Untitled Document

Juan Manuel Cicuéndez was born in the Spanish village of "La Puebla de Almoradiel" in Toledo. He did his primary studies in his home village, moved to the town of "Tarancon" in Cuenca to commence his secondary education and from there to a boarding school run by the Marist Brothers in Toledo.

He moved to Madrid when he was 16 to pursue technical studies but mathematics wasn't his forte... All this resulted in his parent's despair as all efforts and sacrifices had been wasted. Their son wanted to become a mere comic artist. What a disgrace!!

From here, Juan Manuel Cicuéndez´s life isn't any different from other artists: unfinished studies, family dramas and the long, enduring fight to achieve the publication of his work as he continued his training. His first comic was published in the Clarin magazine when he was 17 years old.

In 1959 he embarked on his first periodic comic publications: first in the 3 Amigos magazine and later in several collections belonging to the Ferma publishing company from Barcelona, with whom he was associated for some time.

Juan Manuel Cicuéndez´s first international experience was in 1965 in the UK, where he published war booklets of 64 pages as well as collaborating with other magazines such as Hotspur, Eagle, etc. After this, he commenced work for the prestigious weekly magazine Spirou through the Belgian agency Word Presse. Later, in 1968 he signed a contract with Editions J. Dupuis, owner of Spirou magazine, to work for them on the comic Les Histoires de l'oncle Paul (these were short stories relating historical events that were published weekly).

He also worked on the serie Les Trafiquans d'Ébène, which was awarded the St. Michel prize. His collaborations with the Spirou magazine continued until 1976.

In 1975 the same publisher created the collection L'Histoire en bandes dessinées in album form. Most of the Oncle Paul work by Juan Manuel Cicuéndez appeared in this collection.

This period, working for Spirou (one of the most intensive periods of the professional life of Juan Manuel Cicuéndez) gave him great experience and played a major part in both his cultural and artistic development. The fantastic scripts written by O. Joly for Oncle Paul inspired Juan Manuel Cicuéndez to research extensively in order to attain a better historical knowledge: an essential requirement in order to achieve accuracy of historical settings as scripts could be set in prehistoric times, the French revolution, discovery of cathode-rays and so on...

The period spanning 1975-77 was a time filled with great creative activity. During this time two pieces of work can be highlighted: La Estampida del Oro and Los Mayas. Both were published in Spanish magazines, first in El Acordeon and secondly in Piñón.

Los Mayas had an across-borders projection and was published in other languages. In 1980 it was published in French and Flemish by Spirou and from there went to almost all countries in Europe including Turkey. In 1988 it was reissued in Spain by Everest publishing co.

Between 1978 and 1983 Juan Manuel Cicuéndez worked for the French-Belgian magazine Tintin, working on Le Chevalier Noir and Les Mercenaires du Ciel, with scripts from Y.Duval. Part of this work was also published in Spain by the Nueva Frontera publishing co.

In 1980, amidst the decline of European comics, Juan Manuel Cicuéndez started to work on book illustration. This continues up to the present along with comic work.

In 1987 Juan Manuel Cicuéndez created the character Tim Taylor with scripts from A. Gomez Cerdá for Editions Lug (Lyon). This was a nine episode western of 64 pages each published monthly in the French magazine Rodeo.

In the 90s, he began a new phase in his artistic work and career (from here onwards he signs his creation with "Cic") working on aeronautical themes. It should be pointed out that his passion for aviation isn't new as some of his past work also dealt with this theme, such as Les Aventuriers du Ciel (issued by Editions J. Dupuis), the aforementioned Les Mercenaires du Ciel (published in Tintin) and other short stories about aviation. In this new phase his work was a set of monographic episodes comprising Spanish aeronautical history. To date, three volumes have been published: Guerra aérea sobre el Marruecos español (1913-1927), En busca de la aventura aérea (1926-1936) and Nuestros pioneros (...-1913).

During this decade several short stories were also carried out for the magazine Aeroplano, not to mention the fantastic illustrations Efemérides Aeronáuticas for the magazine Aeronáutica y Astronáutica (from March 95 till February 97) belonging to the Spanish Air Force.

There is another piece of work from this period that should also be mentioned: Castilla-La Mancha, una Aventura, a 100 page comic written by Angel Flores and Antonio Perera about the history, art and architecture of the Spanish region of Castilla-La Mancha.

Well into the XXI century –apart from his work as illustrator-, in 2001 he published Don Bosco, Nuestro Amigo (of which there’s also a French edition) with the CCS group; in the 2002 he worked on El Chatarrero de Dios.

In 2005 he published a comicbook about Eugene of Mazenod's life titled: Eugenio de Mazenod "Corazón de fuego". Actually, in the 2007, this comicbook has been published in Germany, Austria and Czech Republic.