Ángel Del Árbol was a Catalan comic book artist, who worked for several publishing houses in the Barcelona region during the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. He provided cover and interior artwork to action comics ('Selva Rebelde', 'Aventuras Deportivas'), romance comics ('Laura', 'Cuentos Gigante Tres Hadas') and horror comics ('Macabro'), and later worked for foreign publishers on funny animal comics such as 'Robbie' and 'Tom & Jerry'. Some sources misspell his name as "Del Argol".
'Aventuras Deportivas' #17 (1957).
Early comics
Ángel Garcia Del Árbol was born in 1936 in León, the capital of the province Castile and León in north-western Spain. Del Arbol began his career drawing for the fairy tale comics collection 'Los Mil Y Un Cuentos', published by Ameller in Barcelona from the late 1940s until the early 1950s. Other artists for these landscape format-shaped mini-comics were Tomás Porto and Maria Pascual Alberich. In the second half of the 1950s, Del Arbol was affiliated with the publishing house Exclusivas Gráficas Ricart, where he provided cover and interior art for the small-format action comic book 'Selva Rebelde' (1956-1957) and the sports title 'Aventuras Deportivas' (1957).
From: 'Sissi Juvenil' #197.
Romance comics
Around the turn of the decade, Del Árbol switched from action to romance, when he drew for girls' comics like the landscape format-shaped title 'Laura' (1959) for Editorial Ferma and the regular formats 'Dos Corazones' (1959) and 'Cuentos Gigante Tres Hadas' (1960) for Inedi Industria Editorial. He continued to work in this genre for Ediciones Bistagne's 'Collecíon Idilio' (1961), which consisted of mini-comic books based on romance films, and for Editorial Bruguera's 'Sissi Juvenil' (1962). Further work of the 1960s includes artwork for the war comic book 'Grandes Abatallas' (1965) by Editorial Ferma.
Unknown funny animal comic, presumably for a non-Spanish publisher.
Agency work
In the 1970s, Del Arbol provided artwork to horror comic books such as 'Fórmula 1. Aventuas' (1971) by Editorial Presidente and 'Macabro' (1974) by Ediciones Ursus. During this decade, the artist was however most notable as an agency artist, working for the German comic book market. For Bastei Verlag, he drew adventures of 'Buffalo Bill' (1970) for the comic book Lasso. He also created the lighthouse-keeper walrus 'Robbie' for Bastei Verlag's Felix Extra (1972). The character appeared in France in 12 issues of his own comic book in the Mon Journal collection of Éditions Aventures et Voyages in 1976-1977. The 'Robbie' comic book also published the adventures of Alfonso Borillo's kangaroo 'Wippy'. Through Josep Toutain's agency Selecciones Ilustradas, Del Árbol drew six stories with Walt Disney's 'The Big Bad Wolf' (1973-1974) and one with 'Donald Duck' (1980) for the Danish publisher Gutenberghus. In the 1980s he illustrated comic stories with the cartoon characters 'Tom & Jerry', originally created by Hanna-Barbera. Again for Bastei Verlag, and through Studio Ortega, he was one of two artists - the other one was Bernardo Serrat - making original content with the famous Belgian comic cowboy 'Lucky Luke', created by Morris. Written by Peter Mennigen, the short stories and gags were published in the German 'Lucky Luke' comic book (1993-1994).
Death
In 2019 Angel Del Arbol passed away in Barcelona.
