'O Vingador Mascarado'.
Sebastião Seabra is a Brazilian drawing teacher, comic artist, cartoonist and illustrator, also known as Zéfiro. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, he has worked on a great many erotic comics published in the São Paulo region, but also in Europe. Among his best known creations are the sensual 'Catwoman' ('A Mulher Gato', 1990) and the hermaphrodite 'Close' (1991), as well as the superhero 'O Vingador Mascarado' (1991).
Early life and influences
Sebastião Rodrigues Seabra was born in 1958 in Araraquara. In 1969 he moved with his family to the Brazilian capital São Paulo, where he developed a keen passion for comics, drawing and 1960s pop culture. As a child, Seabra already made several drawings of The Beatles. He finetuned his skills with the guidebook 'Anatomy & Drawing' by Victor Perard, and was especially captivated by the art of anatomy. Seabra ranks among his major influences both classic and modern American comic book artists such as Joe Kubert, Charles Flanders, Jack Kirby, Gene Colan, Steve Ditko, John Romita Sr, Neal Adams, John Buscema, Paul Gulacy and Joe Madureira.
Early comics work
Together with his friend and scriptwriter Franco De Rosa, he made his debut in the newspaper Notícias Populares with the daily comic strip 'Capitão Caatinga' (1974-1978). For the same paper, he also made the humor panel 'Chucrutz'. In 1979 he began drawing covers and stories with 'Zorro' for Editora EBAL in Rio de Janeiro.
'Doença Venérea' (Quadrinhos Eróticos #13, 1979).
Erotic comics
Around the same time, Seabra, along with fellow craftsmen Ataide Braz and Roberto Kussumoto, began making erotic comics stories for the Curitiba-based publisher Grafipar and its publications Personal, Quadrinhos Eróticos, Próton, Volúpia and Sexo em Quadrinhos. In the next decade he worked on stories in the same genre for Hot Girls and Contos Excitantes, two publications by Noblet, and for Close Quadrinhos Eróticos by Editora Press. Later in the 1980s he joined his friend Franco De Rosa, also a former editor at Grafipar, to the new label Nova Sampa, which published Horas de Vampiro and Quadrinhos Eróticos. His most notable creation for this publisher was 'Close', a hermaphrodite protagonist who starred in the magazine of the same name. It became one of Nova Sampa's most successful publications, attributed largely to the popularity at the time of transgender model Roberta Close.
As his erotic work became more and more pornographic, Seabra started using the pen name Sebastião Zéfiro as a tribute to the legendary artist of pornographic comics from the 1960s, Carlos Zéfiro. The Zéfiro signature also helped him to keep his adult work under the radar, as Seabra was by then also a productive artist for school and educational books.
'Mitos & Crenças', drawn by Seabra & Femix (Quadrinhos Eróticos #65).
Commercial art and cartooning
The 1980s saw Seabra not only working for nearly every publisher of erotic comics in São Paulo, but also for many advertising agencies, publishing houses and newspapers. One of his creations during this period was the character 'Super Honda', which appeared in the automotive magazine Clube Honda, edited by Reginaldo Leme. The colours were provided by Seabra's friend Josmar Fevereiro. In 1983 he returned to Araquara, where he published his own weekly page about comics and pop culture. The second half of the 1980s saw the artist working mainly as a political cartoonist and caricaturist for local newspapers and magazines. He was awarded the Angelo Agostini prize as best artist of the year 1986.
O Vingador Mascarado
Sebastião Seabra returned to comics more prominently in 1990, when he created his own character, 'O Vingador Mascarado', for the publishing house Phenix. The Brazilian superhero made its debut in the Almanaque Phenix Superação in July 1991. The second and third short story didn't appear until 1999 in Super Club by Editora Canaã, but the idea of launching a 'O Vingador Mascarado' comic book by Editora Escala was never realized. Even though only a handful of stories exist, the "Masked Avenger" is considered Seabra's best known creation.
'Catwoman'.
Agency work
Like Arthur Garcia, Mozart Couto, Roberto Kussumoto and Rodval Matias, Sebastião Seabra was working for a European audience through the Belgian agency Commu International in the 1990s. His "noir" erotic albums starring the sexy 'Catwoman' ('Rose, A Mulher Gato', 'A Volta da Mulher Gato'), as well as 'John Àskesis' and 'A Porta Dourada' ('La Porte Dorée'), were published in Europe by Magic Strip (French) and Loempia (Dutch). Some of his European work was published under the pen name J. Brown.
Seabra in the 2000s
In 2003, the publisher Opera Graphica published 'Na Trilha do Prazer', a trade paperback with with the erotic comics created by Seabra under pseudonyms. More recent comics work include comic adaptations of the novels 'Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas' by Machado de Assis and 'A Moreninha' by Joaquim Manuel de Macedo for Escala Educacional's 'Literatura Brasileira em Quadrinhos' collection (2004-2005). The scripts for these adaptations were by Maria Sonia Barbosa.
For many years, Seabra has been working as a drawing teacher in Araraquara. He is the author of guide books and how-to-draw magazines (such as 'Como Desenhar Mulheres' and 'A Figura Masculina') which were either self-published or released by Editora Escala and Editora Minuano.
Sample from one of Seabra's drawing courses.