'Aladdin and the King of Thieves'.
Carmen Pérez is a Spanish artist who works for European comic productions through Studio Comicup in Barcelona since the early 1990s. She has mainly produced artwork for European Disney publishers, such as Hachette in France and VNU/Sanoma in the Netherlands. For Sanoma, she also provided art for series like 'Nick en Simon' (2011-2013), 'Emme's Dierenwereld' (2014-2016) and 'Tina' (2013-2018) in the girls' magazine Tina.
'Minnie Mouse' gag from Le Journal de Mickey #2318 (1996).
Early Disney comics
Pérez was initially specialized in the "mice universe", and characters that originated in Disney feature films. For France, she illustrated 'Pluto' and 'Mickey Mouse' stories, and many gag pages with 'Minnie', written by Dominique Nicolli. For The Netherlands, she drew short stories and gags with characters like 'Goofy' and/or 'Clarabella Cow', but also a lot of 'Aladdin' stories (written by Frank Jonker) and gags (written by Evert Geradts). She had first showcased her expertise in drawing 'Aladdin' in the mid-1990s, when she drew the graphic novel adaptations of the films 'The Return of Jafar' and 'Aladdin and the King of Thieves' for Disney Europe.
Comic story starring Dutch talk show host Ivo Niehe ("I. Vanille"), published in Troskompas.
Dutch Disney comics
In the 2010s, she became one of the most requested artists by the Dutch editors for stories with 'Donald Duck' and his family. This includes not only stories and gags for the weekly, but also for spin-off publications like Donald Duck Junior, Katrien and specials, as well as other magazines like TV guide Troskompas. Since 2015, she has furthermore illustrated several crowded posters, featuring characters from Donald Duck magazine portraying (well, actually undergoing) famous Dutch sayings and Olympic sports. Perez additionally works for Egmont, the Danish publisher of Disney comics, every now and then. Other Disney characters that have come from her drawing pen include 'The Little Mermaid', 'The Big Bad Wolf', 'Basil from Baker Street', 'Peter Pan' and 'Pinokkio'. Since 2021, Carmen draws the daily 'Donald Duck' gag strip - written by Hugo Sauer - that the Dutch licensee produces for the newspaper AD. She succeeded the original artist Tony Cronstam after 57 strips. Highly productive, Carmen generally provides rough layouts, which are then cleaned by Tony Fernández and finished by a Comicup inker.
Olympic poster from Donald Duck #13, 2016.
Tina
Besides Disney, the Dutch publisher Sanoma has also used Carmen's skills in the girls' magazine Tina. From 2011 to 2013, she has done artwork and lay-outs for the comics feature based on Dutch singers 'Nick en Simon', sometimes with finished artwork by Sergio Garrido or Rafa Ruiz. She has also alternated with Rafa Ruiz on the artwork of the series 'Emme's Dierenwereld' by writer Lucienne van Ek from 2014 to 2016. In 2013, she became the artist of Tina's new title comic, which was developed and plotted (and at first also sketched) by Dutch artist Jan Vriends. By 2016, as her workload for Duck increased, she handed over art duties of this strip to her son, Ruben Montoya. She has continued to make sketch style illustrations for Tina's editorial pages. In 2018 she drew the weekly cartoon/comic strip on Tina's mail page, from plots by Bas Schuddeboom.
Other non-Disney work includes the pencil drawings for a series of interactive picture books starring 'Tom & Jerry' by Benjamin Bird for Capstone Young Readers (2014).
The first 'Emme' story from Tina #23 of 2014.