'Patote'.
Juanele Tamal is a Mexican physicist and part-time cartoonist, who started out in Mexico's indie comics scene in 2007. Since 2011, Editorial Resistencia has published several of his comic books, starring either the little boy Moquito or his many funny animal characters, including Patote the duck, Borola the dog and Chocolomo the cat.
Life and career
Juan Manuel Ramírez de Arellano was born in 1982 in Mexico City, and has been drawing cartoons and comic strips since his childhood. In 2012, he earned his Ph.D. in physics from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). Since then, he has been working as a physics professor at the Mexico City campus of Tecnologico de Monterrey, one of the largest university systems in Latin America. He is actively doing research in computational solid state physics and publishing papers in scientific journals, while on the side working as a cartoonist under the pen name Juanele Tamal (he mostly uses only "Juanele"). Among his main graphic influences are Carl Barks, Walt Kelly, Dik Browne, Hergé, and Sergio Aragonés.
'La Abuelita Karateka' strip of 10 May 2020.
Cartoonist
Juanele Tamel describes his comics as a mix of adventure, humor and Mexican folklore. In 2007, he won an Information Transparency contest, held by the city of Ecatepec, with a comic strip about a corrupt politician. Since then, he has been spending more time on developing his cartooning skills, self-publishing comic books with characters like La Abuelita Karateka ("Granny Karateka") and launching his Moco-Comics website. Over the years, comics by Juanele have appeared in magazines like El Chamuco, the Mexican edition of MAD and ¡#$%&! Cómics, an indie comic anthology from Monterrey. Outside of Mexico, his work has been published in the zines Karton (Poland) and ¡Caramba! (Spain). By 2011, Juanele's work was picked up by the Mexico City-based publisher Editorial Resistencia, that started with releasing his comic book 'Moquito: el Secreto del Convento Mutante' (2011), about the humorous adventures of a little boy. Accompanied by his grandfather and dog, Moquito returned in 'Moquito y la Leyenda Colonial' (2018), a graphic novel based on the Mexican legend of the 18th-century murderer Don Manuel de Solórzano.
Covers for 'Moquito y la Leyenda Colonial' (2018) and 'Chancho' (2022).
Funny animal comics
Juanele Tamal is best-known as the creator of several funny animal characters, most notably the vagabond duck Patote. The foundations for this funny animal world were paved during the cartoonist's teenage years, when he had three ducks as pets. Since the birds were never at peace, the boy imagined countless funny situations starring them. He captured his ideas in drawings and comic stories, which he then photocopied and distributed among his friends. Since 2010, Juanele has expanded his funny animal world with many other characters, appearing in strips published on his Moco-Comics website. In 2013, Editorial Resistencia released first story collection under the title 'Patato', which not only starred Juanele's homeless duck, but also his swindling cousins Patas Negras and Pato Blanco, Patato's dandy crocodile friend Chonito, the fraudster mouse Bubónico and the worm Cuco.
'Patote' (2013).
In Juanele's second funny animal collection with Resistencia, 'Mascotas Chenchas' (2016), the lead characters are Borola the dog and Chocolomo the cat, who try to rescue their kidnapped vet. In 'Banquete Familiar' (2017) - which came with a foreword by the renown Mexican cartoonist Luis Fernando - Patote and Chonito go on a treasure hunt with Luchito, a little crocodile that appears to be Chonito's son. The landscape-format book 'El Que Tranza Avanza' ("If You Ain't Cheatin' You Ain't Tryin'", 2019) was another story collection, covering subjects like abuse, impudence and injustice. In his 2022 book 'Chancho', Juanele used an anthropomorphic pig boy and his father to tell a personal story about parenthood and death.
'Patote'.
Self-publishing
Since 2022, Juanele has self-published several of his funny animal collections in the English language, for instance 'Pet-Posterous!' (2022) and 'The Skewer Game!' (2022). His self-published anthology '¡Golpe a la crisis!: y otras historias' (2022) collected stories with several of his creations, including La Abuelita Karateka and her grandson, the heroic student Pepo as well as Patote and his friends.
'Patote'.