Miguel Quesada Cerdán (4 January 1933 - 6 November 2020; Albacete, Spain)
Miguel Quesada was born in 1933 in Albacete, the younger brother of Pedro Quesada. He became interested in drawing cartoons whilst at school and, in late 1945, left school at the age of twelve to start making money for his family, since his father was imprisoned during the Civil War. He began assisting Manuel Gago, his brother-in-law, on his strip La Pandilla de los 7. He then collaborated with his brother Pedro on a number of strips for Valenciana and Bruguera publishing houses.

For the publisher Maga he created Pacho Dinamite and Tony y Anita as well as briefly taking over the popular Pentera Negra strip.

He worked with his one-time school friend Luis Bermejo in Valencia through whom he began working for British comics.

A year later, Quesada joined the publishing house Valenciana, where he did the 'Los Exploradores del Universo' collection along with his brother Pedro. Again with his brother, he began 'Ted el Pelirrojo' at Bruguera. At the same time (and still very young!) he was a regular artist for periodicals like Jaimito, S.O.S. and Juventud Audaz, doing series like 'Kormak el Vikingo' and 'El Justiciero Negro'.

In 1951 Quesada was in charge of the first collection for Maga publishers, 'Leyenda y Fantasia'. At the same time, he produced 'El Sargento Invencible' for the same publisher. That same year, Quesada began one of his most notable comics works, 'Pacho Dinamite', strongly inspired by 'Big Ben Bolt'. He also began a new series with his brother as his scriptwriter, called 'Tony y Anita'. While doing two successful series for Maga, he also took over 'Pantera Negra' from José Ortiz for five episodes, after which he completed his military service.

Afterwards, he returned to the comic industry for several years. In later years, Miguel Quesada focused mainly on illustrating. In Germany, his horror comics appeared in the comic book Gespenster Geschichten by Bastei Verlag.

In the mid-1950s he replaced José Ortiz in the drawing of the series Pequeño Pantera Negra but had to interrupt it to do military service. This collection was a great success, reached 329 issues and was the protagonist of the magazine Pantera Negra in which Quesada participated occasionally. Quesada, in an interview, highlighted his script in the series of El Duque Negro (1958).

He was a regular contributor to Air Ace Picture Library and Commando as well as producing occasional weekly strips, including a run of stories featuring The Iron Man for Eagle and The Trigan Empire for Look and Learn. In later years Quesada concentrated on book illustration.

Miguel Quesada has done many works in the field of comics and illustration. One of the author's most outstanding works is an edition of Don Quixote in comics.

In 1999 he won the Grand Prix of the Barcelona International Comic Fair shared, posthumously, with his brother Pedro, who had died in 1988. In 2000 he received the gold medal for Merit of Fine Arts, making him the first comic book artist to win this award.

Miguel Quesada Cerdán is the father of Miguel Quesada Ramos who is following in his father's footsteps.
Source: Lambiek, Illustration Art Gallery, Wikipedia