One day, Alberto Madrigal had an outburst. His job, in a video game company, gave him enough joys: good salary, pleasant atmosphere, creative work. However, it had nothing to do with your dream: make comics. So, suddenly, he overturned in a paper years of unresolved dilemmas. A relief, some relief, and return to the routine. “No one should read it,” he recalls that he thought. Although, the next morning, he himself looked again at those reflections. And decided to turn them into four pages of drawings. The premise, in theory, remained strong. “It will never be seen,” he repeated. After a while, he sent the material to a few editors.
A real job (Norma) supposed, in 2013, Madrigal’s debut in the graphic novel. He told, precisely, the story of a young person trapped between his desire to be a cartoonist and the recommendation that everyone made him look for “a real job”, which served as a title for the comic. Clearly, ignored them. Upside down, today his day to day is close to the comics. And vice versa: the vignettes of Everything is going well o Pajamas, laptop, cookies, About being set in Berlin, the relationship or parenting lived them before drawing them. “I’m still self -deceiving. I’m still convinced that I will never teach it,” he says.
Years ago, however, that their intimate newspapers end up available to anyone. Like those of hundreds of authors who have converted autobiography or family guts into one of the pillars of the comic. Holocaust’s memories that Art Spiegelman’s father tells his son in Mausthe childhood and escape of the Iran of the Islamic revolution that Marjane Satrapi recalls in Persepolisor the search for personal and family responses by Alison Bechdel in Fun Home They belong to the ninth art canon. What I like most are monstersby Emil Ferris, he became an instant classic, as well as Zerocalcare’s personal experiences, a comic as the best -selling book in Italy were placed several times. In Spain, tributes drawn by Paco Roca to their parents in The house y Return to Eden They occupy the Cumnet of the cartoon, where they live The art of flying, by Antonio Altarriba and Kim, Maria and me o Something strange happened to me home, both by Miguel Gallardo, We are all fineby Ana Penyas, and recently climbed The body of Christ, of Bea Lema, National Comic Award of 2024. There is no month without new vignettes self -deflection, such as the brand new Remind us to live, where Joanna Rubin Dranger investigates the disappearance of her relatives in World War II.
Hence, the first edition of the Madrid Comic Fair, from March 27 to 30 in Matadero, resorted to such a solid foundation to raise its programming. “The comic has largely abandoned the portrait of the outside world to delve into the stories counted in the first person, introspective to the point of the experimental,” reflects Elisa McCausland, commissioner of the initiative, which placed personal narration between the axes of the program. He baptized him, specifically, “the house”, also for the analogies between structuring a home and a plot in vignettes. The expert, in reality, emphasizes that the ninth art has been drawing the yo From its origins, more or less evident. He quotes Fay King, the Peanuts by Charles Schulz or the stories of Yoshiharu Tsuge. And he explains that the trend shot in the sixties and seventy, through the comics underground. Now, perhaps razes more than ever within the graphic novel. Although it was also, on the street and in social networks, in the cinema or in the literature.
“The comics are a great place to narrate boring autobiographical episodes, because of their flexibility. Many of the stories that I have would be very heavy without the drawings to make them fun. And when combining text and image they leave more margin than literature to play over time, fantastic elements … They are an easy vehicle to turn a common topic into unique or interesting,” says Julia Wertz. Drawing his exit from alcoholism, specifically, cost him a decade, but now he sees some coherence at the past time: “It’s how recovery works in real life.” Not for nothing, he titled his work The incorrigible (Errata Naturae). Rubin Dranger was also lengthened by the project. He knew that his grandparents had fled from the pogroms, he had registered photos and interviews. I did not know, how, how far the trip would take it: “I had no idea that it would reach such magnitude. What began as a personal exploration expanded until it discovered more than I expected, both about my family and Sweden’s actions during World War II. The process was extremely challenging, at totally overwhelming times and, at the same time, the most satisfactory work I have ever done.”
