Jose Ortiz in 2012, with the Grand Prize of the Barcelona International Comic-Con
Jose Ortiz, whose sixty years as a comic strip artist encompassed a thirty-year span working for British comics, has died on Monday, 23 December at the age of 81. Feeling ill, he had been admitted to La Fe hospital in Valencia a week before he died of heart failure.
Of all the Spanish artists who found themselves working for British publishers during the British comics' boom of the 1950s and 1960s, José Ortiz was one of the longest survivors. Such is his longevity, that he has fans for each of the decades he worked in the UK: those who grew up in the 1960s will remember his as the artist of countless war libraries as well as “UFO Agent” and its sequel “Smokeman” in Eagle; fans in the 1970s are more likely to remember his work in nursery or girls comics or his eight month run as the artist of "The Persuaders" in TV Action; in the 1980s he helped relaunch the Eagle with fantasies "The Tower King" and "The Fifth Horseman" and went on to draw the long-running horror series "The Thirteenth Floor" and various tales of the genetically-adapted warrior "Rogue Trooper".
At the same time, Ortiz is widely recognised as one of the masters of comic art in his native Spain as the artist of "Hombre" and "Burton y Cyb" and one of the most popular contributors to the American horror magazines published by James Warren.
Born José Ortiz Moya in Cartagena, Murcia, Spain, on 1 September 1932, the son of a painter of watercolours, he was the younger brother of Leopoldo Ortiz by almost exactly two years, but the two progressed through the comics industry almost in parallel during the 1950s. After winning a competition held by Chicos magazine, at the age of 16 Ortiz began working for Manuel Gago's Editorial Maga publishing company on the series El Espia [The Spy] in 1951, which he signed Zitro (Ortiz backwards). Gago was the hugely popular creator of "El Guerrero del Antifaz" [The Warrior Mask] and had moved to Valencia, where the strip was published by Juan Bautista Sorianos' Editorial Valencia. Ortiz and others — Leopoldo Ortiz and Luis Bermejo amongst them — joined Gago, Miguel Quesada and Pastor Eduardo Vañó in Valencia, helping to establish what has become known as the Escuela Valenciana or Valencian school of art.
Ortiz worked extensively for Editorial Maga for the next decade, working on El Capitan Don Nadie [Captain Don Nobody] (1952), El Principe Pablo [Prince Paul] (covers only, 1953-54), Coleccion Comandos (1954), Sebastián Vargas (1954), Don Barry, El Terremoto [Dan Barry, Earthquake] (1954), Balin (1955), Pantera Negra [Black Panther] (1956), El duque negro [The Black Duke] (1957), Apache (1958), Bengala (1959) and Johnny Fogata (1960). Of these, Ortiz was probably best-known for the western adventures of Don Barry, which ran for 76 issues and 3 'annuals' in 1954-57; Ortiz also drew the first 31 issues of another popular western, Johnny Fogata.
By the late 1950s, Ortiz was also establishing himself with other publishers, such as Toray, with such strips as Sigur el Wikingo [Sigur the Viking] and stories of the wild west in the anthology Hazañas del Oeste; for Bruguera he produced stories for Bisonte Extra Ilustrada, distributed almost exclusively in Argentina, and adaptations for Colección Historias such as "Los Viajes de Gulliver" [Gulliver's Travels] and "Las Cruzadas" [The Crusades].
Ortiz had made his British debut in 1957 with "In Love's Trap" in D. C. Thomson's early romantic pocket library
Love and Life; other early sales to
Golden Heart Pocket Library,
Thriller Picture Library and
Top Spot followed, but it was 1960 before he established himself as a regular in Ted Bensberg's war libraries department, producing three dozen stories for
War,
Battle,
War at Sea and
Air Ace libraries between 1960-67. In 1962-63 he drew the short-lived "Caroline Baker, Barrister-at-Law" for the
Daily Express, preparing for the task of illustrating the adventures of a female lawyer by coming to the UK and making sketches at a magistrate's court.
In 1964, Ortiz took over the character of John Brody for
Boys' World and produced "The Green Men" in colour on the rear page for seven weeks. He later took over the adventures of "UFO Agent" Major Grant in the original
Eagle, which, exploiting the popularity for American superheroes that followed the appearance of the Batman TV show, became the superhero "Smokeman", then, when that bubble burst within the year, became a member of the C.I.D. When "Grant (C.I.D.)" came to an end, Ortiz continued to work for
Eagle on the aerial pirates yarn, "Sky Buccaneers".
Ortiz also found work in the pages of
Lion where he drew "Trelawny's Mob", "The Phantom Viking" and "The 10,000 Disasters of Dort" over the next couple of years. However, he found himself in something of a backwater after that, drawing one-off romantic stories for
Valentine and
Romeo and illustrations and fairy tales for
Once Upon a Time. He was offered the more action-oriented strip "The Persuaders", based on the TV show, in the pages of
TV Action and was drawing for D. C. Thomson's
Diana and
Warlord when the opportunity came to work for James Warren's magazines in the USA.
