EXTRACTS: Warren magazines - The Spanish Artists (Illustrators Special Edition) © 2016 The Book Palace (144 PAGES in Full edition)

88 Luis García Mozos DavidRoachandDiegoCordobacombine their efforts in telling the remarkable life-story of a Spanish artist who brought to the fore a unprecedented realism into comics Luis García Mozos was born in the small village of Puertollano in 1946. He began drawing at an early age and learned by copying the comics of Emilio Freixas. In 1957 his family relocated to Barcelona, where Luis would also take art lessons in the evenings after school. At the age of 14 and through the insistence of a schoolfriend, he decided to show his drawings at Bruguera , a publishing house specialising in comics for children. The editor at the time was José Bielsa, a cartoonist who agreed to see the youngster out of visiting hours mainly because he was still a child. However Bielsa told Luis that comics were done in ink and not in charcoal and pencils. Giving Luis a pen and an ink pot to take home, Bielsa asked him to copy some samples of a Capitán Trueno comic (then Spain’s most popular comic series) and bring them back to him when he was done. When Luis finally finished his new “inked” samples, there was another editor in Bielsa’s place, cartoonist Francisco Ortega, but nonetheless he liked Luis’ work enough to ask him to join them. Luis was persistent and highly driven and, aside from his work for Bruguera , prepared some romance samples to show at Selecciones Ilustradas (or S.I.), an art agency that also served as studio for various artists around town. The samples he brought along were polished enough for the director of the agency, Josep Toutain, to invite him over to work for them. Apparently Toutain took one look at Luis’ drawings and marched into the main studio saying, “Guys, we have a new Pepe González!” The big attraction for working at an agency as S.I. was not only its roster of both young and brilliant artists but also the opportunity to earn serious money with work sold to foreign clients across Europe, particularly in Britain. As they were paid in foreign currency and the local Peseta was so low, the exchange rate enabled them to buy the latest fashions or be the first to obtain the newest rock and roll records. Working in a studio alongside other artists, many already professionals, also gave them the opportunity to learn the tricks of the trade in a short time and challenge themselves artistically. So the appeal for a young artist like Luis was obvious. Nevertheless Luis had mixed feelings about working there: “When I went to S.I. at the age of 15, I was impressed by the quality of the artists, but then I was disappointed when I saw the strips they were copying from—though soon I was copying from the same artists myself! The artists there were variously friendly, proud, jealous, stupid, funny and even psychotic (as in the case of Antonio Romero, a seemingly quiet, friendly, peaceful artist who later killed his own father with an axe). At Bruguera , when I was only 14, I discovered Alex Raymond’s Rip Kirby , which really impressed me and then at S.I. a year later the artists who influenced me the most