“Self -fiction is popular because people seek in art a certain truth without intermediation. We want Chartwell Manor (The dome) told the sexual abuse he suffered in his adolescence in a boarding school. Cat Fernández also fio al comébeo, in The shadow of the cockroachthe horrors suffered by his father. And authors like Peter Pontiac (in Kraut), Jiro Taniguchi (My father’s almanac), María Herreros (A barber in the war) Sole Otero (Naphthalene) They transferred to the vignettes dilemmas, disputes, traumas, pains and secrets of their homes. As in any family, but counted for the public. Madrigal argues that revealing his inner world is “super -therapy.” It helps you express yourself, to understand each other, and even gave you some support to deal with a particularly critical personal moment: “A part of me, deep down, knows that you can nurture those experiences to enrich my work.” “Drawing myself and telling my story was surprisingly pleasant. I am not an exhibitionist, but I have no problems dealing with traumatic childhood memories on the pages,” says Head.
Elodie Durand knew how to normalize in a comic, through a graphic resource, the epilepsy he suffers: The parenthesis. And Wertz claims the importance of opening to even talk about the most complicated issues. But, if a creative work always entails the risk that the public does not like, does sharing painful memories give even more vertigo? “For me it was not difficult at all The incorrigible. Consider it risky only perpetual stigma. The dangerous thing is not to be open with people around you and fight alone. I do not say that everyone must announce their problems to the world as I do. But the more one opens on these issues, the easier it will become for other people to be honest and find the support they need, ”replies the author.
Although, once life floods art, the reverse path can also occur. In Hometown, Nora Krug drawn research on the possible Nazi links of her loved ones, the author recounts the obstacles and silences that her own family opposed. Anna-Lina Mattar inquiry in The snake ring About forgotten memories did not be especially comfortable for his surroundings, while Rubin Dranger points out just the opposite: he felt the support of his relatives and believes that the process even brought some of them closer. Wertz says he showed The incorrigible to anyone who appeared reflected, before the publication. With an exception: “Who fell me, I write what I want.” Madrigal acknowledges that talking about his intimacy can generate tensions with nearby people, because, when counting it, he is already changing it. “In addition, many times, feelings and emotions are simplified that are actually complex,” he emphasizes. Over the years, he has decided not to teach anyone his work in the early stages, when his sensitivity is more fragile. His last work, in fact, is the first that his environment has not read before. “There was some complicated reaction in the family, so I could know. It was expected. But some comic memories are telling the truth,” Head brings.
Guy Delisle tried as he could in Pyongyang, Graphic novel about his stay under the hermetic North Korea regime. Then, he continued traveling, and drawing it, in Birian chronicles or Jerusalem. Even his ups and downs as a parent ended Guide for a bad father. Why, In addition to the darkest wells of existence, personal comic usually illuminates much more everyday shadows: egolatry, insecurities, small home neuroses. Irony, tenderness and melancholy permean The loneliness of the cartoonist, by Adrian Tomineor the strata, of Pénélope Bagieu. And, incidentally, comic autobiographies also share a bittersweet image of the sector between precariousness and vocation. “A comic offers the absolute freedom that you can do it only with paper and pencil. But it is a trade that is difficult to live. That is why it is usually one of the first anxieties that appears in these books,” third Madrigal.
This will be discussed in the meetings organized by Elisa McCausland at the Madrid Comic Fair (organized by the City Council and the City Libraries Association). Although the curator invites even one step to take. Underline the relevance of personal comic. Review their merits and keys. But also to question it: “The time has come, given the supposed state of effervescence and maturity that has reached the author’s comic (a) in our country, to analyze with perspective and critical spirit the different self -portraits that detect symptomatology, yes, but that seem to have stagnated in easily recognizable constants and somewhat complicit that prevents moving towards new thematic and expressive territories. Well, but fatigue is detected in the formula; there is a whole world out there to explore and think. ” And draw.