994 with
The Hard Goodbye
is essential.
The Norma publishing house has published all of them separately and in compilation volumes.
And a lot of extra material about the world of Sin City.
5 is the perfect number
.
Igort.
To say that a hit-man story is pretty might be going too far, but this graphic novel, Book of the Year at the 2003 Frankfurt Book Fair, has it all.
The themes (revenge, friendship, loyalty), the setting (wonderful seventies Naples) and the pacing of a well-written and better-drawn story.
It is edited by Salamandra Graphic.
50% off
Exclusive content for subscribers
read without limits
subscribe
I'm already a subscriber