Well, yes, ladies and gentlemen, damsels and knights-errant: it’s here. Well, almost. After a great deal of work, a great deal of fighting and the odd sleepless night I wouldn’t wish on the wickedest of enchanters, El sanguinario hidalgo Don KILLXOTE de La Mancha (The Bloodthirsty Gentleman Don Killxote of La Mancha) is getting ready to land on paper very, very soon.
And here is its cover. Take a good look. That’s our hidalgo: sword held high, armour stained red, and a look that says nobody is falling for the windmill business anymore.
Let the record show: I still don’t like the “Kill” bit. I’m saying it here, in writing and in front of witnesses. But Jorge might kill me if I change it, and judging by these pages, I know exactly what he’s capable of. So Killxote it is.
Man proposes…
My plan was to have it out for All Saints’ Day. Well, the day after, since All Souls’ suits it even better. But you know how it goes: man proposes, and the printers dispose. So a little patience, please. Good things come to those who wait, and bloody things even more so.
A comic that cost us (a lot)
I won’t lie to you: this comic has cost us a lot. Loads. In many ways, and not all of them show up in the panels.
It’s nearly 140 pages of pure, hard-hitting comics, and on top of that it comes with a pile of extras made by a pile of friends who are top of the game, the kind who make you blush when they say yes. And behind it all is Tomos y Grapas Editorial, who have bet big on this madness. Thank you, truly, for believing in it as much as we do.
Yes, I know what you’re thinking
That there’s no Quixote without its Avellaneda, the unauthorised sequel. I know, I know. Someone already picked a fight with the poor hidalgo four centuries ago, and we won’t be the last.
But I think what sets our adaptation apart is what an enormous joke it is. It isn’t just a slasher gimmick, the old “take a classic, add blood and sell it” trick. We’ve paid close attention to literature, to our history, and to the kind of details only those of us who have walked the plains of La Mancha, and enjoyed the hospitality and the history of its people, really know.
A word of warning to travellers and squires alike: this may not be an easy read, because the characters “speak” following Cervantes’s patterns, though adapted to today’s Spanish. It may not be the funny comic you were expecting. It may not be the highbrow comic that blows your mind either.
But it talks about many things. About literature. About creation. About fathers and sons. About the loss of faith and the loss of beauty.
From revenge to Killxote
Here’s a secret: at first it was going to be called The Revenge of Don Quixote. Because, dammit, I wanted to avenge the poor hidalgo, who has such a rough time in his own novel: beatings, mockery, blanket-tossings and enchanters at every turn.
Now it’s Killxote.
And revenge is served.
✦
Besmirching the work of Don Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra,
the bachelors EL TORRES and JORGE ESTEBAN URABAYEN.
Promptly served (by licence)
by the publishers of TOMOS Y GRAPAS.
Very, very soon in every shop in the Kingdom of Spain.
POST TENEBRAS SPERO LUCEM
