Preview: ‘The José Muñoz Collection’ — The Early Art Of A Comics Legend

You should know José Muñoz’s name from Alack Sinner and his bold, chiaroscuro lines, but here’s his early Brit comics work… every bit as beautifully exaggerated and wonderful.

Muñoz is, quite rightly, a legend in comics, influencing Miller, McKean, Risso, and Giffen. But did you know Muñoz had work printed in 70s Brit comics? Well, here’s where you see the early work of a master.

Tutored by Hugo Pratt and Alberto Breccia in his native Argentina, the assistant to Francisco Solano López, he’d go on to work with Carlos Sampayo, creating the incredible works of Alack Sinner and Joe’s Bar together (and plenty more besides).

But before he came to wider acclaim for Alack Sinner and a style that would be aped by many, artist José Muñoz would first find work in Britain, part of Lopez’s studio that was often used by Brit comics at the tme, and the young Muñoz ended up making his beautiful art for Lion comic in the early ’70s. The Treasury of British Comics now presents three short-lived stripes he worked on in 1973 for Lion Comic, typically gorgeously presented in restored perfection.

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The three strips here, A Stitch In Time, Lost in Limbo Land, and Sark the Sleeper are the beginnings of a master of comics art, rough and raw perhaps but still full of all the style that would establish Muñoz as a master of comic art.

Here’s the Treasury PR for this one…

‘In 1973, Muñoz worked on three short-lived strips in Lion. A Stitch in Time follows the adventures of a young boy named Stitch Cotton and his alien friend, Varl, after they steal a time machine from the sinister space-master, Mr. Universe. Lost in Limbo Land (written by 2000 AD regular, Chris Lowder), follows Barry Smith – a studious bookworm who is struck by lightning and flung into a world of Norse myth and legend. The final strip, Sark the Sleeper, sees a starship commander accidently woken from hypersleep by two boys who are completely unaware that they passengers flying through deep space in search of a new home.’

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Chris Lowder, writer of Lost in Limboland included in this volume, has this to say of Muñoz:

‘ (He was)na young artist who could do not only fantasy, war, soccer, basic ingredients of boys’ weeklies at the time, but also (hugely important) facial emotion – rage, misery, cheerfulness, courage, not to mention, best of all, humour. José could do funny – and oh my god!, how many artists, all ages, simply couldn’t do funny.’

The first strip in the volume, Stitch in Time opens the book, one of those that remain writer unknown, despite, no doubt, all the efforts of the Treasury. Sadly that was just the way things were back then, records were patchy, things got lost. But we know the artist, although it’s far from the sort of thing you’d expect if I mentioned Muñoz to you and you’d only seen his later work.

But even here, on a wacky time-travelling strip where troublemaking ‘Stitch’ Cotton gets picked up by ‘Mister Universe’, the sort of bloke who introduces himself as, ‘Master of the Planets… Despot of Outer Space’, and makes a habit of going round convincing young kids to head out into space as his apprentices. Yep, the sort of innocence you just couldn’t get away with now, or just the sort of ridiculous sort of thing that Brit comics like this were full of – and it’s ridiculous that makes Stitch in Time loads of fun, especially when Stitch and the other apprentice nick Mister Universe’s time machine and head off in time.

But that’s almost secondary, you’re no doubt here to see the Muñoz artwork. Wildly different to what you’d expect, but there’s still so much to be seen here and within a few pages you’ll be forgiven for playing spot who was influenced by Muñoz’s gorgeous lines and sumptuous inks. There’s plenty of names you can easily throw about, believe me. And it’s here you most see all that funny that Lowder talks about, and the range of facial expressions, and just a wonderful lightness to the artwork that comes from a master in the making.

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Just as with Stitch in Time, Lost in Limboland, the Chris Lowder written strip, and as Lowder says in his introduction, the story was never meant to be something deep, just throw poor Barry Smith in the path of a lightning bolt and send him to someplace strange, full of whatever you need to put him in peril every week – Norse Gods on the eve of Ragnarok, wizards, trolls, giants, and whatever monsters you fancied putting in front of the reader that week. And everything Lowder threw at Muñoz gets drawn quite perfectly.

And then finally, with just typically gorgeous line and ink work from Muñoz, we have Sark The Sleeper, another mad romp of a thing that opens with two strangely-dressed kids running through an alien jungle, only to litterally fall into the chamber where Sark the Sleeeper is… well… sleeping. Obviously they wake him up, because that’s what happens in these sorts of things, after all, and he’s shocked to find out he’s slept 1000 years too long. Which is a bit of a problem as the kid’s world is actually a spaceship that’s now 1000 years off course. Yep, just your everday madness of Brit comics.

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And that was it, that’s all the Lion work Muñoz did. In fact, he never actually made it to the end of Sark the Sleeper, with the last two episodes being drawn by Eric Bradbury – not a bad sub if you have to have a sub!

But in these three strips there’s a hell of a lot to enjoy, ridiculous nostalgic tales of another time, but all pulled together and elevated by one thing – the incredible art of Muñoz.

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Rebellion presents the José Muñoz collection

Stories include: A Stitch In Time (writer unknown), Lost in Limbo Land (written by Chris Lowder), and Sark the Sleeper (written by Frank S Pepper)

Written by Chris Lowder, art by José Muñoz

Originally serialised in Lion from March 1973-May 1974.

Published by the Treasury of British Comics on 20th November 2024