1 week Ago By Xavi Serra
Last week, Nico Rodríguez (Reus, 1973) received an unexpected visitor at Fatbottom, his comics bookstore: it was Chris Ware, the most influential American cartoonist of his generation, to whom the CCCB is dedicating an exhibition until November 9. "I was doing the invoices for the quarter and, suddenly, I looked up and saw her there," explains the bookseller, still incredulous. Ware is not only the patron saint of modern experimental comics, but a very important author for Rodríguez.
"I had been a big comics reader, but over time I became detached," he explains. "And one day, when I was living in England and hadn't read anything for five or six years, I went into the Forbidden Planet bookstore to browse and bought the de Ware". A few years later, already in Barcelona, the 2008 crisis forced Rodríguez to abandon his work as a photographer, and he opened a bookstore specializing in author's comics with a special focus on fanzines, self-published comics and imported comics, in other words, exactly what was missing from other bookstores.
~BK_S was also impressed by Fatbottom. After walking with him through the bookstore - and the printing and self-publishing workshop Máquina Total, which shares premises and sensibility with Fatbottom - and acquiring some titles (the catalog of the exhibition dedicated to Saul Steinberg at the Fundación March, the with drawings by Hokusai, of ..
.), Ware told the bookseller that it was the best bookstore he had ever seen. And he didn't mean well: the next day, , he reaffirmed: "It might be the best comic book store I've ever been to.
It's truly amazing, impeccably curated. [..
.] I found it inspiring and impressed." Rodríguez believes that the cartoonist most enjoyed seeing "how the self-publishing workshop was integrated into the bookstore" and that he was surprised to discover "many comics I didn't know, but not just those published here, but also American ones.
" One of the things Ware highlighted at the ARA was Rodríguez's "sensitivity and intelligence," which he appreciated just by looking at the shelves, and the peculiar way the comics are organized. "The covers are where they are because they somehow tie to Nico's head," Ware said, and Rodríguez confirms it. "I have a space problem in the store, but I try to organize the comics in a more intuitive than practical way, and so that the covers can be seen, or at least part of them," he explains.
Cultural programming Although it's now located at 21 Carrer Lluna in the Raval district, Fatbottom was founded in 2010 in a shop in Poble-sec, where, to attract the public, it organized comic book and fanzine presentations and exhibitions of authors who shared the bookstore's independent sensibility. Over time, these activities have become one of Fatbottom's defining features, and it has a group of regulars (mostly cartoonists) who drop by every Friday. If last week it was a Nadia Hafid exhibition, this Friday will be the presentation of , by Delphine Panique, which inaugurates the Catalan comic collection .
Fatbottom even hosts the work meetings of Gutter, the self-publishing festival in Barcelona, one of whose organizers is, in fact, Pablo Taladro, the soul of Máquina Total. Rodríguez is already accustomed to receiving foreign visitors who have heard of the bookstore; Ware is the most illustrious, but a few months ago it was Canadian Dave Cooper, who took advantage of a trip to Angoulême to organize a signing session at Fatbottom, which many, including Chris Ware, consider the best comic book store in the world..
