Finding your voice
Clever art Spanish artist Fernando Dagnino Guerra reveals how his life experiences influenced his own graphic novel, Smart Girl
Fernando Dagnino Guerra on writing and illustrating his graphic novel, Smart Girl.
In his time, comic artist Fernando Dagnino Guerra has pencilled Superman and Green Lantern, and contributed to DC’S New 52. He’s drawn the stalwarts of comic heroes. But that’s not ultimately who this artist is. A fractured upbringing drew him to where he is now – creating his own cyberpunk world, Smart Girl.
“I grew up in Madrid, Spain, in the late 1970s and 1980s in a booming period of cultural and artistic transgression after the long 40-year night of a gruesome fascist regime,” he tells us. “And I guess pop art, cyberpunk and comics were there, and I got caught in the explosion.”
Comics were Fernando’s way out. His “greatest inspiration” were the pages of a graphic novel or pulp classic. Finding their way into his collection, the artist would paw over Terror Illustrated from EC Comics, the art of Winsor Mccay, and the “mind-blowing” comics of the 1970s and 1980s.
“Al Williamson, Kirby, Eisner, Miller, Byrne, Bill Sienkiewicz, P Craig Russell, Moebius, Milo Manara…” the names just keep coming. “I could go on giving names for days up to my contemporary friends and colleagues, who are a continuous source of learning and inspiration.”
IMAGINE THAT
Before comics came calling there was life in the real world. Fernando started his career in art as a graphic designer and illustrator, working for The Walt Disney Company’s Imagineers. When he finally decided to leave for the lesssecure lifestyle drawing his heroes there was a moment of hesitancy.
“Definitely,” he says, when asked if quitting a stable job for comics was stressful. “It was one of the many risks I had to take throughout my career to finally focus exclusively on comics.”
As it turned out, life was easy. Almost too easy. The workload was tough. “Publicity was the perfect trap. I had loads of work. They paid me a lot of money to draw fast, but not with the quality I would have liked to provide,” he says. “I guess it was one of those few moments where success was the problem on my way to achieve my comic book goals.”
Has life as a professional comic artist met Fernando’s expectations? He jokes that not everything is as you think it will be as a child, some things like growing old and getting wrinkles aren’t the end of the world. “In the same manner, making your childhood dream come true comes with a price. The dream becomes real and it’s rewarding and fascinating, but also disappointing and demands great sacrifice. Comics are an industry too and many non-artistic parameters may determine the fact that you enjoy, or don’t enjoy, working on a series.”
His experiences at the big comic houses haven’t dented his love of the industry or the art. It also affords the chance to do your own thing in a way few jobs allow. For Fernando this has meant creating his own graphic novel, Smart Girl. A steampunk comic strip in the manner of his heroes from his childhood, in some senses it sees the artist come full circle; using his knowledge and love of comics to create something he’s proud to call his own.
Smart Girl began as a short story by Fernando back in 2014. The comic itself took the artist two years to create between 2016 and 2018.
GREATER MEANING
Smart Girl is a personal project for Fernando. The artist had written some underground comics in Spain and a graphic novel aimed at young adults, but It wasn’t until Smart Girl that he decided to throw himself into something more meaningful.
We ask Fernando if he has any advice for artists wishing to create their own comic. He tells us connecting with your characters is vital. You must share a “personal rapport with them,” he says, “That is, injecting some parts of myself in them so that whenever I write them or draw them, they elicit that precise emotion I need to vibrate to their particular tune.”
Smart Girl describes an artificial person undergoing an emancipatory process. She’s attempting to deconstruct her programmed identity and search for meaning in her life. “I couldn’t identify more with any other character, “says Fernando.
Discover more about Smart Girl at titan-comics.com/c/1681-smart-girl.
It was one of those few moments where success was the problem…