A bloody journey. If there is something different about comic books, it is the possibility of telling stories through a different prism, managing to convey them with strokes as well as words. The need to find an original approach is also an indicator of the success of a study. In this situation, The sky inside your head A modern epic with echoes of tragedy and magical realism, based on an unfortunate truth that seems hidden in numbers and statistics: the reality of thousands of African immigrants seeking a better life. They set out on a long journey towards the shores of Europe. Pynchon & Co. in Alicante. The bookstore will present this comic book with its authors on January 18 at 19:00.
Antonio Altarriba (National Comic Book Award the art of flying) agrees with the cartoonist Sergio Garcia (National Illustration Award) and colorist Lola Moral Telling the life of child soldier Nivek, who lives in hell near the coltan mines. Miraculously saved from a landslide, this young Congolese man must embark on a terrifying, terrifying, one-way journey through the beautiful, dangerous and magical lands of Africa. On a journey where distances are measured not in kilometers but in horror and human lives.
In this way, we gain a new perspective on the immigration issue and get closer to people who experience it first-hand in their own countries. “It is an issue that we have become accustomed to as a society. There is rarely a day when we do not receive word that the boats have arrived. It has become a kind of repetition that is almost indifferent to us. All they tell us on the news is the number of migrants arriving or the number of children and women on board. But we don’t know anything else about them: whether they were accepted into their country or sent back, what they went through to reach our shores, why they embarked on such a dangerous journey…”, explains Altarriba.
To accurately capture emerging issues The sky inside your headAn extensive search for information was required by its creator: “Not all of the things that happen to Nivek are invented events,” says Altarriba, “they are things that actually happen in the Congo. Encounters with bandits who rob them, mistreat them, or rape them are part of the difficulties they face.” Passing to reach Europe”. This required a process of prior documentation: “Contacting an NGO like Jambo Congo and reading the bibliographical accounts of the heroes of these journeys not only gave me a face to these people, but also allowed me to tell a tragic story.” “They do not come, they escape from the conditions of the countries they come to, they are subjected to constant pressure.”
this trip brings you closer to a familiar subject. Especially the exile his father was forced to undertake after the Civil War in 1939. “My father had to leave Spain, not really knowing where he was going, what was going to happen to him. He always talked about that moment, and I grew up with that refrain of my father, so I intertwined both topics and felt I had to talk about it,” says Altarriba.
When you delve into the depths of the comic, you come across a work that is very bloody but also told based on magical realism, creating constant contradictions.. The story is shown as if it were an African fairy tale and is presented in a way very close to popular literature, with an animist approach in which living things, whether trees or animals, play the leading role with their own essence. “I wanted to recreate the story a little bit as if it were a popular fairy tale, where sometimes magic meets the harshest reality. One of the keys was choosing Sergio García’s artwork and the colors of Lola Moral to complement this message,” says the author.
García’s stylized drawing and Moral’s color gave shape to an environment of extraordinary beauty. The African landscape, with its diversity and color, creates a light space for a dark story. “At first you see very beautiful images with very beautiful colors that act as poisonous sugar. The appearance is very beautiful, but the content is extremely bitter,” Altarriba says. “There are moments of friendship, magic, and love, but they are wrapped in constant pain.”
Presentation in Alicante
presentation The sky in my head, this too will happen Pynchon & Co. in Alicante. bookstore On Thursday, January 18 at 19.00.It will be directed by Paco Linares from Alicante, who assures that it is “a unique opportunity to analyze this wonderful work in the company of its authors.” In this sense, Linares thinks that the work is “a magnificent work that has already been approved by many awards and will definitely be a candidate for the next Angoulême festival, which will be held in a month.” In this sense, he understands that Antonio Altarriba “distinguished himself from the psychoanalysis he had undergone through some of his best-known works: “The art of flying”where he tells his father’s biography. He is determined to find a way to show the most dramatic and intimate side of life and has the ability to “put in front of people the things we know are there but somehow we don’t want to see.”
Regarding the work that Sergio García and Lola Moral did on the work, Linares understands that “what they did at the graphic level is real genius.” “Sergio is already one of the country’s greatest cartoonists and we can even say that he is better known outside Spain than inside, although he is a drawing professor and researcher at the University of Granada.” García, the protagonist of The New Yorker covers, goes deep into this comic by inflating the page composition: “His compositions are not the classic short stories we are used to seeing; rather, he brings a narrative line to the fore in its entirety, without needing any explanation. A speech bubble.”. In this way, it gives way to longer formats such as double-pages, or in some cases we can even talk about folding posters,” concludes the expert.
With this, The event in Alicante will feature three writers who will examine the details together with Paco Linares. The sky inside your headA multi-award-winning work that was also nominated for the prestigious Angoulême festival, in France. So the two national winners joined Pynchon & Co. to talk about one of their works of the year. will visit the bookstore.