When Francisco Ibáñez died, on July 15, he left the pages of Mortadelo and Filemón's last comic strip, 'Paris 2024', on the table in his study. A total of 20 pages in pencil and 19 of dialogues typed by the author himself. On April 4, the Bruguera imprint of the Penguin Random House group will publish, in Spanish and Catalan, this unfinished adventure just as its author left it, without any modifications. Coinciding with this editorial event, Nuria Ibáñez, daughter of the cartoonist, receives 'La Vanguardia' in the studio in the Sant Martí district of Barcelona where her father worked for 60 years and where she created, practically, all of her work. . She is a biologist by profession, her working life takes place in a laboratory ("I'm Professor Bacterio," she jokes) but she has assumed the responsibility of safeguarding the (immense) legacy of her father.
We suppose it is difficult to talk about this album, many emotions are condensed...
It's very emotional, yes. It is a different book. For me it is a treasure. These comics have always been published inked, in color and completely finished, many people may not imagine that behind that there is a pencil, that everything begins with a sketch. The day I saw these last pages on my father's drawing table I thought this was how they had to be published. You had to see the work in its raw form, just as its creator left it.
Was it clear to you that no one else could finish this album?
Yes, that is very clear to me. What my father did does not have to be modified. It has immense value in itself and any alteration damages the work.
It is impressive to see the level of finishing of the drawing in 'Paris 2024'. In some way this album vindicates the work of his father, not always visible enough...
Completely. Here we see all the details that characterize his work: the main story, the secondary one... it has the same richness as the finished drawing. We see how the pencil drawing progresses to a perfect finish, because he was a perfectionist, he never delivered anything that was not absolutely finished and with all the details. He did not allow there to be any type of error in his work.
And on a personal level, what was Ibáñez like in the short distance, as a father?
At the short distance it was just as fun. He always made us laugh, he was the soul of the family and the parties. He was the one who always made the jokes. He had a way of being that, even if you were having a bad day, he made you laugh with that way of speaking...
Did he speak like his characters? Did it say 'hake' and 'barnacle'?
Yes, he spoke in a way that you identified with the comics. It was him. And he was an endearing person to those closest to him. He also had a bad temper, of course, and then you had better keep quiet, but the next day he had already forgotten everything. He had a very great personality and character that filled everything, and now this hole is difficult to fill. His absence is very noticeable.
At some point he must have wondered why his father drew so many hours...
Yes. We even told him to stop, but he replied: “And if I don't do that, what do I do?” What happened is that his work and his hobby coincided. He swore that he would take August vacation and, last week, he was already thinking about new comics, he needed to keep his head busy. He gave it life. Like an actor who needs to be on stage.
I needed the drawing...
If for some reason he had not been able to draw, I think he would not have lived all the years he did. In fact, he was sick for a while, two or three years ago, and I took him some sheets of paper to the hospital so he could draw but he was too weak and considered that it didn't have enough quality. He was fighting until he recovered, he fought to be able to draw again with the line and quality that he was looking for. Despite going through setbacks, what gave him life was continuing to draw. At that moment it was clear to me that, if he had not been able to draw again with the quality he wanted, he would have died alive.
Here in the studio there are many drawings by his colleagues, friends from the historic Bruguera publishing house. We imagine that you knew many of these cartoonists.
Yes, they had meetings at home and they were hilarious. They made a lot of jokes between them. I was little and I was going to sleep but they continued playing card games until late hours surrounded by a cloud of smoke, because everyone always had cigarettes in their mouths and the ashtrays ended up full... They were a group of professionals and at the same time very friendly and respectful of each other's work.
Who was in this group of friends of Ibáñez?
Raf, Gin, Nadal, Tran... also Jan, although they saw each other less often. He was a good friend of Víctor Mora and also of Macabich y Blanco, from 'TBO.' And I remember a lot, as a child, seeing Escobar, the creator of Zipi and Zape, although he was from a previous generation.
Now it's time to manage Ibáñez's legacy. His father's work is immense. How do you approach the management of such enormous cultural heritage? Should a foundation be made? A museum? Have public institutions already shown any interest?
It's still very early. We are talking about all that and there are several projects. Our intention is that we can all share Ibáñez's legacy. We don't want to keep it stored in a closet. We want to show it. The final formula has not yet been decided but all these ideas are on the table.
Many projects will come...
We will study them and many will continue as long as the original idea is respected and not distorted. Let it be a project faithful to Ibáñez.
Is the intention to make an Ibáñez museum?
I don't know if it will be a permanent museum or what form it will take. There are many ways to accommodate this initiative and we want to structure it well before making it public. We have time to find the best formula. Many things are wanted to be done from many different areas, but everything cannot be done at the same time. We will stagger and prioritize it. And that does not end in our country, we also need to take into account the international dimension, the success that, above all, Mortadelo and Filemón have in countries like Germany, as important as here, and following his death this interest emerges again.
Do you have a favorite album?
The first ones, like 'The changing machine', 'Valor and... the bull!', and of course 'The atomic sulphate', which I don't know how many times we had read it. For me, this album is like a work of art and could be a starting point both to discover the work that came after and the one that came before. But also Rompetechos, which was his favorite, or 13, Rue del Percebe, with characters and situations that are still tremendously current.
Her father often said that the comics his daughters liked were those of Zipi and Zape, not those of Mortadelo. Is it true or is it just another Ibáñez joke?
I have to confess that it was true... (laughs) But I also have to say that that time did not last very long. My sister and I were very young, maybe we were three or four years old at the time, and we felt very identified with those two brothers.
Will we ever discover something about Ibáñez that he had not planned to publish?
At the moment the unpublished one is this 'Paris 2024'. If later, in a closet, a surprise appears, we will think about it. In any case, we won't do anything he wouldn't want to do. This is the slogan. I would not like to contradict his line of work, which was always very clear.
Will Mortadelo continue in other hands?
The continuity will be to republish old albums. We have an extremely large fund of material to practically have new work simply by remembering titles that have not been published for a long time. There is an incredible fund, which has great value and is fully valid. Our line is this. If, I don't know when, all this immense work is exhausted, then it could be proposed; but it is by no means the goal right now. The objective, now, is to make public again works that many readers go looking for in bookstores and cannot find because they have not been published for years. There is too much work to do with everything we have without having to think about releasing another album. We have an immense fund, although perhaps it has to be published in a different way. And for many readers, that will be new work.
Are there film projects, series, cartoons?
There is a documentary project but not a series at the moment. I imagine it will come. Every day we receive new ideas and projects, animation will surely be one of them.
That would be a way to keep the character alive. With Tintin, his creator said that there would be no new albums after his death but, instead, reissues of his work, films are multiplying...
It is a model of continuity that seems perfect to me. You keep the quality of the character intact and, around it, you complement the original story, a story that you have republished in a different format and now interests both new readers and collectors. The Tintin model is a very good example of the idea of continuity that we have.
There is a series of originals from the former Bruguera publishing house that Prensa Ibérica has retained in a warehouse in Berguedà. The heirs of Escobar, Vázquez, Raf, Conti or Cifré have demanded the return. Will the Ibáñez family join this petition?
Yes, our idea would be to be able to recover these originals, whatever there are, because we don't even know how many there are. My father perhaps left that in the background because he was very pragmatic and not at all nostalgic, he thought about the present and the future, he did not want to waste time with things from the past. Perhaps it is his sin, not worrying enough about the past, but instead, he undertook a firm fight for copyright that, starting in 1987, marks a before and after and that allowed, from then on, the entire profession to have the law on your side.