Ortiz's agent, Josep Toutain of Selecciones Illustrades, created for publication in Spain and in the US in the early 1970s and - like many of his contemporaries - Ortiz saw the American market as a way of escaping the strictures of the British comics' market and earn a better return for his efforts. With James Warren's horror comics
Vampirella,
Eerie and others, he found the market he was looking for and, as David Roach records in
The Warren Companion, "At Warren he embraced the 'new look' with relish to produce a succession of superbly-drawn stories such as "Coffin", "Jackass", and his masterpiece, "The Apocalypse" (which ran in
Eerie #62-65). This looked like it wasn't so much inked as feverishly scratched out of a morass of black ink and seething textures." He was named Warren's Best All Around Artist in 1974.
Although Ortiz could not maintain this intensity, he became Warren's most prolific artist, contributing 119 strips to the Warren magazines, abandoning the UK market but maintaining a presence in Spain and Europe with strips such as "El Cuervo" for Kung-Fu (1976), "Los Grandes Mitos del Oeste" [Great Myths of the West] (1978) and El Nuevo Tarzan (1979-81).
As the Warren magazines lost circulation, Ortiz found a new market in Spain where new comics aimed at an older audience such as
Cimoc, for which Ortiz teamed up with Antonio Segura on the science fiction series "Hombre" in 1981. The series portrayed a post-Apocalypse society that has developed following the collapse of civilised society. The series, a futuristic twist on the Spaghetti Western, sees the man known only as Hombre travelling from city to city, encountering survivors often banded together as small communities for protection against the hostile environment and marauding bands.
In 1983 he teamed up with his nephew Leopoldo Sanchez who, with writer Mariano Hispano,was co-founder of Ediciones Metropol; Ortiz contributed a number of strips to their three titles,
Metropol,
Mocambo and
KO Comics, including "Hombre" in the latter. Although Ediciones Metropol lasted only a year, Ortiz was able to concentrate on contributing strips to the new adult comics published by Toutain Editor, such as "Las mil caras de Jack el Destripador" [Jack the Ripper] (1984) for
Creepy, and Norma Editorial. In 1987 he created, with Segura, "Burton y Cyb" for
Zona 84 (and, later,
Comix Internacional) and "Morgan", which debuted as "Ives" in
Metropol before being revived in
Cimoc.
During the same period, Ortiz was a regular presence in the revived
Eagle in Britain, producing a run of comic strips for the newly relaunched boys' photo-weekly: "The Tower King", "The House of Daemon" nad "The Fifth Horseman". The paper soon became a more regular comic, for which Ortiz continued to contribute "The Amstor Computer", "News Team" and the long-running "The Thirteenth Floor", which debuted in
Scream! in 1984 and continued in
Eagle & Scream! until 1987.
Ortiz also contributed to
2000AD, mostly illustrating "Rogue Trooper", but also single episodes of "The Helltrekkers" and "Judge Dredd" (1987). His last strips in the UK were "Kid Cops" for
Eagle (1988) nad "Kitten Magee" in
WildCat and the merged
Eagle & WildCat (1988-89). Contemporarily, he also briefly worked on
Sabre for Eclipse and a number of stories appeared in
Heavy Metal.
In the early 1990s Ortiz drew "Bud O'Brien" (for
Torpedo) and "Ozone" (for
L'Eternauta), and contributed two volumes to a lavish collection of books from Planeta-Deagostini with the overall title
Tales of the New World: #2 La civilización Inca: Los Hijos del Sol (1991) and
#25 Orígenes del hombre Americano: Los Primeros (1992).
“Hombre” had continued to appear in
Cimoc until the 1990s but Spanish comics suffered a collapse in popularity in that decade following the Golden Age of the 1980s. Subsequently, Ortiz spent twenty years working for Sergio Bonelli on the famous Italian western
Tex. He has also drawn episodes of "Ken Parker" and "Magico Vento" [Magic Wind] for their respective titles. The latter is currently being reprinted in Italy as
Magico Vento Deluxe and in English translation by Epicenter Comics in the USA, with volume 1 published in June 2013 and volume 3 due to appear in January 2014 (volume two was by other hands).
In 1998, Ortiz was awarded the Parparajote de Oro by the Asociación de Amigos del Tebeo de la Región de Murcia.
Recently, Ortiz produced a colour episode, “La dimora stregara” [The Haunted House], penned by Andrea Cavaletto, for
Dylan Dog Color Fest (2012).
In May 2012, Ortiz was awarded the Grand Prize—the Gran Premio del Salón—at the 30th Barcelona International Comics Convention in recognition of his brilliant career; a retrospective exhibition took place at the following year’s Comic-Con in April 2013.
The second volume of a complete collection of “Hombre”, was published by Editorial EDT Editores de Tebeos in November.
(* photo: http://www.ficomic.com)
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