Of all the Spanish artists who found themselves working for British publishers during the British comics' boom of the 1950s-1960s, José Ortiz was one of the longest survivors. Such is his longevity, that he has fans for each of the decades he worked in the UK: those who grew up in the 1960s will remember his as the artist of countless war libraries as well as UFO Agent and its sequel Smokeman in
Eagle; fans in the 1970s are more likely to remember his work in nursery or girls comics or his eight month run as the artist of "The Persuaders" in
TV Action; in the 1980s he helped relaunch the
Eagle with fantasies "The Tower King" and "The Fifth Horseman" and went on to draw the long-running horror series "The Thirteenth Floor" and various tales of the genetically-adapted warrior "Rogue Trooper".
At the same time, Ortiz is widely recognised as one of the masters of comic art in his native Spain as the artist of "Hombre" and "Burton y Cyb" and one of the most popular contributors to the American horror magazines published by James Warren.
Born José Ortiz Moya in Cartagena, Murcia, Spain, on 1 September 1932, the son of a painter of watercolours, he was the younger brother of Leopoldo Ortiz by almost exactly two years, but the two progressed through the comics industry almost in parallel during the 1950s. After winning a competition held by
Chicos magazine, at the age of 16 Ortiz began working for Manuel Gago's Editorial Maga publishing company on the series
El Espia [The Spy] in 1951, which he signed Zitro (Ortiz backwards). Gago was the hugely popular creator of "El Guerrero del Antifaz" [The Warrior Mask] and had moved to Valencia, where the strip was published by Juan Bautista Sorianos' Editorial Valencia. Ortiz and others — Leopoldo Ortiz and Luis Bermejo amongst them — joined Gago, Miguel Quesada and Pastor Eduardo Vañó in Valencia, helping to establish what has become known as the Escuela Valenciana or Valencian school of art.
Ortiz worked extensively for Editorial Maga for the next decade, working on
El Capitan Don Nadie [Captain Don Nobody] (1952),
El Principe Pablo [Prince Paul] (covers only, 1953-54),
Coleccion Comandos (1954),
Sebastián Vargas (1954),
Don Barry, El Terremoto [Dan Barry, Earthquake] (1954),
Balin (1955),
Pantera Negra [Black Panther] (1956),
El duque negro [The Black Duke] (1957),
Apache (1958),
Bengala (1959) and
Johnny Fogata (1960). Of these, Ortiz was probably best-known for the western adventures of Don Barry, which ran for 76 issues and 3 'annuals' in 1954-57; Ortiz also drew the first 31 issues of another popular western,
Johnny Fogata.
By the late 1950s, Ortiz was also establishing himself with other publishers, such as Toray, with such strips as
Sigur el Wikingo [Sigur the Viking] and stories of the wild west in the anthology Hazañas del Oeste; for Bruguera he produced stories for
Bisonte Extra Ilustrada, distributed almost exclusively in Argentina, and adaptations for
Colección Historias such as "Los Viajes de Gulliver" [Gulliver's Travels] and "Las Cruzadas" [The Crusades].
Ortiz had made his British debut in 1957 with "In Love's Trap" in D. C. Thomson's early romantic pocket library
Love and Life; other early sales to
Thriller Picture Library and
Top Spot followed, but it was 1960 before he established himself as a regular in Ted Bensberg's war libraries department, producing three dozen stories for
War,
Battle,
War at Sea and
Air Ace libraries between 1960-67. In 1962-63 he drew the short-lived "Caroline Baker, Barrister-at-Law" for the
Daily Express, preparing for the task of illustrating the adventures of a female lawyer by coming to the UK and making sketches at a magistrate's court.
In 1964, Ortiz took over the character of John Brody for Boys' World and produced "The Green Men" in colour on the rear page for seven weeks. He later took over the adventures of "UFO Agent" Major Grant in the original
Eagle, which, exploiting the popularity for American superheroes that followed the appearance of the
Batman TV show, became the superhero "Smokeman", then, when that bubble burst within the year, became a member of the C.I.D. When "Grant (C.I.D.)" came to an end, Ortiz continued to work for
Eagle on the aerial pirates yarn, "Sky Buccaneers".
