'El Tesoro de Lucio' (French edition, 2018).
Belatz is the pen name of Mikel Santos, a Spanish comic creator, active in the Navarre region. Several of his comics have delved into the region's history and culture, most notably his 2018 comic about the anarchist and forger Lucio Urtubia, 'El Tesoro de Lucio'.
Early life and career
Mikel Santos Martinez was born in 1974 in Pamplona/Iruña, Navarre, where he has continued to reside. His immediate family has never been into art, although his maternal grandfather and paternal grandmother also had a talent for drawing. As a child, Santos developed an interest in comics, and started to draw at an early age. Self-taught, he trained himself to draw by copying the artists he admired, most notably Quino, Alex Raymond, Francisco Ibañez, Will Eisner and above all Hergé. Little by little, he began publishing in newspapers and magazines and eventually illustrated children's books, young adult stories and textbooks for various publishing houses. Most of his work has appeared in the Basque language.
Narvarre regional comics by Belatz.
Navarre comics
By the early 2010s, Belatz was writing and drawing several regional comics on commission. One of his first full productions was 'DN24Horas' (2009), an educational comic commemorating a century of journalism in Navarre, published by the regional newspaper Diario de Navarra. '90 Minutos en el Reyno' (2011) was commissioned by the Osasuna Foundation, and told the fictional story of a young man who wants to debut in the first team of the Pamplona football team, CA Osasuna. Subsequently, Belatz wrote and drew a comic about the conquest of Iberian Navarre by Spain, titled 'Navarra: Una Aventura en Tres Tiempos' ("Navarra: An Adventure in Three Times", 2011), published by the Government of Navarre.
'El Tesoro de Lucio' (2018).
In 2018, Belatz wrote and drew his most successful comic, 'El Tesoro de Lucio' ("Lucio's Treasure"), telling the story of the Navarrese anarchist, bricklayer and forger Lucio Urtubia (1931-2020), who was known for forging Citibank traveller's cheques in Paris during the 1970s and almost caused the bank to go bankrupt. The book was published in both Spanish and Basque by the Txalaparta publishing house, and has been reprinted several times. In addition, translations appeared in Galician (Demo Editorial) and Catalan (Tigre de Paper), as well as Danish (Det Poetiske Bureaus Forlag) and French (Rackham). Belatz subsequently began working on a comic biography of Enrique Villareal "El Drogas", a well-known Navarre rocker who founded the band Barricada.
Illustration work by Belatz.
Other activities
In addition, Belatz's comics have appeared in magazines and collective comic books like El Climaco, El Balanzin and Xabiroi. Besides being an illustrator and comic book artist, Belatz has played the piano in the rock 'n' roll swing group Swingaraia.
Belatz.