'Meu Monarca Favorito'.
Marcelo Tiburcio Vanni - known as simply Tiburcio - is a Brazilian cartoonist, illustrator and commercial artist. After contributing to the Brazilian edition of Mad Magazine, he launched personal projects like the webcomic 'Meu Monarca Favorito' ("My Favorite Monarch", 2011-2019) and the spiritist comic pamphlet series 'Quadrinhos Fraternos' ("Fraternal Comics", 2017- ).
Early life
Marcelo Tiburcio Vanni was born in 1963 in Niterói, and remained a citizen of his Rio de Janeiro suburb ever since. His father was a shoe designer, who molded and stitched handmade shoes. Before her marriage, his mother had been a milliner, sewing dresses for individual clients. Tiburcio's brothers all became engineers. As a child, he could indulge his urges to draw on the many pieces of paper he received from his godmother, who was a shorthand writer for a big company. Important influences on Tiburcio's comics have been Hergé, René Goscinny, Francisco Ibáñez and Dan DeCarlo. Another important inspiration is Walt Disney's Donald Duck - to this day he has the tendency to draw hands with four fingers.
'Mad Business'. Translation: "... but the latest washing powder Brilhex makes your clothing soft and free from bacteria. Are you sure you don't want to try our 30-day offer?" - Nudist colony: "For the thousandth time: NO!".
Early career
In the late 1970s, while still a teenager, Tiburcio published his first comics and cartoons in O Pingo de Gente, the children's supplement of the local Niterói newspaper O Fluminense. He remained an illustrator for the newspaper until he was 20 years old. While studying Visual Communication at the UFRJ School of Fine Arts in Rio de Janeiro (1981-1986), he began working as a freelance artist and caricaturist. During the 1980s, Tiburcio made illustrations and comic strips for trade union newspapers like Revista de Seguros, Indústria e Produtividade, O Café and La Bolsa, as well as in-house publications of companies like CNI, Esso and Senai. Between 1986 and 1993, he was a prominent cartoonist and illustrator for the Brazilian edition of Mad Magazine, published by Editora Record.
Illustrator
During the 1990s, Tiburcio worked for several publishing companies as illustrator for children's literature, textbooks and other educational material. An important client was Editora AO Livro Técnico, for which he illustrated textbooks on history, ecology, physics and English, as well as a couple of children's books. In 1993 and 1997, AO Livro Técnico also released two children's picture books written and illustrated by Tiburcio, starring the detective dogs 'Gino & Polaco'. Since 2010, Tiburcio has returned to book illustration, this time for independently released by titles by authors like Marcio Biasoli, Carlos Figueiredo, Marlize Murteira, Silvina Ramal, Renata Jubran, Carlos Figueiredo and Helival Rios. By the time the digital age set in, Tiburcio developed a specialization in creating electronic art for web purposes, including Flash greeting cards and other animations.
'Gazeta Canina'. The reporters have to interview a wrestling champion, but are warned that he has a complex about his voice. Despite claiming they're "professionals", they still burst out laughing when they hear his squeaky vocals. In the final panel, they phone their boss to tell him they had "a little accident."
Comic creator
Since the early 2000s, Tiburcio has expanded his work on comic strips. Besides doing comics for companies and instructional manuals, he also began developing his own webcomic projects. An early effort was 'Gazeta Canina', a short-lived humor strip about a newspaper run by dogs, scripted by André Diniz. More enduring were his comic projects about historical and spiritist subjects. In 2011, he began a blog with 'Meu Monarca Favorito' ("My Favorite Monarch", 2011-2019), a humorous webcomic freely inspired by the Second Brazilian Empire under the reign of Pedro II of Brazil. Book collections have been released by Editora Kimera and Super Prumo.
'Meu Monarca Favorito', depicting Brazilian emperor Pedro II.
Quadrinhos Fraternos
In the meantime, Tiburcio had also begun making works of a spiritist nature. Since 2010, he has been an illustrator for the Jornal Correio Espírita, a magazine sponsored by the Centro Cultural Correio Espírita, aimed at spiritual elevation. One day, he presented his editors a comic book adaptation of an 'Irmão X' story, based on the writings of spiritist medium Chico Xavier. A monthly publication was however halted because of copyright reasons. Instead, Tiburcio turned to writings that were in the public domain, like the books of the 19th-century French author Allan Kardec. This kicked of 'Quadrinhos Fraternos' ("Fraternal Comics", 2017- ), Tiburcio's four-page comic book series that adapts texts from 'The Gospel According to Spiritism' and Kardec's other books from the 'Spiritist Codification' ('The Spirits Book', 'The Book on Mediums', 'Heaven and Hell', 'The Genesis According to Spiritism'). With a print run of 4,000 copies, the semi-monthly series is financed by the sponsors of the Jornal Correio Espírita.
Quadrinhos Fraternos - 'Ajuda do Invisível'.