Interview with the authors of 'Rage from the South' by Mode Aranda and Carlos de Iracheta, Shiftmagazine (03-05-2013)

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Written by F. J. Villalba - Artwork by Marcos Cañada - Translation by Linda Silvester

A climate of political corruption, people with lax morals and legal proceedings fit for a John Grisham novel are the backdrop of our everyday lives. With these foundations, it seems fitting for there to be good stories set in our cities that reflect all of these comings and goings. Well, now we can read such a story in the entertaining visual format of a comic. 'Rage from the South' which has been published online for several months (www.rabiadelsur.com) has proved highly popular with readers. In this interview we speak to the authors, Marcos Cañada and Francisco Villalba, who tell us about how everything came about and speak about the current situation in Malaga.

We had a comment from a woman who said we were violent and not politically correct with women [...]. The truth is that the initial image was of a gunshot through the spyhole of a door, with a woman on the other side. Buñuel cut open an eye, we shot through a spyhole.

There are evil women just as there are evil men. And at no time have we said: “we won’t include this because it may be offensive,” or, “this drawing is too explicit, we shouldn’t put it in.”

Lately, reality has given us food for thought. We said so in the first post when we presented the project. The reality of recent years has been terrible, and it’s getting worse. While we were developing the project what was happening fitted like a glove. What’s been happening is sordid. What’s happening is very sordid.

We are also interested in pissing people off a bit. It’s the way to wake them up. If you don’t like a cascade of blood, well then don’t visit he web. When you see the political situation, doesn’t it piss you off the same way? When you want to give a wake up call, anything goes. We wanted to tell a harsh story, but the filth just reflected what was happening when I wrote the story.

The Technology Park presents an idealised image of Málaga thanks to the omnipotent Europe of some years ago, which allowed unsustainable companies to open, and today it’s scary to go there [...] business at the PTA (Technology Park of Andalusia) was based on money that came from the EU when Europe supported projects so that they would flourish. This situation really existed: there have been companies that took money for unsustainable projects and ultimately failed. Even so, that entire infrastructure was created, and now it’s like a ghost town.

Málaga is not represented in the world of the graphic novel. If you tell a dark story it has to be in New York, Chicago, maybe Barcelona, el Rabal or film noir Paris. And we said, why not do something from here? It seems that everybody thinks that everything that’s dark comes from outside and we live in the perfect setting. Even if you go to a village with a population of 1,500, you’re going to see corruption: the depraved, the femme fatalle, the drug dealer, the thief, the corrupt politician and good people as well, but we aren’t here to tell stories about princesses and frogs.

Excerpts courtesy of Shiftmagazine. Translation by Stílogo.