The art of comics has always known how to make the most of the black and white contrast that the ink line drew on the paper. Ever since stories began to be told with drawings, that intense black colour became the language that understood our reality, becoming the absolute protagonist until it found its own discourse, a way of narrating from the black stain, from the darkness that hid that unfathomable abyss without colour that led to unknown places. Possibly, one of the greatest forerunners of the comic art was Goya, precisely with the images he drew in rabid black and white about the disasters of war, opening a path of exploration of more disturbing themes that, from colour, explored the darkest part the of the human soul, the Black Paintings. Manuel Gutiérrez and Manuel Romero imagined in their comic Goya: Saturnalia how the Aragonese painter confronted his fears in the “Quinta del Sordo” to create his famous altarpieces, precisely by symbolising in the black line all the strength of the symbolic..

A path of symbolic exploration that has in the artist Laura Pérez one of its greatest exponents. If works such as Ocultos or Tótem made clear her interest in the recesses of the strange, Espanto manages to synthesize the absolute essence of the strength of the black line that hides infinite stories. Images that connect with Goya in their disturbing capacity, in that beauty that crosses the undefined border between the beautiful and the appalling, that attracts us knowing we will fall into the abyss.

Two works that dialogue with each other about the appeal of the ink line and its possibilities to evoke the most hidden aspects of humanity, from the past to the present, using the comic as a narrative connection.

Goya. Saturnalia, by Manuel Gutiérrez and Manuel Romero. Cascaborra Publishing House, 2022

Espanto, by Laura Pérez. Astiberri, 2022