After a period away from Valencia, Daniel Torres (born 1958 in Terres de Cofrentes) found a new pace. He left his Barcelona home to descend into a calmer life in the Cantabrian valley of Liébana, in a village surrounded by nature, a place inhabited by 14 cows and four neighbors. This move mirrors his self-portrait as the creator of Roco Vargas, whose name now graces the back cover of Some teachers and all truth (Norma). The book, originally planned to debut during the pandemic to honor four decades of vocation, finally arrived—already forty-three years into his career—highlighting a major exhibition of hundreds of original works in Barcelona last year, and a Grand Prix for overall achievement in comics.
“In The Eighth Day II I painted myself as a monk, echoing a scene from The Name of the Rose. It was a hunch, and I’m that age now,” the author of Picasso in the Civil War jokes. He says he is sketching an apocalypse and asks, does everything look so bleak? “No, not entirely. I have denounced moral noise and much of the frustration in Future Not, and I escape into the world of Roco Vargas, a retrofuture in my own way.” He notes the same approach appears in some memoirs. Apocalypse, etymologically from revelation, signals what is to come, a future where the speaker vanishes.
In these memories, Roko Vargas, the heartthrob adventurer who runs a nightclub and pens what some call “cheap” works under the pseudonym Armando Mistral, meets a surprised young cartoonist named Daniel Torres in 1980. He asks him to adapt the latest book Tritón into a comic, an effort that leads to an adventure published in 1983 and accompanied by nine further installments.
“I’ve always believed illustration and comics share a single language. An illustration is a self-contained sketch that tells a story,” Torres explains. The hall displays an impressive collection of originals. The album is limited to 999 copies and includes a signed edition. Behind the irony lies truth. “I wanted to think, so I turned to it. It’s a confession to recount my sins. I asked myself: where do you come from? what did you do? where did you place your hand, what would you like to do?”
“I’ve never relied on computers; I defend handcraft and do not follow tech trends. That’s why I stepped away from technology, away from geeks.” Yet the noise around Artificial Intelligence and ChatGPT could not be ignored. The same goes for requests to write Hemingway-style texts about potato harvesting. “What for me? It is of no use to me, either as reader or creator. This is not productive. Creation is a path, not a destination—an idea. That is what I explore in Some teachers and all the facts, how one’s style emerges through these teachers. You do not spring from spontaneous generation. I distrust techno-heavens and predictions that everything will be like this. There remains a shadow behind it. They won’t fix the world. Intelligence and curiosity are what keep society alive. Curiosity cannot be dismissed as useless. That would be an insult to intellect,” he says.
What sins did Daniel Torres confess? “Wonderful sins,” he says with a mischievous smile. He studied architecture, which led to the monumental 600-page work La casa, a project he devoted six years to. In short, he was the family’s black sheep who longed to pursue theater. The greatest sin was turning a delightful hobby into a livelihood.
He began in Valencia with fanzines such as El Gat Pelat, and arrived in Barcelona by train in 1980, bringing drawings by Claudio Cueco, a raw, underground spirit drawn from Robert Crumb’s American scene. The farm system that he once used became a detective’s private world—a youthful, exuberant idea that sprang from fresh energy. He joined the newsroom of El Víbora and handed his work to director Josep Maria Berenguer, who liked them and nudged him to refine them further. But when he got home that night, a call came: he would be published.
From the Valencian school of the 1980s to the works of Micharmut, Miguel Calatayud, and Sento, the early open line would later seed Opium (1982) and the Roko Vargas universe, the byproduct in 2021 under the label non-future, featuring Detective Archi Cuper. The Eighth Day (1992) brings God into dialogue with the devil’s stories, and a dinosaur series for children appeared in 1995.
Torres observes that the market has transformed since those early days. “Publishers were few in the ’80s, and so were readers. Today, more titles surface with shorter print runs, yet the audience does not grow at the same pace.” He recalls being largely self-taught because there were few accessible sources for comics, drawing inspiration from American masters like Milton Caniff, plus artists such as Flash Gordon, Little Nemo, and Crazy Cat. He later admired European school icons like Hugo Pratt, Dino Battaglia, Jacobs, and Mobius.
Keep it up, Roco Vargas
Torres continues to revisit today’s classics and revised classics, from Corto Maltese by Pratt to the new interpretations by Juan Díaz Canales and Rubén Pellejero. “I’d be glad if someone gives Roco Vargas a second life while I’m gone,” he says.
He enjoys playful mirror metaphors, seen on the covers of Picasso in the Civil War and Some Masters and the Whole Truth. When he looks in the mirror, he sees hundreds of pages filled with drawings but keeps his curiosity alive. Facing the blank page, he wonders what will surface once the image is finished. The journey matters as much as the final piece. That is the essence of his work.