Tuesday, November 11, 2008

José Luis Salinas (1908-1985)



José Luis Salinas is mostly known in English speaking countries for his comic strip illustrations to The Cisco Kid from 1951 to 1968. His Argentinian work is less familiar and well worth a look. Hal Foster and Alex Raymond were his heroes and a large sampling of Salinas adventure strip work is available for viewing on the blog Descartes Mil (where I borrowed the awesome illustration above.) Also of much interest is a three part documentary about the cartoonist available on You Tube HERE alongside a clip of the fondly remembered Cisco Kid telivision program. Chiquirritipus has a fantastic selection of Salinas comics and photos HERE.

Salinas illustrated a lot of the classics, among them She, Michael Strogoff, and The Jungle Book. Since these are available in Spanish albums it may be time for English-language publishers to take note -- fans of Hal Foster and Alex Raymond would love to add some translated Salinas to their libraries.

2 comments:

  1. Estimado Sr. Adcock:
    Muy interesante su blog.
    Si a usted le gusta el trabajo de José Luis Salinas, lo invito a que vea mi blog:

    http://chiquirritipis.blogspot.com/search/label/SALINAS%20-Jos%C3%A8%20Luis

    Aquí encontrará abundante información sobre el tema.

    Un saludo.

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  2. I have a hardcover book of Salinas Cisco Kid reprints from 1951 and 1952, translated in French by Slatkine BD (from around 1982).

    His quill work was amazing.

    But to me, the greatest "American" western comic book ever drawn was by a Frenchman, Jean Giraud, with his "Nez Cassé" (Broken Nose) in the Blueberry series. I read somewhere that Giraud actually worked on it for a few years, while he was in a legal dispute with his publisher -- he just kept working on it in the meanwhile. It's magnificent, in my opinion his very best work ever.

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