Juanjo Guarnido Wins 2024 Sergio Aragonés Award for Comic Art Excellence
The Lakes International Comic Art Festival (LICAF) is pleased to announce that Juanjo Guarnido is the recipient of the Sergio Aragonés International Award for Excellence in Comic Art. Juanjo was presented with the award during the Opening Night event of the festival's weekend-long celebration in Bowness-on-Windermere.
Alexa Frank was also announced as the winner of this year's Sophie Castille Awards for Comics in Translation – English, for her translation of "沖合の雷" ("Offshore Lightning") by Saito Nazuna, translated from Japanese and published by Drawn & Quarterly.
The Sergio Aragonés International Award for Excellence in Comic Art is named after the world-famous cartoonist known for his work on MAD and as the creator of Groo. Established in 2017 by The National Cartoonists Society, the world's largest and most prestigious organization of professional cartoonists, in partnership with the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. The award is presented annually to an exceptional comic artist, animator, or cartoonist.
Born in 1967 in Granada, Spain, artist Juanjo Guarnido is the co-creator of the comic book series Blacksad. He spent his childhood drawing in the town of Salobreña before moving north to Granada with his family. There, he studied Fine Arts, joined the local fanzines, and had some Marvel character illustrations published by Comics Forum. He then turned to animation, moving to Madrid to work for the Lápiz Azul animation studio.
On his first day at Lápiz Azul, Guarnido met Juan Díaz Canales, who would become his friend and the writer of Blacksad. In 1993, Guarnido moved to Paris to join the Walt Disney Studios in Montreuil, where he moved from layout work (on The Goofy Movie, Mickey's Runaway Brain, and Hunchback of Notre Dame) to character animation (Hades in Hercules; Tarzan and Sabor in Tarzan; and Helga in Atlantis). Guarnido also contributed to The Jungle Book 2 and Lorenzo the Cat before the French Disney office closed down, ten years after he was first hired.
A longtime fan both of the European bande dessinée market and of American comics, Guarnido patiently began the production of his first graphic album while still at Disney, working long-distance with Díaz Canales toward the 2000 publication of Blacksad: Somewhere within the Shadows. The overwhelming success of the title has allowed Guarnido to take on other projects – like Sorcelleries with writer Teresa Valero – or directing and animating the music video Freak of the Week for the Swedish band Freak Kitchen.
Five issues of Blacksad were released between 2000 and 2013. Guarnido spent then three years and a half working on the one-issue, ambitious 145 pages fully watercolour graphic novel Les Indes Fourbes, with script by Alain Ayroles, which hit Europe in autumn 2019 with huge success and has recently completed and published the two-issue Blacksad adventure They All Fall Down.
Previous winners are Dave McKean (2017), Hunt Emerson (2018), Charlie Adlard (2019), Boulet (2021), Posy Simmonds (2022) and VIZ comic, edited by Graham Drury and Simon Thorp, in 2023.
