By Juan Gimenez (Catalan Communications)
ISBN: 978-0-87416-012-3 (Album PB), Del Rey edition (2005): 978-0-34548-314-0 (PB)
The pandemic is hitting hard and hitting everywhere now. Here’s a rather rushed response to news that a global giant has been taken from us. I’ll have more in the days to come: reviews of his more recent triumphs and books you can get in digital formats, unlike this lost classic that – as always – is long overdue for a new edition…
Juan Antonio Giménez López was born in Mendoza, Argentina in 1943 and after studying industrial design, attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Barcelona. Hugely influenced by Hugo Pratt and Francisco Solano López, Giménez broke into the comics field with stories for Argentine magazines Record and Colomba before beginning a long association with European comics in such publications as Spain’s Zona 84, Comix International and 1994; France’s Metal Hurlant and Italy’s Lanciostory, L’Eternauta and Skorpio. He ultimately attained critical acclaim and gaining global fame with his scintillant Metabarons series produced in collaboration with Alejandro Jodorowsky.
Giménez’s preferred metier was adult-oriented tales of science fiction and/or combat. He was an accredited expert on all things avionic or to do with air combat. Back in 1985, Catalan Communications collected into one gloriously baroque and stunningly beautiful fantasy anthology a selection of time-travel related short stories – many of which had appeared in American Heavy Metal – usually known as The Time Paradox Tales. Dark, sardonic and incorporating sublimely lyrical overtones of classic 2000AD Future Shocks or Twisted Times, these are a feast of irresistible “sting-in-the-tale†stories…
Following an expansive and lavishly illustrated critique from Carlos Gimenez (no relation), the elegantly lush procession of exotic, eccentric 8-page excitements begins with ‘DIY’, wherein a father and son meddle with the wrong home-computer program and dear old dad ends up a terrified touchline visitor at some of the most dangerous moments of all time and space…
Following on, ‘Tridisex’ details the horrific fate of a couple of salacious chronal researchers who land in the right place at the right time but at the wrong size, after which ‘Express’ sees a dedicated time-assassin dispatched into the past to unwittingly murder himself before ‘Entropy’ details a tragic timeslip which causes the greatest combat aircraft of two eras to experience the closest of encounters…
‘8½’ then explores the secret advantage of the fastest gunslinger of the Wild West and recounts the fate of a time-tourist who rooted for him whilst a tragic synchronicity-loop and incomprehensible paradox at last explains the great leap forward of an ancient civilisation in ‘Chronology’…
‘Residue’ takes the exercise in futility that is war to its inescapable conclusion in a lustrous four-page paean to technological advantage, bringing this magnificent artistic treat to a close on the darkest of downbeats…
Gritty, witty and ever so pretty, A Matter of Time is pure speculative gold: old-fashioned, cutting-edge fantasy fun and electrically-charged entertainment with a satirical edge and its tongue firmly in its cheek. Perfume for the eyes so breathe deeply and jump aboard.
In later years, the Master’s fantasy forays grew ever more ambitious. Whilst working with fellow Argentinian émigré Ricardo Barreiro on As de Pique and The City, he collaborated with industry giants such as Carlos Trillo, Emilio Balcarce and Roberto Dal Prà .
A gifted writer, he generated many of his own classic yarns. However, in 1992, after completing his own space opera epic The Fourth Power, he began an astounding 8-volume run on his visual magnum opus – illustrating Jodorowsky’s The Metabarons: expanding the universe built by Moebius and reshaping the nature and scope of graphic sci fi forever.
Juan Giménez died on April 2nd 2020 at his home in Mendoza, from complications of COVID-19.
© 1982-1985 Juan Gimenez. English translation © 1985 Catalan Communications. All rights reserved.