Comic Barcelona warms up its engines for the return of international authors

Comic Barcelona will be held this weekend at Fira Montjuïc in an edition marked by the return of international authors, after their forced absence due to the pandemic. Some of the foreign authors who will visit the Catalan capital from Friday to Sunday will be James Tynion IV, Anne Simon, Aude Picault, Zerocalcare, Barbara Stok, Rick Remender and Rosemary Valero-O'Connell, mixing classics and emerging cartoonists, and representing different styles and trends within a medium in continuous evolution.

The national event of comic culture par excellence will accompany the big names of the international scene with an extensive exhibition program, with exhibitions dedicated to very famous figures such as the duo formed by Zipi y Zape, who turn 75, and historical cartoonists such as Daniel Torres, with an extensive review of his work made up of about 100 originals, many of which are unpublished, and Carlos Pacheco, to whom his colleagues will pay tribute after his death from ALS, selling the originals and prints they have dedicated to him to raise funds for research into this disease. There will also be surprises with the discovery of the facet as a cartoonist of filmmaker Álex de la Iglesia.

"It is the second edition after the pandemic: international authors are returning and we also wanted to have a great selection of exhibitions after these years in which we have not been able to," said the director of Comic Barcelona and general director of Ficomic, Meritxell Puig, at the presentation this Monday of the program for the 41st edition. Although for some years now the salon has preferred to promote alliances with museums to produce exhibitions, taking into account their high cost and the few days they can be exhibited at Fira Montjuïc, the organizers wanted to make an exception this year, after the virtual editions of 2020 and 2021, and the first in-person one in 2022.

An example of this impact that Comic Barcelona seeks in the programs of cultural institutions is also the presentation this Monday of the essay in graphic novel form, El Museo (Norma Editorial), which traces an overview of Art History based on the collections of the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya (MNAC). The screenwriter and writer Jorge Carrión and the cartoonist Sagar Forniés once again joined forces after Gótico (Norma Editorial), their previous graphic essay in which they analyzed the MNAC's collection of Gothic art as a possible great-great-grandfather of comics. They are also the authors of Barcelona. Los vagabundos de la chatarra (Norma Editorial).

Comic Barcelona will occupy pavilions 2 and 5 and the Plaza Univers of Fira Montjuïc, and, finally, will not recover pavilion 1, as announced by the organizers a few months ago. Last year, the event gathered more than 110,000 attendees and 195 exhibitors. The budget for this year's event in 2023 will be between 800,000 and 850,000 euros, still below what it was before the pandemic. Asked about the public support the event receives, Puig pointed out that, together with Manga Barcelona, the other event organized by Ficomic, aid does not reach 5% of the budget.

One of the new spaces of the 41st edition of Comic Barcelona will be the Comic Stage, a stage in pavilion 2 that will host talks, live podcast recordings, and concerts with music illustration included. Recent novelties will be consolidated, such as the Alter Comic Barcelona area, with exhibitors from small, independent, alternative, and newly created publishers; and the Comic Vision and Comic Fantasy sections, dedicated to the relationships that comics have woven with the audiovisual industry and role-playing, respectively.

In Comic Vision, one of the highlights will be the exclusive broadcast of episode 1,000 of the series El detectiu Conan, dubbed into Catalan, in collaboration with the X3 channel. Unicorn Wars by Alberto Vázquez, the first comic book artist from Astiberri publishing house, will also be recovered. Winner of the Goya for Best Children's Film, it was previewed in last year's edition. The participation of Álex de la Iglesia will be completed with the world premiere at Comic Barcelona of the second season of 30 monedas (HBO).