Tag Archives: guillermo zubiaga

An Interview with Guillermo Zubiaga

Conducted in Fall 2007 Guillermo Zubiaga is a graphic artist living in New York, though he was born and grew up in the Basque Country. We met through my website, when Guillermo contacted me about a link to his site. In this interview, Guillermo describes growing up in post-Franco Euskal Herria, his experiences in the […]

Joanes 4: Traganarroo’s Revenge by Guillermo Zubiaga

Episode IV, Traganarroo’s Revenge: It is a period of civil war. Rebel ships, striking from a hidden base, have won their first victory against the evil British Empire. Joanes, aided by Rebel spies, managed to steal secret plans to the Empire’s ultimate weapon. Pursued by the Empire’s sinister agents, Joanes races home aboard his magic txalupa, […]

Basque Fact of the Week: Old Basque Documents in the Americas

The Basques, in their never-ending quest for new fishing and whaling grounds, pushed ever west, encountering Iceland, Greenland, and ultimately what would become Canada. At the same time, they were a large part of the Spanish conquistadors that pushed through South and Central America. It thus should come as no surprise that some of the […]

“I like fried eggs!” — Some Basque Weirdness in a Spanish Comic

Guillermo Zubiaga sent me this strange and funny bit from Los Grandes Enigmas de Martin Mystere, Investigador de lo Imposible, a Spanish translation of an Italian comic published in 1982. In the comic, the hero encounters an unknown tribe in Belize. I don’t know anything about the plot, but there are a few scenes in […]

Basque Fact of the Week: Legal to Kill Basques in Iceland

As part of their ever-expanding quest to find fish and whales, the Basques ventured further and further west across the Atlantic. Of course, they are well known to have established settlements in Newfoundland, where they had oil processing plants to process the whale blubber into oil. However, things didn’t always turn out so great everywhere […]

Basque Fact of the Week: Basque Superheroics

When I was a kid, the world of superheroes was, for the most part, confined to geeks like myself. Today, with the enormous success of the Marvel movies, superheroes are now mainstream like never before. Given the enormous universes and the thousands of characters that Marvel, DC, and the like have created, it is unfortunate […]

The Basque-Algonquin Language of Canada

This article originally appeared in Spanish and Basque on Kondaira’s Facebook page. It is translated and posted here with permission. The Basque-Algonquian language is a pidgin that arose for intercommunication between the members of the Mi’kmaq tribe, Innu and other Amerindians with the Basque whalers, cod fishermen, and merchants in Newfoundland, Quebec, the Labrador Peninsula, […]

Priest of Pirates by Guillermo Zubiaga

The third and final installment of Guillermo Zubiaga’s epic about Basque whaling, Joanes or the Basque Whaler: Priest of Pirates, follows the final exploits of Guillermo’s hero, Joanes. This graphic novel, based on historical documents of Basque derring-do on the high seas, culminates the grand adventures of Joanes and his crew as they encounter deadly […]

Joanes or the Basque Whaler, Part 2, by Guillermo Zubiaga

When we last saw Joanes and his crew, they had made their first successful whale hunt. Part 2 of Joanes or the Basque Whaler, Whale Island, picks up with the rewards of that hunt. And, along with the rewards, come the price of success as Joanes begins to overstep his abilities as he sees greater […]