Interviews with Comics Artists
I absolutely adore interviewing comics artists about their work. It has been a privilege to meet and talk to the people below.
Joana Estrela is an illustrator and comics artist, born in 1990 in Penafiel (Portugal), which, in her words, is "not a very big city, but at least with a statue of a dragon-snake on the main avenue".
Joana studied Communication Design at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Porto, where she used to live and work nearby. Her first book was published in 2014 by Plana, Propaganda. In 2016, with Planeta Tangerina she published Mana, a picture book that has won two awards: first prize at the Serpa International Award for Picture Books and Best Illustration of a Picturebook (Portuguese Author) at Amadora BD.
She currently lives in Brussels, where she has completed a Master's degree in Graphic Storytelling at the LUCA School of Arts, which is where we conducted the interview you find here. The interview was published in Spanish in the journal Cuadernos de cómic of the University of Alcalá de Henares, in issue 21.
Joana Estrela
Gabri Molist
Gabri Molist was born in Barcelona in 1993. He is a comics artist and illustrator. After his studies on Arts and Design at Escola Massana in Barcelona, he completed a Master in Fine Arts at LUCA School of Arts Gent. Gabri lives in Brussels now, where he teaches comics to the students of LUCA School of Arts and is part of a graphic atelier called VROOM. His academic journey continues with a PhD in Fine Arts, with a project entitled "Write Me A Panel". This research project counts with Dr. Isolde Vanhee and Thierry Van Hasselt as promotors.
As a child, he used to draw in class so as not to get bored, as a kind of "energy therapy". He read Mortadelo y Filemón as a child, to later fall in love with Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes and Mike Mignola's Hellboy.
Gabri loves drawing strange and curious people whom he puts in absurd and uncomfortable situations while claiming the frontiers of what the medium of comics makes possible. Most of his stories came out in fanzines or self-published comics (Gazpacho, Way Opposite, I Laugh To See Myself So Beautiful In This Mirror). He adapted a short story by Sergio Ramirez, Flores Oscuras, into a comic book (with other Belgian authors) for the Cervantes Institute in Brussels. He is not afraid to declaim his work; he did so at MACBA during the event Còmic en Revolta, curated by Francesc Ruiz.
Our talk in Spanish was published in issue 16 of the journal Cuadernos de cómic.
Cuco16_EntrevistaconGabriMolist.pdfLorena Alvarez Gómez aka Artichoke Kid was born in Bogotá (Colombia) in 1983. She studied Graphic Design at the National University of Colombia, and since then, for more than 15 years, she has illustrated children's books, and has worked for advertising and fashion magazines. Her first comic was published with Nobrow Press, "a very nice and happy coincidence," because Alvarez was then living in Arkansas (US). In a local library, she stumbled upon Nobrow's comics by chance. She liked the collection very much, because of the diversity of authors. By that time she was writing her own stories and decided to send them her project. Nobrow not only accepted, but they also proposed to extend Alvarez's project to three books. That's where it all began.
In 2018 she was nominated for an Eisner Award for her first comic, Night Lights. For the artist, it was a surprise because these books, only her first comic books, were still exercises to learn how to narrate, to find ways to tell stories and use the resources of the comics medium.
Lorena's success brought more readers to her work and also attracted more attention to comics in Colombia. Our interview on your right below the image, was published in Spanish in the journal Cuadernos de cómic of the University of Alcalá de Henares, in issue 18.
Cuco18_EntrevistaconLorenaAlvarezGómez.pdfInterview with Valentine Gallardo & Mathilde Van Gheluwe, with Benoît Crucifix
As part of the Comics Picturing Girlhood international symposium, Benoît Crucifix and I interviewed two cartoonists trained in Ghent and based in Belgium, Mathilde Van Gheluwe and Valentine Gallardo about their book Pendant que le loup n’y est pas, originally published by Atrabile in 2016.
Their graphic novel recounts the experience of growing up in the 1990s amidst horrific cases of child abuse, creating a media frenzy and a range of adult concerns. The book intersperses viewpoints from two pre-teen girls in Brussels, over a couple of years, creating snapshots of this period through different stories seen and drawn from a child’s perspective.
Conversation with Matteo Farinella on Comics & Science
Matteo Farinella received a PhD in neuroscience from University College London in 2013. Since then he has been combining his scientific expertise with a life-long passion for drawing, producing educational comics, illustrations and animations. He is the author of Neurocomic (Nobrow 2013) published with the support of the Wellcome Trust, The Senses (Nobrow 2017) and the Women of Science Tarot (2020), in collaboration with Massive Science. His children's books Cervellopoli (2017) and Ramon Non Ha Sonno (2021) are published in Italy by Editoriale Scienza. He has worked with scientific institutions all over the world to make science more clear and accessible. From 2016 to 2019 Matteo was a Presidential Scholar in Society and Neuroscience at Columbia University, where he studied the role of visual narratives in science communication (find out more on cartoonscience.org). He is often invited to write and talk about about science communication and visual literacy. He occasionally volunteer as art director for the Science for the People magazine. In 2019 he joined the Zuckerman Institute as scientific multimedia producer.