Interview by Aitziber Aranburuzabala for PUNTUA magazine, a publication delivered every Friday to the subscribers of the Goiena newspaper in Debagoiena, one of the seven regions of the Gipuzkoa province of the Basque Country.
MAGAZINE DETAILS
Release date: 2018-VII-6
Language: Basque
Number of pages: 48
Size: 17x24.5cm
Retail price: -
INTERVIEW by Aitziber Aranburuzabala
FROM PAPER TO THE WALL
Ioannes Busca, editor and cartoonist.
The work Antxintxiketan: The Democratic Race by the cartoonist Ioannes Busca (Oñati, 1984) is being displayed in the Architecture Bienale of Venice. It's the first time that a Basque written comic is shown in the famous Italian exhibition. It's in the Spanish Pavilion, until November 25. "There are over 100 works in the pavilion and mine is one more, but I was really glad that a Basque written work was selected, especially in the Spanish Pavilion, payed by the Spanish government." said the artist.
The works exhibited in this year's Spanish Pavilion in the Venice Biennial are all by Architecture students. There are works of all kinds. Busca for example, has filled the walls with his comics and images. "While I was studying Architecture in Madrid I moved to Puerto Rico with a kind of Erasmus scholarship and while I was there on December 2015 I started to draw this story I've yet to finish. The curators of the Spanish Pavilion thought it was an interesting project and they put me on the space dedicated to the narrative."
COMICS UNDER THE PEN-NAME IAN NOSE
He makes videos, design works and comics, these last ones signed as Ian Nose. "Ian Nose was born at the same time as the comic EdFramed, and I'm the editor. In August I will return with new EdFramed strips in Instagram, Frozeen, Facebook... this will be the third season. That's what I'm working on now."Apart from those stories, in March, he also published the one-shot It Also Rains in Puerto Rico, about hurricane Maria hitting the Island and the experiences of two elder women.
POLITICIANS RUNNING
He says Antxintxiketan: The Democratic Race is a comic with a political-humorist nature. "In the story, the candidates for presidency in the 2015 Spanish general elections are literally running as in a marathon, one tripping over the other, in a race to life or death. I've never followed political issues too much, but when I was in Puerto Rico, the general elections were taking place and it seemed like a change was coming and I thought it would be a funny idea."
It's being serialized in paper and digital by Ahabi Comics. "I drew the first four pages in a hurry. The idea was to finish it together with the elections, but it never happened... I started doing four pages one day, the next day another two, in a couple of days three more... I started to publish it like this in Facebook in Basque, Spanish and English. But it was too tiring to keep on like this so I thought I'd publish them as 20 page booklets. In the walls of the pavilion, the first 25 pages of the comic are printed in a huge size, but I drew them in DIN A4 size with ink and later I added some screentones and the texts with a computer."
AHABI COMICS
In 2011 you started to publish a daily web strip: EdFramed. It is also on display in English in the biennial, on the fire exit door of the showroom. "I've always liked comics. When I was a kid I tried to write a short story every Summer. In 2011 I bought a drawing tablet for my computer and that's when I started EdFramed."
He says that behind a work there's always an author and a publisher, and they named Ahabi Comics the publishing house he and his brother founded while he was living in Puerto Rico. He would like to, but he's not making a living out of comics. "I sell them for 4 euro, so I will have to sell a lot of them to make a living out of that..."
They publish all their comics in three languages - Basque, Spanish and English- the catalog is available in ahabi.net and the paper editions are available in Amazon. The digital editions are available in multiple platforms such as Kindle and iBooks. They can also be read for free in Frozeen.com.
GLOBETROTTER AND PRODUCTIVE
Busca says he decided he would go to wherever opportunities were. So after living in Madrid and Puerto Rico for a while, this Oñati boy now lives in Philadelphia. He told us he has a lot of things on his hands. "I recorded a kind of making-of documentary in the Venice Biennial and I'm giving it some last touches. I'm also working on the new episodes of Antxintxiketan..."