Kidnapped footballers, violent neo-Nazis and an eccentric detective

Barcelona"I've always imagined myself as a storyteller. In high school, I was already writing texts, inventing plays, drawing characters as if they were going to appear in a film. It just so happened that the market was difficult in Spain, and I was lucky enough to find an opportunity as an illustrator in the Franco-Belgian market." Jordi Lafebre (Barcelona, ​​1979) is at the top of his game. After an impeccable and, in many ways, enviable career as an illustrator for the Belgian screenwriter Zidrou (pseudonym of Benoît Drousie), with whom he has signed memorable works such as Lydie (2011) or Mondaine (2014), now presents his third solo comic, with his own script and artwork.

His first solo story was an intimate romantic comedy –However, published in French in 2020 and in Catalan in 2024—a genre she had already explored with Zidrou. "When I finish However I realize that everything I've drawn so far takes place in the past: the 30s, the 40s, the 60s... My whole career is based on nostalgia. And I think, "I haven't drawn a mobile phone yet, I haven't drawn anything modern." I felt the need to talk about things today, and I went from intimate comedies to wacky police plots, because humor is part of my color palette.

A mystery in Barcelona

This is how Lafebre invented the character of Eva Rojas, who debuted in 2023 in French and in 2024 in Catalan with the album I am your silence (Norma). Rojas is a young psychiatrist who, like her mother, suffers from bipolar disorder. In the first album, the protagonist becomes involved in the murder of a cava magnate, and her psychological skills allow her to solve the crime. Lafebre had already introduced other iconic characters: Dr. Llull, Commissioner Alemany (alias Merkel), and the three voices that accompany the protagonist. Now, Norma is publishing the second album in Spanish and Catalan. I am a fallen angelIn this story, these characters reappear, and Rojas becomes involved in a skinhead crime against sex workers connected to a football club. The starting point is the kidnapping of a 19-year-old player, a patient of Rojas's.

"The crime genre has always been an opportunity to talk about the social undercurrents. And I wanted to tell a story that took place in my city," says Lafebre. "I was born in Sants, and therefore I'm talking about the city I know and have walked through: real estate mafias, social classes, and, let's not kid ourselves, mental illness, mental illness, and the skyrocketing numbers among teenagers. We're not talking about the Cold War, the Transition, the Vietnam War, or heroin in the 80s, but about now."

The author mentions Montalbán and Mendoza as key figures in Barcelona's literary tradition, but he wants to make it clear that the city is more of a backdrop. "Barcelona is only mentioned in the subtitle," he explains. "I don't talk about specific buildings. Nor do I want to delve into local or national politics. I want to focus on the characters' individual circumstances. The context is more European and global." He also clarifies that the football club that appears in the comic is not real: "This city has a very famous club with very famous players, but it has nothing to do with my book. I'm talking about sports in general and the masses it attracts."

One element of these masses are the comic's villains, the neo-Nazi group called the Root Boys. They make a living through illegal dealings and meet in a gym. Lafebre claims the parallel with the current rise of the far right is coincidental. "Fascists have never gone away, they've always been here," he says. "So now they're growing like wildfire? Well, we fight them, as always." Lafebre recalls the Indiana Jones films against the Nazis and acknowledges that the skinheads of the Sants neighborhood inspired him: "They were a bunch of hooligans." However, he says that "it's not a book with overly political intentions," but rather one that reflects "what I think and what I feel." He adds: "I didn't want to finish my career, many years from now, without having said it."

One of the strengths of the script is its non-linear narrative. In the first volume, the reader learns the events through Rojas's explanation to Dr. Llull. The comic opens and closes with the psychiatrist's office. "In the second, I wanted to use the same approach. I wanted Eva speaking in the first person and explaining the week." But he encountered a complication: "Insisting on the office setting wasn't so simple anymore, because I invented a scenario where the crime had already occurred and Merkel took Eva to see the psychiatrist." So the office brings together four characters: Rojas, Alemán, a police officer, and Llull. "I found that, from a technical point of view, writing a script, having four people talking in a room is a technical challenge. But the series demands it." Lafebre is certain that linear stories "no longer resonate" in the same way. "When you go on Twitter or Instagram, you don't see posts linearly, but rather according to what has the most retweets or audience. The phone changes the way we understand reality: time doesn't move forward or backward, everything happens at once." The first film that "impacted" him and that breaks with linear temporality is Pulp Fiction, he acknowledges.

Lafebre's comics first appeared in the French market, and Norma later translated them into Catalan and Spanish. This creates a dissonance between the language of writing and the language of publication. "I write in Spanish because I've done it all my life. My first library was Latin American," he says. Even so, he confesses to having hesitated to write in Catalan out of a sense of duty to the country. "But I never resolve the doubt," he admits. "Besides, the draft is a mess and goes through the hands of a proofreader, a French translator… It goes through the hands of people who know a lot and who produce a proper text." The author praises Andrea Jofre's "delightful" Catalan translation.

Exiled talent

Lafebre's beginnings are a distant memory. "I was born in 1979 and grew up in the 80s, when there were still plenty of newsstands and magazines," he explains. "But when I reached working age, in the early 2000s, there were few places to publish, and I did what I could." The fact that most magazines were based in Barcelona was fortunate for the cartoonist. "I'd call the editorial offices, take the metro, and show up," he recalls. "I started in magazines like..." Clio either ThursdayBut little by little I realized that I wanted to make long books. My vocation was to be an adventure comic book artist, and I couldn't be that here; publishing output was very limited."

So, go resort to the Franco-Belgian market“Sales are different there,” he says. “The structure is geared more towards producing long books and selling them everywhere. After knocking on many doors and learning a bit of the language, I found the right people and stayed. I’ve been working at Dargaud for almost seventeen years now, and I feel right at home.” Although Lafebre is open to all kinds of influences, he acknowledges that his DNA as an illustrator “fits more with the Franco-Belgian style.” At first, he didn’t handle the scripts. “I illustrated several books for Zidrou, and I’m very proud of that, but I never forgot that I wanted to write. And when I was almost 40, after becoming a father, I said, ‘It’s now or never.’ I had people who believed in me and the editorial expertise, so I took the plunge.”