Continued from page 8
ter holding several conversations with Paco Jimenez.
Unfortunately, my stint as an assistant editor on the
Batman and Superman titles lasted only a couple of
months. Personal disagreements with the administrative staff and the low pay forced me to leave the
position.
My credit as a translator and editor did not appear
in the two full-size specials that reprinted the “Death
in the Family” storyline. The editor argued, “He no
longer works for the company.”
However, from Novaro to Vid, I managed to hide signatures on my work. Several of the drawings enlarged
in Vid´s publications have hidden initials that escaped
the scrutiny of the publisher. The initials to my name
“G M G” can be seen between the cross-hatch
details of the art. Similarly, on page 13 of the first
volume of Vid´s “Death in the Family”, there, in the
first panel of an illustration of “The Gotham Gazette”
Continued from page 9
ing and we sleep peacefully when our home is in
flames!
D999. You are absolutely correct Vasilis! You cannot
ignore the interweaving of politics and comics. Especially when a funny book is being exported out of its
country of origin to be defined, reworked, and translated by another nations citizens. There has to be a
political element to comics because quite simply they
are time capsules of culture which in turn represents
a specific nation or peoples at any given time.
But I digress, not wanting to devote to many precious words to foreign policy/politics discussion
because I would rather discuss the “god is dead guy”
and comics! LOL
So my friend, I am definitely no philosopher though
what person in their youth didn’t find an attraction to some of Nietzsche’s ideas? I have heard
about the theory that Superman and early superheroes in general were based on the concept of
“Übermensch”(superman theory). Never have I
studied it in great depth, and your explanation seems
perfectly reasonable. But, like you said “contradictory”, and its my understanding that Nietzsche’s con-
Page 10
you may find my initials as Drop caps of the texts that
accompany the news article, right next to Jim Aparo´s
depiction of The Joker.
Emulating and, in many aspects, surpassing the
achievements of Novaro, Vid grew by leaps and
bounds in the following years and began distributing
in Spain just like their predecessor had done decades before. Their decision to eventually respect the
American format and size of the text was commendable. It was only in late 2012 that poor management
forced them to stop publication and sell the rights to
Editorial Televisa.
In general, leaving aside the obvious translation and
format deficiencies, Spanish speakers owe a lot to all
those publishers that gave a home in Latin America
to the mythological figures of the late twentieth and
early twenty-first centuries.
cept could be warped and shaped by many different
movements and ideologies for their own purposes.
How ironic that for some citizens of Greece at least,
what I would say is Americas greatest pop culture
invention (comic books), could be exported out into
the world and those very superheroes would be
used philosophically, symbolically, and ideologically
against us in some fashion.
Though I might not agree at times with the antiAmerican sentiment some of your fellow Greek
compatriots might feel towards America I am also
not naïve enough to say that I don’t understand the
impetus of it. The junta had to have been terrible, and
nothing compares to a lack of freedom and liberty to
sour ones attitude towards anything.
So you were a rebel, one of a few amongst your
peers that chose to go against the grain, who understood, and loved the Marvel vision. You then moved
on to underground adult-type comics and creating.
Lets fast forward a bit to the beginning of your journey within the comic industry of Greece. How did you
start? Were you an illustrator as well or only a writer?
What was your first comic creation?
Oh, and also I have to address this. Disney books
could share a shelf with porn mags?