The Sevillan Pepe Macías and Javier Monsalvett have known each other since childhood and share a passion: comics. As adults they wanted to draw their own comics, but the need to eat three times a day forced them to abandon that dream. Until they won an award that allowed them to publish their first graphic novel: The Strange Odyssey of Lucas de Andrade.
The comic, published by Serendipia (Ciudad Real) and hitting shelves this Thursday, plays with autofiction and metafiction to tell a love story for comics and to expose the difficulties of being a cartoonist in Spain.
Macías and Monsalvett are at once authors and characters in their graphic novel. The protagonists are two failed comic artists who, by chance, come across the story of Lucas de Andrade, a Spanish explorer from the early 20th century who traveled to the far reaches of Africa. “We started making comics when we met, a little over five years old, but our professional paths drifted apart. While Javi remained surrounded by brushes, graphic tablets and illustrations, I entered the world of comedy and television writing, telling stories, but without drawings,” Macías, the popular ‘Magic Man’ from the show La Revuelta, explains to Efe.
The dream of publishing a graphic novel together became a reality when they won the Creative Mancha Comic Grant, inaugurated for the first time in 2025 and organized by the Association of Friends of Comics of Ciudad Real, in collaboration with the Regional Government of Castilla-La Mancha and the El Arte de Volar Foundation. “The grant gave us creative freedom to experiment with the format and with the story rather than binding ourselves to what might be more commercial or easier to sell,” the humorist reveals.
Thus was born The Strange Odyssey of Lucas de Andrade, the story of an explorer who left his hometown of Cuenca to embark on a grand adventure. Based on the correspondence he kept with his father, the book recounts his journey across the unknown continent of Africa.
Thanks to the postal service, which took more than a century and misdelivered the address, those letters fall into the hands of the characters Macías and Monsalvett, who believe they see in what is recounted there the seed of a graphic novel that will take them to the Olympus of comics. “The style of the pages where Lucas tells his story uses a warm color. It’s a sepia tone very close to what the letters take on as time passes. By contrast, our adventures tend toward grays that are more bluish and muted,” says the award-winning illustrator Javier Monsalvett.
Playing with autofiction, with a lot of humor and unexpected twists, Macías and Monsalvett’s first graphic novel also critiques the scarce professional opportunities for comic artists in Spain, who end up working in France or the United States or giving up their passion. “This is the comic that two kids dreamed of together and that a couple of forty-somethings have brought to life,” concludes Macías.