EXTRACTS: Illustrators Crime Comics Special © 2020 Book Palace Books (144 pages in full edition)

118 While Toth was, by this stage of his career, something of a comics legend, Abulí was a relative unknown. However, in terms of experience and skills, Abulí was very much of a seasoned professional with compelling ideas and a good ear for dialogue. He was also a pragmatist, very aware of the vicissitudes of making a living as a freelance writer, as his father, Enrique Sánchez Pascual, was also a screenwriter as well as an author of novels centred around themes of war and science- fiction. Abulí’s early years had seen him typing up his father’s scripts and novels, he had also written a few screenplays of his own and was currently eking out a living working on translations of comics such as Richard Corben’s Den . The issue of Abulí and Toth’s status amongst the comic book cognoscenti was to have a profound impact on the strip’s launch. Toth wasn’t just one of the kingpins of graphic art, he could also be highly opinionated, stubborn and difficult to deal with. Still a master of his craft, and when he was enthused about a project, capable of creating stunning art, he evidently wasn’t on board with the brief he had been given. The artwork he delivered wasn’t just devoid of the usual Toth sparkle (to describe it as perfunctory would be charitable), he had also tampered with Abulí’s script, and in the process totally undermined and, effectively emasculated the author’s original vision for the series. Abulí tells the story; "Alex Toth, was a highly principled man, he considered what I proposed was immoral. Since he was Alex Toth, a very influential man with a large fan-base, and I was a relative nonentity, he changed the script, the ideas, the words, and in doing so imposed his own set of values on the series. When we met at the Barcelona Comic Fair we, inevitably, talked ABOVE: A poster for the Barcelona Comics Fair, it was here that a year earlier Abulí had met Alex Toth, where the great artist had delivered his judgement that the premise of Torpedo was “immoral”. ABOVE RIGHT & FACING PAGE: Hot dames and fast cars. Torpedo ’s iconography is laced with deviant and deadly allure. © Toutain Editor