DOCU-THRILLER: SUPERNATURAL PORTRAITS AND ALIEN SHE-VAMPIRES

SUPERNATURAL PORTRAITS AND ALIEN SHE-VAMPIRES: THE MYSTERIOUS LIFE OF CARTOONIST PEPE GONZALEZ IN A ONLINE DOCU-THRILLER

In the early 80’s, Barcelonian José González Navarro was one of the world’s most admired artists. The breathtaking beauty of his female characters shook up the Sixtie’s romantic comicbook scene, as well as making Vampirella become a true icon of the Seventie’s Pop Culture. But Pepe couldn’t care less. Brilliant. Unaware of it. Self-destructive. At the peak of his popularity, Pepe decides to give up cartoons to invest all his talent in a supernatural collection of more than hyperrealistic portraits, of which his greatest obsession was: Marilyn Monroe. From then on, and until the news of his death, very little would be known about him.

March 15, 2009. While Pepe González agonizes at Hospital Clinic in Barcelona, documentarist Tony Macousqui is busy shooting one of the last Sant Antoni’s Market Sundays. The impending start of some radical remodeling plan, brought him back to his childhood scenario: cartoons for girls, romantic photo-novels, horror comicbooks… Macousqui plans a chronicle of the 60’s and 70’s spanish pulp fiction. For that purpose, he composed a list of outmoded magazines and essential authors, headed by that three-word combination he believed to be magical in his adolescence: Pepe, Vampirella, González. Three days after, Macousqui choked on his breakfast finding those three words in the newspaper’s necrological section.

April 7, 2009. The obituary was brief and didn’t bring any light to the circumstances of his death. 70 years old. A long disease. Refusing to accept that fate has forever cancelled his interview with Pepe Gonzalez, Macousqui follows the track of some comment posted on the Internet (“Your Ros Negre’s friends will never forget you, Pepe”) and succeeds in locating the illustrator’s home address at the precise moment when all his personal belongings were being thrown into the dumpster. Drawings, photos, clippings… To unravel the true meaning of this papery whirlwind, the documentarist is ready to interrogate all those people who, one way or another, collaborated in the making of the Vampirella’s comicbooks. Cover designers, cartoonists, script writers, production managers, even the models who inspired the character. Nobody is above suspicion.

The awful truth is that Pepe González died in total poverty. And though he used to say that his corpse was to be thrown out in the garbage, his mortal remains ended up being put in the same grave as who, for so many years, had been his mentor, manager, publisher and colleague: Mr. Josep Toutain, the founder of the mythic agency Selecciones Ilustradas. In its golden years, the agency had employed 100 artists who produced countless romance, action and terror cartoons for European and American editorials. Pepe had been the most charismatic and spoiled artist in Selecciones Ilustradas. Perhaps also its main victim.

August 24, 2010. In his obsessive determination to portray the life of the famous she-vampires cartoonist, Macousqui is about to resurrect the worst ghosts from Selecciones Ilustradas. A new and amazing finding will force him to locate all the agencie’s shipwreck survivors. Since then, and until the “Love Strip” premiere news, nothing good would be known about him.

Here you have the trailer and the first two episodes of this online series: