Imagina'Malaga 2009 - Salón Del Comic de Málaga

This week-end on Saturday the 24th, I went to a nice comic convention called ImaginaMalaga organized by an association called Qi'Tomer. It took place in a buiding aimed at hosting student initiatives in Teatinos, the biggest student area of Málaga.


It was really nice : besides the usual "nerd crowd" playing Magic on the grass and fighting with foam swords, there were quite a few presentations from Spanish authors/illustrators, as well as bookstands for signing.

I attended the following presentations :

• - a Madrid author presenting his latest noir comic, "The Empty Inside" - good drawing style, noir atmosphere with original ideas
• - a famous Spanish illustrator called Luis Royo, about the genre of fantasy illustration as art

Luis Royo talking about his career as illustrator both in Spain and worldwide (US, Europe)

Luis Royo again, defending illustration as a genre of art on its own

Luis Royo's signature (which took me about 30 minutes to get... not so long to wait in the end)

I met the Wee team, an edition line publishing both online and printed forms of webcomics. Webcomics in Spain tend to be pretty geeky, with a lot of allusions to the subculture of what geeks usually like : science-fiction, SciFi, video games, other comics, etc...
It was nice because they all signed their comics together.

A nice example of Wee signature :)

An author from Andalucia, hanging out in the Wee stand

Of course I stood in the (huge) line for Luis Royo's signatures, with the rest of the crowd :) He seemed to be the main star of the afternoon, along with Cris Ortega, a female illustrator. I had a good surprise at the end of the line : I was acquainted to another illustrator called Javier Trujillo, who was not as popular as the other two apparently. Which was even better since we had time to chat about his latest book covering the Gilles-De-Rais theme. And I got a complete drawing from him as a bonus :)

It was the end of the afternoon, so Javier (left) and I were both exhausted...^^ In the background you can see some of Javier's work. Exposed on the wall, second to the right, there is the illustration which he quickly redrew for me

Javier's signature drawing - a reproduction of his exposed work in the previous picture.

Overall this convention was a good surprise, living in a town like Málaga which does not have the sophistication of an European capital makes moments like this really appreciable. I have only been there one afternoon, and the amazing part is that the convention took place for 4 more days... Such an amount of effort and richness of content, especially for the scale of Malaga. In the end, it also shows that the student circle can be a major driving force in culture, especially culture targetting audiences of teenagers or young adults.

Attending this kind of event in a smaller town also implies that you are closer to the artists, and do not suffer so much hassle (no long line in particular).