With each great sporting event, an extra dose of Francisco Ibáñez’s talent. The followers of the brilliant cartoonist waited every two summers for a new installment of the comic book adventures of detectives Mortadelo and Filemón. The TIA (Airborne Investigation Technicians) agents travelled to the host country to protect the Olympic Games or the World Cup from some threat. Their unique and addictive incompetence, guided by the enormous talent and originality of their creator, turned each adventure into a fun and agile read, in which the absurd dominated the story, bringing the reader to a smile or even to laughter, regardless of age. Because many childhoods passed into adulthood and continued reading Ibáñez’s stories. Because many children continue to join the universe of the author today, who passed away in July 2023.
Paris 2024 (Bruguera) is the book that Ibáñez was unable to finish and it is also an open window into the cartoonist’s creative process. The line with which he marked the space that the texts should occupy in each vignette; the typewritten pages with the script and in which the underlined and capitalized words indicated the onomatopoeia that would have a larger text size; the first pencil strokes, which helped to order each scene; and that page 20, with those pure vignettes that will never be finished, with that last sketch of Mortadelo and Filemón, opens the door to the history of comics for the reader. A unique opportunity – as indicated by Arturo Pérez-Reverte in the prologue and Jordi Canyissa in the epilogue – to enter the intimate universe that existed between Ibáñez and his characters.
A reason for excitement and gratitude for so many good times and so many laughs. A reason to return to one of the more than 12,000 pages of adventures and meet again or discover details. A plot to introduce someone to this joker’s world in which the author laughs at everything and everyone. Paris 2024 It may be Ibáñez’s last book, but it is by no means the end of a story shared with millions of readers.
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