Vanessa Graell Barcelona

Barcelona

Updated Monday, March 25, 2024-21:38

  • Rafael López Espí Marvel's 'vintage' superheroes were Spanish

  • Comic Paco Roca and Rodrigo Terrasa, winners of the ACDCómic Award for Best Work by National Author 2023 for 'El abismo del olvido'

  • Japan Inside Shuna's Journey: Hayao Miyazaki's forgotten treasure (finally) arrives in Spain

In 1970,

Friday Foster

first appeared in the pages of the

Chicago Tribune

presented as a "glamorous fashion photographer." It had only been two years since Martin Luther King had been assassinated. It had only been five years since African Americans could vote in all states. And Friday Foster became (not without controversy)

the first black heroine to star in a daily strip

in the main newspapers in the United States, among the Flintstones, Dick Tracy and Donald Duck. In reality, she was a fascinating and sophisticated photographer and detective who moved with the same ease through the underworld of Harlem as she did among the cream of New York high society, thanks to her assignments from She magazine,

a

clear reference to

Elle.

French.

Friday Foster was a cult character, a feminist and African-American icon who, surprise!, was created by a Spanish cartoonist:

Jordi Longarón

(1933-2019). Although in Spain we didn't even find out, not even his adventures would have passed the censorship of the Franco regime. Nor did they do so in the southern states, where conservative and even segregationist newspapers vetoed it.

One of the original cartoons colored by Jordi Longarón.

The Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya (MNAC) vindicates Friday Foster with an exhibition of originals that seeks to popularize this milestone of national drawing under the title

The Unexpected Heroine

. Because Longarón was the first Spanish cartoonist to work on a daily strip for the United States, sending the originals by plane by

express

mail three weeks after their publication. Longarón's name has always been associated with

cowboys

and the popular

War Exploits

, but Friday Foster was his most transgressive character, which he brought to life based on the idea of ​​screenwriter

Jim Lawrence,

author of the James Bond strips in the

Daily Express

British, which came out in parallel to the success of Sean Connery's films. "Friday Foster is like a

black, female alter ego of James Bond

," compares Àlex Mitrani, curator of Contemporary Art at the MNAC and curator of this delicious micro-exhibition that "works like an installation" and can be seen until July 24.

To know more

Comic.

Fame, age difference and imposter syndrome: Alison, the successful graphic novel that turns toxic relationships into beautiful stories

  • Editor: RAQUEL R. INCERTIS Madrid

Fame, age difference and imposter syndrome: Alison, the successful graphic novel that turns toxic relationships into beautiful stories

Comic.

Anatomy of six violent stories in which the girl is saved: "The victim of La Manada was still a Little Red Riding Hood 2.0"

  • Editorial: SARA POLO Madrid

Anatomy of six violent stories in which the girl is saved: "The victim of La Manada was still a Little Red Riding Hood 2.0"

«The MNAC has been collecting comic book originals for years and we want to integrate it as an equal in our exhibition, not only to get closer to new audiences, but because we understand that it is part of our heritage responsibility. And even more so in a case like this, when a character that is part of the popular imagination of the United States and that is already universal was created from Barcelona," Mitrani highlights.

Pam Grier in the 1975 film 'Friday Foster'.

I was Friday Foster!

In the midst of the explosion of feminism and the Black Panthers movement, Friday Foster became a reference and soon had her own film starring an exuberant Pam Grier, muse of

blaxploitation

, who had just released the legendary

Foxy Brown

(1974). and which Quentin Tarantino would recover in

Jackie Brown

(1997). "It was something political, something social, a gift (...) It is still an honor to be able to say 'I was Friday Foster!'" recalls Pam Grier in the great volume that Norma edited in 2021,

Friday Foster. An icon of Black Power

, the first compilation in Spanish of all her strips.

«It was very difficult to edit it because there were hardly any originals, they all stayed in the United States. So they had to redraw many parts," recalls Marc Longarón, architect and son of the cartoonist, who today safeguards and disseminates his legacy through a virtual museum and temporary exhibitions like this one. «In Spain, Friday Foster is absolutely unknown. People are surprised when she discovers her modernity, both the aesthetics that we would call vintage today and her character. If she wore a miniskirt it was not to be sexy, but to claim that women could dress however they wanted and do whatever they wanted with her body, whether they were white or black," explains Longarón.

The cartoonist Jordi Longarón (1933-2019).

Friday Foster broke taboos and stereotypes, but she had to deal with the latest blows of censorship, which

prohibited showing interracial romantic relationships

in newspaper strips: hence a certain climate of unresolved sexual tension between her and her attractive boss Shawn North, the incarnation of American blonde ideal. «Outside the United States, it was only published in France and Denmark. But a Hispanic version was made

for the Miami public, in which she was called Carmen Foster.

The Castro regime became angry when it considered that the gringos were instrumentalizing African Americans to carry out capitalist propaganda,” says Longarón Jr.

Like his character, Jordi Longarón also broke stereotypes. At birth, he was wrongly diagnosed with Parkinson's. Throughout his life he suffered from a permanent hand tremor, although without cognitive degeneration. That's why he had to draw with a brush, that's why his lines are more fluid, different from the rest. He never received a National Award, but he was one of the great innovators of comics, giving it a more cinematic, more American rhythm. If in its last rooms of the 20th century, the MNAC already exhibits an original of the

TBO

by the cartoonist Josep Coll next to a magnificent canvas by Joan Miró, Friday Foster would not be out of place in front of a Crónica Team. Or a Warhol. Or a Lichtenstein...