I was born in Barcelona in 1962 (that’s what I’ve been told, at least) and I will die mauled by a bear in Canada in 2042.

 

I was a reader of comics and loved Disney movies from a very early age. I wanted to do that. In truth, what I really loved was to tell stories, and I thought drawing them would be a great way to tell them. I cannot boast about never going to an art school or anything like that, but i ended up tired of drawing jars and I quit. As a kid, I wanted to draw Conan, and then I was crazy about Moebius, Franquin, Will Eisner, uderzo or Liberatore. Behind were left The Smurfs, Lucky Luc, and “Mortadelo y Filemón”, among others with which i had so much fun and learned with. I can’t say if I would have even become an artista if it wasn’t for those first comics.

 

According to my approximate time of birth, I was lucky enough to be able to earn a living as an artist when I became 18 years old. After working for some national magazines, in 1986 I was lucky enough to start writing and drawing Tom and Jerry stories. Since then I’ve written and drawn more than nine thousand pages about those characters, until I stopped in the year 2016. ¡Thirty years! Maybe that was the reason why, by chance or by mistake, Warner Bros honoured me in 2002 with the “Lifetime Achievement Award”. I’ve always thought that it was a mistake since that kind of award is given usually to artists in the end of their careers… I don’t know, I feel very young. In the meantime, I have written some other thousand pages for Disney: Lion King, Brer Rabbit, Mickey, Goofy… I also made the comic versions of movies like Tod and Toby, Goofy and Son and some other I can’t recall… (Maybe I’m getting old after all).

 

What I never knew when I was a kid is that working as an artist is a strange thing. It’s strange because even after drawing for work the whole day, I still keep drawing other stuff as a hobby. From that passion, fun, silliness, or lack of social life, several characters of my own were born. SOLO was one of them. In the middle of all the work and collaborations for Warner Brothers and others, the rat that is the main character of this book was born. I love equally all the characters I’ve drawn, with their defects and virtues, I’ve learnt this wonderful craft from them.

 

I don’t deny any of my works, since each of them has made me the professional I am today. Working for brands like Warner Bros, Disney, M.G.M, Turner Entertainment, Universal, Egmont, Semic Press, Delcourt, panini, and many others, more or less important, has been a real honour. Now I am the founder, editor in chief of my own brand: OMINIKY. I like a complicated life.