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

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