Jordi David Redó is a Spanish comic artist, mainly known for his agency work for the international market. During the 1970s and 1980s, he worked for the Spanish publishing house Bruguera, creating his own features 'Pillo y Bollo' and 'Rufo', but also drawing many adventures with Francisco Ibáñez's 'Mortadelo y Filemón'. Starting in the 1980s, he was affiliated with Estudios Bonnet S.A. as an artist for Danish Disney comics.
Early life
He was born Jorge David Redó in 1950 in Barcelona. In later years, he has been mainly referred to by his Catalan name, Jordi David Redó. He began his career as an apprentice in an advertising agency, where he met Domingo "Mingo" Correa, one of the cartoonists for the comic magazines published by Bruguera. While Mingo learned him to finetune his inking technique, David Redó has mentioned the Bruguera creators Manuel Vázquez, Francisco Ibáñez and Raf as his main inspirations. During his later Disney work, he was mainly influenced by Cèsar Ferioli and Giorgio Cavazzano.
'Pillo y Bollo'.
Bruguera
By 1971, David was working for the Bruguera publishing house himself, assisting house cartoonist Manuel Vazquez with the inking of his pages. Later on, David created his own features. First in Sacarino (1975) and then in El DDT (1978), he created the humor comic 'Pillo y Bollo'. In a 2013 interview with the mortadelo-filemon.es fansite, David recalled that his feature was intended as a male counterpart to Vázquez's 'Las Hermanas Gilda', about two sisters of opposite characteristics who live together. In Mortadelo magazine, he additionally drew 'Rufo' strips and cartoons.
Mortadelo y Filemón - 'La Historia del Dinero' (1980).
Mortadelo y Filemón
During the mid-1970s, Bruguera art director Blas Sanchís established an art studio to produce in-house 'Mortadelo y Filemón' stories. By then, Francisco Ibáñez's bumbling secret agents had become a true cash cow for the publisher. Since Bruguera owned all the rights to the characters, they decided to increase the weekly amount of stories by having an extended team taking care of the production, without much involvement from Ibáñez. Jordi David Redó was one of the original artists in this studio, along with Toni Bancells, Tino Santanach and Juan Martinez Osete. Later, they were joined by Juan Manuel Muñoz and several others.
Besides many short stories for magazines like Mortadelo and Super Mortadelo, David and scriptwriter Jesús de Cos notably made the educational full-lenght episode 'La Historia del Dinero' ("The History of Money"), which Bruguera published in 1980 in commission of the Bankunión. In addition, David created mini stories with the characters for Ortiz cupcakes.
Hiawatha - 'Hide and Seek' (D 99086) - © Disney
Estudios Bonnet S.A.
During the early 1980s, David Redó left Bruguera. Joining Blas Sanchís in his new Estudios Bonnet S.A., he began producing comics for the international market, but also children's book illustrations and character designs. As part of the Bonnet team, David worked on Rolf Kauka's 'Fix und Foxi' comics for the German market, but was mainly tasked with drawing Disney comics for the Danish publishing house Gutenberghus/Egmont.
Mickey Mouse - 'Marooned' (story D2005-379, from Russian publication). © Disney
Between 1983 and 2008, he worked on a great many stories and game pages with a variety of Disney characters. Initially doing gags and longer stories with the Duck characters - both for the magazines and the pocket books - David Redó later became one of Egmont's main artists for the secondary Disney characters. He drew a great many short stories with 'Chip 'n' Dale', 'B'rer Rabbit' and the 'Big Bad Wolf'. During the 1990s and 2000s, he was doing most of the Danish stories with 'Little Hiawatha', which were mostly written by Per Hedman. Under supervision of new Bonnet studio chief Cèsar Ferioli, he also worked on a great many stories with Mickey Mouse and Goofy.
In the late 1980s, he was also one of the Bonnet artists drawing short stories with the Dutch rascal characters 'Sjors & Sjimmie' for Sjors en Sjimmie Stripblad in the Netherlands, working from modelsheets by Robert van der Kroft.
Sjors en Sjimmie - 'De Mongoolse Duivelsdog' (Sjors en Sjimmie Stripblad #18, 1988).
Later years
Retired since 2010, Jordi David Redó has since then been a great help to the fans of the 'Mortadelo y Filemón' comic by identifying the artists of hundreds of non-Ibáñez short stories that were produced by anonymous studio workers. As a fan service, he also created unofficial covers for three long episodes that never had their own cover illustrations: 'Simón el escurridizo', 'La banda de Matt U'Salen' and 'El caso del señor Probeta'. Between 2014 and 2015, together with over 60 Mortadelo fans from the online T.I.A. forum, David Redó created an apocryphal adventure of 'Mortadelo y Filemón' with the title '¡Con "W" de Wolframio!'. With consent of rights owner Ediciones B, this non-profit initiative was published in January 2016 in a digital-only format.
Mortadelo fan story '¡Con "W" de Wolframio!' (2016). The story had several cameos from other comic characters, such as François Walthéry's Natacha in this sample.