The Joso School performs a version of 'Blacksad' at the Barcelona Comic Con.

BarcelonaTo commemorate the 25th anniversary of Blacksad, the detective cat created by Juanjo Guarnido and Juan Díaz Canales, Norma has just published a special large-format edition with many extras from the first album in the series, Somewhere among the shadows. However, visitors to Comic Barcelona will also be able to revisit the first Blacksad case in a new version created by 46 students from the Escola Joso, who have adapted all the comic's pages—including the cover and back cover—to their personal style and will be exhibiting them during the fair in Pavilion 2 of Fira Montjuïc.

The initiative came from Joso herself and was approved by the comic's authors and French publishers. Jordi Sempere, an artist and teacher at the school, coordinated the joint efforts of two fourth-year Graphic Art classes, who shared the even- and odd-numbered pages of the comic. Certain rules had to be followed, such as respecting all of Díaz Canales's text, but Sempere gave the students complete freedom and encouraged the most original solutions that reinvented the comic's narrative.

In the process of adapting the work, the students discovered the qualities and resources that made it work. "Every version is an exercise in analyzing the original work," Sempere points out. "In this case, it served to underline the obvious: that Guarnido is an absolutely virtuoso draftsman, with an incredible level of detail and control of light. And as for the script, you realize that, despite being largely crime fiction.

This Friday, students are scheduled to show their work to Guarnido and Díaz Canales, who will find pages of very varied styles in the exhibition, from action manga to graphic realism and cartoonish humor. "In most cases, students arrive at the school having read only Japanese comics, but throughout their training they incorporate elements from European and American comics," explains the head of studies at Joso, Josep Maria Polls.

The great source of Catalan comics

Founded in 1982 by the cartoonist Josep Solana, the Escola Joso began almost at the same time as the Barcelona Comic Fair (formerly known as the Comic Fair), in which it has participated in every edition. The school started with a handful of students, children of Solana's friends, but today, adding up all the courses and activities held throughout the year, nearly a thousand students pass through the center. And although the DNA of the school and its mainstay remains comics, the studies go beyond comics to also cover other branches of the graphic arts such as illustration, animation, and concept art.

Joso's big change came, according to Polls, when the center began to think about how to train professional cartoonists: "Nowadays, all comic syllabuses and subjects are linked to a more general itinerary; the four-year graphic art course, where the comic is a good editorial illustration comic, to do storyboards, poster design... The idea is that the student is not afraid of any narrative or artistic formula or any professional medium."

But Joso's great attraction in our house and outside Catalonia is the large number of renowned cartoonists who have trained at the school. and cartoonists who made a name for themselves in the North American market such as Francis Portela, Ivan Coello or Ramon F. Bachs. As for the authors, the Aragonese Sara Soler stands out and, above all, the phenomenon of Miriam Bonastre, best-seller in the US market. And Sempere predicts that the future of comics will be female: "In 1994, in the first edition of the Graphic Arts course, we had only one female student, and now the majority of students are girls."

At Joso, however, illustrious alumni aren't just medals hanging in a hypothetical display case; many remain linked to the school as teachers, as do other leading names in comics, illustration, and animation: Jaime Martín, Jordi Pastor, and Jordi Pastor. "We are a school created by professionals, and we have been surrounding ourselves with more professionals," explains Polls. "Those of us who work there are cartoonists, illustrators, scriptwriters... We have a very realistic vision of the sector, and that makes us reflect a lot when creating a syllabus or, if necessary, reorienting a subject."