Eider Rodriguez and Julen Ribas: “Fantastic can explain the world as well as or better than the realistic genre” – Danger Room –

danger room interview with Eider Rodriguez and Julen Ribaswriter and cartoonist holy familyA graphic novel recently published in Spanish by Editorial Graphite In 2018, he won the Euskadi Literary Award in the category of children and youth. You can read the review of this comic, which reflects the contradictions, misery and splendor of family and adolescence, online. In this interview, the authors give us some keys to the study.

How was the collaboration born and developed? Was there an older and closed material that served as a basis from the Eider or was it? work in progress four hands?

Rodriguez: It was the idea of ​​the magazine’s director, Dani Fano. Xabiroy, artist and cartoonist. He offered a collaboration and we unconsciously agreed. There was no material before, but in our next meeting, I went with the outline of the story I wanted to tell, the approach to the characters, some milestones, dialogues… They liked it and that’s how we started. . I wrote the script for the first episode and Julen brought new nuances to the characters and situations I used for the second episode based on what I wrote and told, and so on.

The study was first published in Basque in 2017 in the journal Xabiroi. Has anything changed since then? How did the opportunity to publish with Grafito Editorial come about after nearly five years?

riba: Since it was released in album format, we only changed the cover, back cover, guards and home page. Except for some texts, the rest are the same. The contact with Grafito gave us Dani, who went with Iñaki Holgado to the Angoulême Comics Festival to test the possibility of selling the rights to other countries. I think the relationship started here.

Eider, what doors has the narrative change opened for you and what limits has it brought you? Julen, did you have to change your style? To what extent do you think the relevant contributions enrich the end result?

Rodriguez: The process was great. I usually write adult literature, so I’m used to working in total solitude, battling with my text and myself, and I don’t show it or tell anyone until it’s done. Writing the Santa familia was the opposite: I shared my sketches with both Julen and Dani Fano, who served as editor, refine the text and dramatize the process. I like to work as a team, even with such a team, I don’t always have the opportunity. As for the final result, I don’t remember exactly what the contributions were, but I do remember the idea that you have to have fun doing the funny stuff around, and I think it shows. .

riba: It sounds cliché, but I think you’re looking for support in every project you start. In my case I am looking for technique that will help the tone of the story. Back then, I wanted to do something with watercolor, expressive and dynamic drawing, and I think Eider’s story gave me that opportunity.

holy family It assumes a rationale for the complex stage of adolescence. Do you think this vital period from your own fields is adequately depicted, or does the fear of their presence, as with the parents of the young heroine Nora, tend to oversimplify or caricature this phase?

Rodriguez: Adolescence is a very mysterious time, and like anything mysterious, I find writing appealing because you’re not sure what it’s hiding. I like to watch teenagers: lethargic, narcissistic, tired, disoriented, angry… They are even scary, and if something scares us, we tend to cartoonish it to neutralize it. I think the subject of adolescence is covered more in cinema than in adult literature, but yes, personally, I’m excited.

riba: If you’re talking about literature and comics according to our fields, I don’t know how to tell you. I’m not up to date I can’t say what is published in the comics or whether adolescence is adequately represented in anything published. But frankly, we tend to cartoonish it. Whether in cinema, literature, comics, comedians in their monologues… They say comedy drama + time. In that regard, we can all agree that it’s a pretty dramatic time in our lives and hopefully we can laugh at it when the bull is over.

Nora is caught between big questions, between the pool and the ocean, but the work is not about answering, it invites the reader to question herself. More inspiring when creating contradiction?

Rodriguez: Of course, creating a contradiction and asking questions in a large quarry is also an answer method, isn’t it?

riba: Personally, I like jobs that ask more questions than answers, or at least not in an obvious way. Contradictions in a character give it dimension and make it believable. We may see ourselves reflected in it, but to some extent, because if the character contradicts itself too much, we can confuse the reader.