Ortiz also found work in the pages of
Lion where he drew "Trelawny's Mob", "The Phantom Viking" and "The 10,000 Disasters of Dort" over the next couple of years. However, he found himself in something of a backwater after that, drawing one-off romantic stories for
Valentine and
Romeo and illustrations and fairy tales for
Once Upon a Time. He briefly resurged in the pages of
TV Action drawing "The Persuaders" and was drawing for D. C. Thomson's
Diana nad
Warlord when the opportunity came to work for James Warren's magazines in the USA.
Ortiz's agent, Josep Toutain of Selecciones Illustrades, created for publication in Spain and in the US in the early 1970s and - like many of his contemporaries - Ortiz saw the American market as a way of escaping the strictures of the British comics' market and earn a better return for his efforts. With James Warren's horror comics
Vampirella,
Eerie and others, he found the market he was looking for and, as David Roach records in
The Warren Companion, "At Warren he embraced the 'new look' with relish to produce a succession of superbly-drawn stories such as "Coffin", "Jackass", and his masterpiece, "The Apocalypse" (which ran in
Eerie #62-65). This looked like it wasn't so much inked as feverishly scratched out of a morass of black ink and seething textures." He was named Warren's Best All Around Artist in 1974.
Although Ortiz could not maintain this intensity, he became Warren's most prolific artist, contributing 119 strips to the Warren magazines, abandoning the UK market but maintaining a presence in Spain and Europe with strips such as "El Cuervo" for
Kung-Fu (1976), "Los Grandes Mitos del Oeste" [Great Myths of the West] (1978) and
El Nuevo Tarzan (1979-81).
As the Warren magazines lost circulation, Ortiz found a new market in Spain where new comics aimed at an older audience such as
Cimoc, for which Ortiz teamed up with Antonio Segura on the western series "Hombre" in 1981. In 1983 he teamed up with his nephew Leopoldo Sanchez who, with writer Mariano Hispano,was co-founder of Ediciones Metropol; Ortiz contributed a number of strips to their three titles,
Metropol,
Mocambo and
KO Comics, including "Hombre" in the latter. Although Ediciones Metropol lasted only a year, Ortiz was able to concentrate on contributing strips to the new adult comics published by Toutain Editor, such as "Las mil caras de Jack el Destripador" [Jack the Ripper] (1984) for
Creepy, and Norma Editorial. In 1987 he created, with Segura, "Burton y Cyb" for
Zona 84 (and, later,
Comix Internacional) and "Morgan", which debuted as "Ives" in
Metropol before being revived in
Cimoc.
During the same period, Ortiz was a regular presence in
Eagle in Britain, producing the sole comic strip for the newly relaunched boys' photo-weekly. The paper soon became a more regular comic, for which Ortiz continued to contribute "The Amstor Computer", "News Team" and the long-running "The Thirteenth Floor", which debuted in
Scream! in 1984 and continued in
Eagle & Scream! until 1987.
Ortiz also contributed to
2000AD, mostly illustrating "Rogue Trooper", but also single episodes of "The Helltrekkers" and "Judge Dredd" (1987). His last strips in the UK were "Kid Cops" for
Eagle (1988) nad "Kitten Magee" in
WildCat and the merged
Eagle & WildCat (1988-89). Contemporarily, he also briefly worked on
Sabre for Eclipse and a number of stories appeared in
Heavy Metal.
In the early 1990s Ortiz drew "Bud O'Brien" (for
Torpedo) and "Ozone" (for
L'Eternauta), and contributed two volumes to a lavish collection of books from Planeta-Deagostini with the overall title Tales of the New World: #2
La civilización Inca: Los Hijos del Sol (1991) and #25
Orígenes del hombre Americano: Los Primeros (1992).
For the majority of the 1990s and 2000, Ortiz has worked for Sergio Bonelli on the famous Italian western
Tex. He has also drawn episodes of "Ken Parker" and "Magico Vento" for their respective titles.
In 1998, Ortiz was awarded the Parparajote de Oro by the Asociación de Amigos del Tebeo de la Región de Murcia.
Examples of Jose Ortiz's artwork can be found for sale at the Illustration Art Gallery.
