The privilege of attending a historic and unrepeatable event

Barcelona"I'm a little impressed, I hope not to be paralyzed by mythomania, with these four heroes of my life." This is how the inaugural session of the Kosmopolis Festival, which brought together four guests who, as the director of the CCCB, Judit Carrera, said, "have marked the universal history of comics." It was only natural that the presenter of the event, Jordi Costa, admitted to being nervous before starting the talk with the artists Art Spiegelman, Charles Burns and Chris Ware and with Françoise Mouly, art director of The New Yorker for thirty years. (Yes, the magazine that produces those mind-blowing illustrated covers.) Jordi Costa wasn't the only one impressed in the room: tickets flew off the shelves as soon as they went on sale, there was a lot of anticipation, and a certain emotion was palpable in the air. The truth is, I felt privileged, like I was experiencing a special moment. It was hard to believe those four talents were sitting together, right in front of us, and they were greeted (and bid farewell) with tremendous applause. Chris Ware will forever remember it because he took out his camera and started taking a video of the audience. I don't know if it was an exceptional encounter for them, in the sense that it seemed like they met regularly; they were happy and relaxed. They conveyed a great admiration for one another, and this was perhaps one of the most beautiful things about the night: seeing how they spoke to each other and experiencing the respect they have for each other. Towards the end of the talk, when they were commenting that creating can be hard, an emotional Chris Ware told Spiegelman that it hurt him to hear that for the author of Maus It could have been a source of suffering. "You've inspired me my whole life," Ware told her, and it came so naturally, almost as if it were the first time, that I must confess I was moved.

The connecting link between the four of them is the founding avant-garde comics magazine that Spiegelman and Mouly created in 1980, which was the focus of much of the conversation. They thought they would only do one issue, but it lasted more than a decade, and is an indisputable and transformative reference in the world of comics. They made a good team: Spiegelman on the more "artistic-creative" side and Mouly on production. The Frenchwoman recalled with a smile the machine she learned to operate in order to print the magazine, and how she would go from bookstore to bookstore delivering copies of the magazine. They were growing with new artists, not just Americans, and Mariscal came up in the conversation. "The only comic book artist I've ever known who didn't seem depressed," said Spiegelman. Charles Burns, arriving in New York from Philadelphia, saw the first issue of Raw and thought they might have room for him. He saw the address where the originals were to be taken, which was two blocks away, and was greeted by Spiegelman himself, "angry that he had gone to answer the door," Burns recalls. "But I warmed up as soon as I saw his work," adds the author of Maus. For his part, Ware had discovered Raw among pornographic magazines, and was impressed: "They gave me the impression that comics can express the entire human condition." Years later, he received a call from Spiegelman and Mouly to publish there. We could have spent the whole night listening to stories like that and following a conversation that had only one limitation: when Jordi Costa asked them to comment on the "somewhat problematic situation" in the United States. Mouly and Spegelman protested: "Don't make us talk about Trump, we're on vacation!"