Blue dominates the color palette of Nora’s universe, compared to the warm colors of Julen, her parents Sorkunde and Teodoro’s environment. Is it a conscious choice? From a graphical point of view, how did you increase the contrasts with which the work moves?

riba: It wasn’t a conscious choice. This work was published in installments of 6-8 pages. I planned more than the part that suited me at any given moment. I could look for variety and try to do something different from the previous episode, but nothing more. It’s true that water is a big part of the story, which is why I think that’s why Nora is so attached to the color blue.

Although there are serious generational and personal conflicts at work, Santa Familia is laced with varying degrees of humor. What is the importance of humor in your work?

Rodriguez: I’ve always been called a dark, raw, harsh writer, but when I write, I never put humor aside, sour if you like, but humor. A very interesting decompression tool… Not only in writing, but also in life. The danger of dealing with a topic like puberty and parenting is that you could accidentally get serious and preach in some way, something I definitely wanted to avoid. Humor is the perfect antidote to not doing it.

riba: I think this point stems entirely from Eider. My concern and effort was to make the characters as believable as possible. Your job as a cartoonist is to get the characters to act and speak for themselves, making the reader forget they’re looking at the doodles. The script had everything.

The content of the work plays with the title with the game. There is a conscious desire to escape the stereotypical characters in content and form that Eider often incorporates into his literary work. At this point I want you to explain how you work.

Rodriguez: One of my obsessions when it comes to writing: escaping pulp characters. Before I write about them, I need to get to know them: what kind of food they eat, what their favorite jokes are, what their hobbies are, what their style is. Details that won’t appear in the text, but they help me create them. I love this part of the writing process.

riba: I know that Eider avoided and deviated from the stereotype. I’ve heard and read it several times. I work with clichés. Maybe not consciously, but the drawing should be effective. Everything, both the characters and the world around them, should be recognizable at first glance. In general, everything was described in the script, and if not, then I matched it with Eider in the sketches. I remember the biggest disagreement in the process came up when drawing a particular vignette. I drew an overly stereotypical naked young female body, and Eider cleverly blamed me for it. I only realized after a while.

Is the invasion of fantastical elements in the last pages intended to reinforce the element of strangeness in the reader? How can realistic and fantasy genres engage in dialogue to explain the world?

Rodriguez: I believe fantasy can explain the world as much or better than the realistic genre. I like to serve myself. Sometimes I mix genres. Although we ignore it for convenience, we are surrounded by fantasy, and we are also surrounded by reality that seems to be taken from some crazy and uncontrolled sci-fi novel. The reason is not everything, fortunately.

riba: I think surprises are always welcome in stories as long as they’re right; not on the creative side, but on the receiving side. So the reader or the reader can give you these licenses.

In the words of Leonard Cohen, “There’s always a crack in everything, that’s how the light comes in”. This crack creates a purge of the main character family, whose members talk a lot but don’t understand each other. Is it a reflection of the communication difficulties in hyperconnected societies?

Rodriguez: It’s can be, yes. That intimate control we are subjected to, including ourselves. This is what they call reality, you see. Anari has a song called “and the hole was the way out”. Crisis is an idea I like as an opportunity for metamorphosis. Another of my themes is words: do we use the words we use to say what we want or to hide them? This story also serves to explore it.

riba: There have always been, have been and will be difficulties in communication. There is no more direct communication than with ourselves, and even then we experience difficulties, let alone puberty. I think these cracks will always exist. The question is whether these cracks are too wide to be crossed.

Do you plan to continue the collaboration or continue the story? In your case, Eider, which of your stories would you like to include in the graphic novel world? Julen, do you want special supplies from Eide? Set?

Rodriguez: Basically we don’t have a plan. I find my stories quite evocative, but I don’t know, maybe you don’t notice the weird thing about a woman undressing under her daughter’s gaze.

riba: I think we ruled out the possibility of continuing the story at the time, but there might be a possible collaboration. He is one of my favorite authors. He’s really talented and writes really well, and I’m not just talking about his story. Their technical scenarios were great, and that doesn’t happen all the time. I think all of his works are adaptable, both his short stories and his brash final novel. If it’s not in Spanish yet, I hope you can see it translated soon.