Posted in: Comics, Image | Tagged: albert monteys, image comics, universe

Image Comics to Publish Albert Monteys' Universe! in 2021

Published Mon, 03 Aug 2020 08:30:12 -0500

Albert Monteys' Universe has been running on digital comic book pay-what-you-want publisher set up by Brian Vaughan and Marcos Martin, Panel Syndicate and published from 2014 to 2018. Universe! is described as a series of self-contained and yet, somehow connected sci-fi tales. And it looks like Image Comics will be publishing a print collection in January, even if the Amazon listing has the That Texas Blood details in its listing, in error.

Albert Monteys is a Spanish comic writer and illustrator, mostly known for his work in the satirical weekly magazine El Jueves of which he was the director from 2006 until January 2011. While he was studying the first year of Fine Arts at the University of Barcelona, he provided samples to the publisher Joc Internacional, specializing in roleplaying games and wargames, and started contributing his first comic book stories to Líder in 1989, ages 17, He also made illustrations for RPGs and, over time, Monteys became production manager of the publisher.

Monteys befriended faculty fellows José Miguel Alvarez, Ismael Ferrer and Alex Fito, constituting with them the collective La Penya Productions, whose comic Mondo Lirondo (Camaleón, 1993–1997) won the prize for best fanzine in Comic Fair Barcelona 1994. Monteys graduated in 1994 and went on to illustrate RPGs as well as publishing in the Catalan children's magazine Tretzevents. In 1996, for the Barcelona International Comics Convention, he published the comic Calavera lunar, winning an award for best new author. He also started the strip Paco's Bar for El Jueves, following it rapidly with a selfish pizza delivery man titled Tato, con moto y sin contrato, that ran from December 1996 to June 2014. In 1997, he also became director of Puta Mili and Penthouse Comix, and coordinator of Zona X. In 1998, he joined the editorial board of El Jueves, alongside Manel Fontdevila, promoting new authors Darío Adanti, José Luis Agreda, Lalo Kubala, Pedro Vera and Bernardo Vergara. In 1997 he began the strip, Para ti, que eres joven, a two-page strip for the magazine El Jueves alongside Manel Fontdevila as well as topical gag strips. From 2004 to 2006 he published the strip Carlitos Fax for the children's magazine Mister K, about a silly and self-centered robot in a crazy futuristic world.

In January 2006, he was appointed director of El Jueves, and faced possible conviction for the crime of insulting the Crown due to a cartoon in the front page of Manel Fontdevila and Guillermo Torres which included an explicit scene of Prince Felipe and Princess Letizia having sex. In 2011, he stepped down as director of the weekly magazine. In June 2014, he announced his departure from the magazine El Jueves after the publishers would not allow him to publish a cover with a joke that referenced the abdication of the king of Spain, Juan Carlos I. Other cartoonists also left the magazine. A day before the coronation of Felipe VI, they published an online comic with jokes about the event titled Orgullo y satisfacción. He was later hired by the monthly satirical magazine Mongolia.

Here is a preview of the first volume.