Five days a week, JL Martín's cartoon appears on the Opinion pages of La Vanguardia between the columns of different columnists. While some break down his ideas by stringing together one sentence after another, Martín explains himself through drawing and with few words, if he uses them at all. In graphic humor, less is more. And in exchange for this synthesis exercise, the ideas are transmitted with tremendous force and with such effectiveness that we can remember a good graphic joke with enormous vividness years after having read them. A humorous vignette makes us laugh but also think, reflect or see current events in a different way. Through his vignettes, the comedian's gaze transforms ours.
José Luis Martín Zabala – who signs his cartoons JL Martín – is the creator of the series Quico, el progre and one of the founders of the magazine El Jueves, of which he has just told some of its secrets in a book full of humor and of wit titled Reminiscences of a satirical magazine. As a cartoonist he collaborated in La Vanguardia between 1977 and 1978 with a cartoon published under the heading I smile, therefore I exist, which was later taken up by Oli, alias Enrique Oliván.
Four years ago, on October 10, 2019, the firm JL Martín returned to the pages of Opinion, with a joke that well defines the type of humor that the author likes. A couple is watching a lively television talk show and she asks: “With how smart they are, wouldn't a government of talk show talkers be better?” There was a month left until the general elections, the second of that year. The new section was called Apuntes del Natural and on December 22 it reached the respectable number of 1,000 jokes published. A thousand looks at current events through humor. A thousand opinion columns drawn.
“They offered me to participate in the Opinion pages of the newspaper – Martín remembers –, not in the Politics pages, where Toni Batllori was publishing at the time. I really liked this because I thought it would allow me to deal with many more topics, not just politics. I said that I would like to make drawings of social issues, but I have the feeling that I have not fulfilled that idea because, in the end, you end up seeing that current political events drag you down.”
JL Martín is a confessed admirer of the humor of Sempé or the recently deceased Sam Gross, a regular in The New Yorker. “I still think that I should make less drawings about current politics and a little more about what happens on the street, that traditional humor, of anonymous people sitting in a park,” he explains. “I envy the Anglo-Saxons because they have the ability to make humor out of everything. Politics? Of course, but also about Christmas, or when you go to the supermarket or people talking on the street shouting into their cell phones. I have prepared a series of jokes, with the title of Modern Life, that portray precisely all of this and that I am very excited to publish. It is the humor that I like and I think it fits well in the Opinion pages of the newspaper because, precisely, the opinion columns talk about everything, not just politics,” he adds.
He regrets to admit that this is the first time that he feels that a collaboration of his has an “expiration date.” “There will be a time when this will end; I am aware that if one day my hand shakes I will no longer be able to continue drawing, and that is a little distressing. Of course it can also happen to me like the great American cartoonists, or like Francisco Ibáñez, who were drawing until the end.” In return, the current situation also has something very positive: “It is a job that I do with great enthusiasm because it is the first time that I can truly enjoy drawing. There are jokes that I have drawn several times, because I have been able to leave them alone, I have reviewed them again and I have modified them until they look better. This is something I have never been able to do because for years I had to get the job done quickly and turn it in right away. For the first time I have time.”
Technology also helps you enjoy your work more. For decades he had remained faithful to Guillott nibs and Winsor Newton ink, following the recommendation of his friend and artist Kim. But when he started his Nature Notes he replaced paper and ink with a tablet – an iPad Pro – and a stylus. “It's wonderful, it gives me many more possibilities, it allows me to create colors that were impossible to do before, enlarge the image to better see all the details, retouch or modify it. It is very comfortable,” explains Martín as he opens the tablet to show the joke that will be published tomorrow in La Vanguardia and that already looks perfectly finished.
