Francesc Capdevila

Francesc Capdevila (born September 17, 1956), better known by his pen-name Max, is a Spanish artist, with an extensive career in which he has worked in practically every field of graphical activity: illustration, design, and comics. In the 1980s he did a series of comics albums parodying Peter Pan for an adult audience, starring the character Peter Pank.

He is one of the most important figures of Spanish comics, and one of the few that who is still active. From his beginnings, when he created such popular characters as Gustavo or Peter Pank, until his recent Bardín, which is more reflective but equally rebellious, Max has unfolded a graphical and narrative repertoire capable of moving in all registers and genres. With his clear line, indebted of the Valencian tradition, and mastery of the medium, he has told humorous, angry, sad, surrealistic stories… always with a rare sensitivity and a clear will to break rules and experiment.

Childhood and youth
Francesc Capdevila was born in Barcelona on September 17, 1956. His early readings was dominated by publications of the Bruguera Publishing house, with titles like TBO, Pumby, and Jaimito. He later met Americans classics like Flash Gordon and The Phantom and the albums of Asterix and Tintin.

In 1973 he joined the group El Rrollo (to which belonged, among others, Nazario and Javier Marshal), publishing his first comic strips in their fanzine The Masked Rrollo, which he would also be in charge of selling in the streets of Barcelona. Max had just discovered underground comics, especially the work of Robert Crumb, who became his first great influence.

He joined the Faculty of Fine Arts, where he met Pere Joan, with the goal of becoming a painter, but eventually felt more attracted by the narrative capacities of the comic strip, where his career ended up. In these years he published in magazines such as Matarratos (Rat Poison), Star, Butifarra and Integral.

Career
In 1979 El Víbora (The Viper) was founded, and Max was part of the founding artistic team. He used a character he had created previously, Gustavo (revolutionary, environmentalist, and anarchist) and in 1983 Peter Pank (parodying both the animation of Walt Disney and urban tribes).

In 1984 he moved to Majorca, where his wife was born, coinciding with the birth of his daughter. In that year he published El carnaval de los ciervos (The Carnival of the Red Deer), which was an important aesthetic and thematic change. Graphically, his new influence was Yves Chaland; narratively, it was his first foray info mythological and fantastic themes, common in his work from then on.

This work they would follow to him, continuing this way, La muerte húmeda (The Humid Death), El beso secreto (The Secret Kiss) and El canto del gallo (The Crow of the Rooster); it is in this last one where another influences becomes visible: the Belgian illustrator Ever Meulen.

Later years
With Mujeres fatales, published in 1989, he worked directly for the French market, which offered the advantages of greater professionalisation and a higher fee; but the editorial requirements constrained his creative work. After this, he created other commissioned works: La biblioteca de Turpín (The Library of Turpín), El jugador de los Dioses (The Player of the Gods), and Alicia en el País Virtual (Alice in Virtual Land). By that time, his main professional occupation was no longer comics, but illustration and design. In these fields, Max's work is very broad, such as covers for The New Yorker, creating the mascot of the centenary of Fútbol Club Barcelona, and the execution of an animated short for the series Microfilm on the television channel Cinemanía. Part of this graphic work has been compiled in the volume Espiasueños.

Short comic strips such as Los invasores (The Invaders) and La construcción de la torre (The Construction of the Tower) and an unfinished graphical novel of more than 200 pages called El mapa de la oscuridad (the map of the dark) show a new change of style, and a distancing from the clear line, towards a more sober style with an broken line, influenced more by Art Spiegelman' Maus, looking for greater narrative depth.

In 1993, already far removed from the industry, he created the comic strip Nosotros somos los muertos (We Are the Dead), a tough story about the war in the Balkans. Self-published as a fanzine photocopied and sold at the International Comic Fair in Barcelona, it became the germ of the magazine of the same name (also well-known by its initials NSLM) in which, until its last issue in 2007, Max and Pere Joan have published the works of some of the most exciting cartoonists and illustrators of the world-wide scene.

2005 saw the publication of an adaptation of chapter 26 of Don Quixote in the anthology Lanza en astillero (Lance in the Shipyard).

His latest creation is Bardín, a character used in different formats and publications (in this aspect, there is some influence of Chris Ware, but with touched of the Bruguera school) that frees him from editorial impositions, to experiment and to give free rein to his imagination.

Works and style
Max is one of the few Spanish strip cartoonists who emerged in the mid 1970s who remains active. During this long trajectory his style has undergone a constant evolution. The author himself has never has denied the influence that other artists have had on him in various phases of his career (most important, chronologically, Robert Crumb, Yves Chaland, and Ever Meulen).

This path of experimentation has increased in the recent years, when, already free of external editorial impositions, he can act with total creative freedom. Examples of this are the creation of the magazine Nosostros somos los muertos, that he coedits with Pere Joan and who welcomes artists with concerns similar to his, and the creation of his latest character Bardín, that serves toto mix all type of subjects and aesthetics (humor, philosophical reflections) while its publication is totally anarchical (mixing formats).