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Added by animacam 22 May, 2017

MIGUELANXO CARVALHO

Graphic Designer

Donostia · Basque Country, 1966

Donostia, 1966. Member of the collective Pestinho, with which he signs all his works as author of Comic. He was founding partner of the extinct Fanzine Frente Comixario and actively collaborated in the first editions of the Xornadas de Banda Deseñada de Ourense. He obtained the Ourense Banda Deseneñada Award for the series A Familia Perpetua, published in the 90’s of the 20th century, in the newspaper La Region. Later it was integrated in the collective BD Banda. Author, along with Heitor Real and Xico Paradelo of the supplement Arre, for the humorous newspaper Xo. With this same team he also collaborated for the humor magazine Retranca. He works since the 90s as a graphic designer, currently in his own studio, Blau.

“We are what we remember and what people remember of us”

(Miguelanxo Prado in his work Ardalén)

I remember the day in May in which, surrounded by three friends, I met Miguelanxo at the Comic Room in Barcelona, in the end of 80’s. As any true lover of comic, I had already read his two first and amazing works: Fragments of the Encyclopedia of Dolphins and Stratos. After so many years, I think they are still two of the works I enjoyed the most and, so, I often read them back with much joy, just like old friends. In my soul they get older very well.

I remember that, by then, the admiration I felt for the author of these jewels was something close to envy. I still wanted to be a comic drawer and Prado was the perfect model, the inspiration. He wasn’t only young, but he had the Holy Grail of a great talent as an illustrator and an overwhelming creative wealth. In addition, he had good talent as a narrator as well, narrator of his own worlds. His universe was, and it is, completely recognizable and personal, in spite of the numerous aesthetic and thematic changes: slow, reflexive, even poetic for some moments. Besides, in an intangible manner, his work transmits a certain Galician sensitivity. Fragments of the Encyclopedia of Dolphins, a science fiction work, made me think that Miguelanxo had got me to feel nostalgia of a made up world.

Coming back to Barcelona, to that sunny day in May in which four comic-lovers teenagers had the opportunity to meet Prado in person, I remember we expected someone distant, affected. It wasn’t, nor even paternalistic – something that would be excusable between a fans group and the author-. He just talked with kindness and proximity, without stridencies and he ran through in a natural way, as any generational and vital obstacle didn’t even exist. He made you feel comfortable in an honest way. I felt his character, his kindness, and he was very coherent with his aesthetic and narrative universe. In his words, in his tone, even in the rhythm he spoke and gesticulated there was a coherence with his works. Of course, he was, and still is, his works (from Tangents to Streak of Chalk, from Ardalén to Easy Prey): that authenticity, that monolithic strength which I’ve only experienced with the greatest authors.

With time, in the few opportunities I had the chance to meet and talk with Miguelanxo, his kindness and generosity contributed to magnify his figure, gigantic to my eyes. He was always able to collaborate in everything we asked for, whatever the issue it was, from the  Xornadas de BD de Ourense to the magazine Frente Comixario, even when we were nobody into the national comics world. But his charm extended to many other groups and events, and it has kept alive along the years.

If we are what people remember of us, Miguelanxo is great as an author and gigantic as a person because the one who is writing these words, and so many others, remember him this way.

Ourense, October,2016.

Miguelanxo Carvalho