interview & inking demo – alberto breccia

 

.

Click on the image above to see the demo and hear the interview (which is in Spanish).

Translation of Alberto Breccia video interview

(a special thanks to Ignacio Di Meglio)

(1:11 – 1:22) It was simply the way of becoming free from being a worker on a factory. For I was a factory worker and doing comics was the way to set myself free from this very painful, very unhealthy job that made me work 15 hours a day.

(1:27 – 1:38) Because I had some skills for drawing, not much but some skills, I devoted myself to doing comics and with that I set myself free from the work at the factory.

(1:40 – 2:26) Nowadays in South America there are no markets, they don´t exist. I do not Intend. when I work, to work for Europe or the United States. There is no professional attitude in me to publish in Europe or the United States, if it gets published I´m glad, but is not what I Intend.. And I work with this freedom because I have to confess that from all the things that I´ve done very few things, very few things I like.

(4:20 – 5:01) I discovered it… Well is not that I discovered, is not that I´m a discoverer. It was born once I was shaving right here and I realize that unwittingly I did a spatula effect with the foam. So then I benefited, for I was doing Mort Cinder and I had to do the mountains, and put it to use. From that moment on I kept on using it and it was used by others. Other drawers.

(5:37 – 6:22) Is not that they are specially curious or meritorious. 

It´s simply that when you draw you have to use the tools that allow you the most effective expression and each subject needs a different graphic resolution. And every different graphic resolution needs other kind of tools that are not the traditional or classical ones. This is what comic is, this is what drawing is. Is not to limit yourself to the brush or the quill. There are so many things to draw with. You can draw with a hammer, with a chisel, with the feather of a goose, with anything… with a stick. Is a matter of expression, that´s all.

(7:13 – 8:15) The editor is a person that edits comics as he might also make chorizos. Is a person that wants to make money. Which is very legitimate. So he chooses products that make money. My product doesn´t make money. I have said before that when I draw I don´t aim to make money. I propose to do what I want to do. If that, afterwards, gives me some money I consider myself satisfied. If it doesn´t make money, and many stories of mine have never been published and might never be published, is a risk that I take. So when I start working here I take this responsability and take this situation. It doesn´t bother me, it doesn´t hurt me and I think it is right.

(9:25 – 10:01) I´ve drawn since I was a kid, since I have memory. So I didn´t become a drawer to stop being a slaughterer. What helped me to draw, to improve, was the disgusting job that I had. It was one more incentive, but I would have been a drawer anyway. And when I was a kid, a young boy, a very young boy, a teenager; I used to use vagabonds, hobos to make sketches with coal. Common coal. I had no other elements

 

(10:02 – 11:05) I think Mort Cinder is, in the background, an example of human kindness. He´s a solidary man and approaches those same feelings through different times. In Hector, my friend Hector Germán Oesterheld, always existed a vocation of justice and this is what determines his… his so cruel ending. And in all his stories there is a reflection of this, you can see that vocation of justice, this fight for freedom that is clearly apparent in the Thermopyles episode.

(11:12 – 11:37) For Ezra´s face I use mine simply  because of comfort. I´m not egotistical, is not that I like my face. If I could change it I would, but it was useful for that character and it was useful for a previous character with Oesterheld in wich I appear but much too young.

Ignacio adds a sidenote: In the interview Alberto talks about Hector Oesterheld and I know you may not know who Oesterheld was.

He was a very important part of Argentinian comic history. 

He started writing comics and eventually founded an editorial company. 

But what I wanted to clarify for you is that when Breccia talks about him in the interview, his voice goes weak. That´s because Oesterheld was a very political person and among other things he did the Evita and Che Guevara´s comic biography and was involved in a revolutionary group called Montoneros. 

From 1976 to 1983 Argentina had a military government and this govt did the infamous “Process of National Reorganization”. Basically, the state was the terrorist and Montoneros was the enemy. Oesterheld “disappeared” in 1977 after his 4 daughters and before his sons in law and his grandsons.

That´s why Breccia´s voice is so full of sadness.

 

.