'Candélabres'.
Anne-Laure Garcia is a French comic book artist who works under the pen name Algésiras. She is best known for 'Candélabres' (1999-2000, 2002, 2005).
Early life
She was born in 1972 in Bangui in the Central African Republic and moved to Burkina Faso at the age of 10. Her parents were avid comic fans, and she became interested in the medium herself through reading French comic magazines like Pilote and Métal Hurlant as an adolescent. Garcia became familiar with the work of Richard Corben, Quino and Enrique Breccia, and developed interest in all forms of the fantasy genre: horror, gothic, and science fiction. She also ranks the US/UK authors Bill Sienkiewicz, Dave McKean, Simon Bisley, Alan Moore, Duncan Fegredo, Kyle Baker, Teddy Kristiansen and Chris Bachalo, the Japanese manga artists Atsushi Kamijô, Yoshiyuki Sadamoto and Osamu Tezuka, and the Europeans Andreas, Frank and Cosey among her influences. Garcia moved to France, where she received her high school diploma with a scientific option.
Early career
Her drawing teacher encouraged her to enroll at the Academy of Fine Arts in Angoulême. She spent four years at the Academy's comics section, while earning some money by translating scripts and doing lay-out work for the animation firms Octopussy Animations and Les Armateurs. Algésiras participated in the collective album 'Les Enfants du Nil - Anges' by Delcourt in 1993.
Candélabres
She spent several years developing her first comics project, 'Candélabres', about a physically handicapped man who regains the use of his legs through a mysterious person. The first volume was published by Delcourt in 1999, and three more books followed in 2000, 2002 and 2005.
Other comics
Most of her comics output since then has been as a scriptwriter for others, or as a contributor to anthologies. She wrote an adaptation of Pierre Bordage's space opera trilogy 'Les Guerriers du Silence' for Delcourt's Neopolis collection between 2005 and 2008, with artwork by Philippe Ogaki. It was followed by 'Elinor Jones', a romantic series of three books set in the Victorian age, drawn by Aurore (Soleil, 2010-2012).
Wendigo
Since 2015, Algésiras has been posting 'Wendigo' on Deviantart.com and Tumblr. It is a fanfiction comic based on the TV series 'Hannibal' (2013-2015), featuring the Native American mythological monster Wendigo as the pet/assistant of fictional serial killer Hannibal Lecter. Two book collections are for sale on her website.
Graphic contributions
She participated in a collective book with comic adaptations of Yannick Noah songs (Delcourt, 2007), and to 'Paroles d'Étoiles' (Soleil, 2008), a comics documentary about children who grew up during World War II, based on the book by Jean-Pierre Guéno. She also wrote a story for the US anthology 'Smut Peddler' (Iron Circus Comics, 2012).
'Wendigo'.