El Listo (literally The Clever One) is a

webcomic Webcomics (also known as online comics or Internet comics) are comics published on a website or mobile app. While many are published exclusively on the web, others are also published in magazines, newspapers, or comic books. Webcomics can be co ...

character conceptualized by Xavier Àgueda in 2003. Àgueda initially tried to syndicate the strips about his 30-year old

unemployed Unemployment, according to the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), is people above a specified age (usually 15) not being in paid employment or self-employment but currently available for work during the referen ...

engineer Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who invent, design, analyze, build and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while considering the l ...

in magazines, but after getting no response, he decided to start his own website and published his work there. Àgueda uses El Listo to comment on a large variety of topics, such as literature, film, science, politics, and food. Early artwork on the webcomic was provided by Octavi Navarro. Àgueda has presented his webcomic in multiple comic exhibitions since its inception, and he has become a recurring face in the Spanish webcomic scene.

Xavier Àgueda

Xavier Àgueda was born in 1979 in

Barcelona Barcelona ( , , ) is a city on the coast of northeastern Spain. It is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, as well as the second most populous municipality of Spain. With a population of 1.6 million within ci ...

. Àgueda is an engineer and high school teacher, creating cartoons in his spare time. Besides creating ''El Listo'', Àgueda has written a short story in ''L'estiu d'Ulises i altres contes'' as well as the prologues of ''Comics 2.0: Antología del Webcómic'', ''Zombess'', ''Crónicas PSN 3'', and ''Spooky Volumen 2''. Moreover, Àgueda is involved with various webcomic

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, collaborates with the Comic Book Guide, and writes textbooks for Editorial Casals. Àgueda often uses his illustrations in the classes he teaches in

technology Technology is the application of knowledge to reach practical goals in a specifiable and reproducible way. The word ''technology'' may also mean the product of such an endeavor. The use of technology is widely prevalent in medicine, science, ...

and

natural science Natural science is one of the branches of science concerned with the description, understanding and prediction of natural phenomena, based on empirical evidence from observation and experimentation. Mechanisms such as peer review and repeatab ...

. Àgueda described his experiences as a webcomic author in his 2015 autobiography ''Una Amante Complacient''.

Character

The character El Listo is a 30-year old, unemployed engineer, who is drawn with a

monkey Monkey is a common name that may refer to most mammals of the infraorder Simiiformes, also known as the simians. Traditionally, all animals in the group now known as simians are counted as monkeys except the apes, which constitutes an incomple ...

-like appearance. The character reads books, watches films, and studies up on various topics, to the point where he is able to give his opinion on a large variation of subjects. Àgueda admits that the character resembles him to some degree, but has consistently denied that El Listo is based on himself or that his strips are autobiographical. In an interview, Àgueda explained that " l Listostudied the same things as I did, he is about my age and has my hobbies, but he is a caricature. He has things from me, from my friends, and from people I know." El Listo spends his time with the supporting characters El Gordo, El Cachas, Tito, and Borja, which are all caricatures of early 21st century youth archetypes.

Development

Àgueda thought up the character of El Listo in 2003, and quickly drew up four pages with him. However, when he gained no responses from the magazines he contacted about it, Àgueda decided to benefit from the still fairly untapped potential of the

World Wide Web The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system enabling documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet. Documents and downloadable media are made available to the network through web se ...

and put his work online. When Àgueda first uploaded his cartoons, he didn't know what webcomics were and social media services had yet to come into prominence. Inspired by the

WordPress WordPress (WP or WordPress.org) is a free and open-source content management system (CMS) written in hypertext preprocessor language and paired with a MySQL or MariaDB database with supported HTTPS. Features include a plugin architecture ...

template ComicPress, which was designed to be used by cartoonists, Àgueda used

Dreamweaver Adobe Dreamweaver is a proprietary web development tool from Adobe Inc. It was created by Macromedia in 1997 and developed by them until Macromedia was acquired by Adobe Systems in 2005. Adobe Dreamweaver is available for the macOS and Windows ...

to build a website for himself. ''El Listo'' is sometimes published on the '' 20 minutos'' website. Àgueda has exhibited his cartoons at Especula en Acción (

Antequera Antequera () is a city and municipality in the Comarca de Antequera, province of Málaga, part of the Spanish autonomous community of Andalusia. It is known as "the heart of Andalusia" (''el corazón de Andalucía'') because of its central locat ...

, 2006), Humor Gráfico por la Libertad de Prensa (

Madrid Madrid ( , ) is the capital and most populous city of Spain. The city has almost 3.4 million inhabitants and a metropolitan area population of approximately 6.7 million. It is the second-largest city in the European Union (EU), and ...

, 2008), Diez Años Después del Vertido de Aznalcóllar (

Sevilla Seville (; es, Sevilla, ) is the capital and largest city of the Spain, Spanish autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community of Andalusia and the province of Seville. It is situated on the lower reaches of the Guadalquivir, River Gua ...

, 2008), Salón del Humor Erótico de Cuba ( Santa Clara, 2008), Hartos de Arte (

Vitoria-Gasteiz es, vitoriano, vitoriana, , population_density_km2 = auto , blank_name_sec1 = Official language(s) , blank_info_sec1 = Spanish, Basque , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

, 2009), Maldita la gracia (Madrid, 2010), and Escolta Espanya! ep, que hi ha algú? (Barcelona, 2011). The 42nd compilation album of ''TMEO'' magazine, published in 2011, was dedicated to El Listo, with a prologue by Mauro Entrialgo.

Publications

* 2011 ''El Listo''. TMEO Ezten Kultur Taldea. * 2013 ''Una amante complaciente''. * 2015 ''Oxitocinas''. TMEO Ezten Kultur Taldea. * 2017 ''Liguepedia''. Fandogamia. * 2019 ''Cardio''. Underbrain Books.

References

External links

* {{Official website, Listocomics.com Webcomic characters 2003 webcomic debuts 2000s webcomics Spanish webcomics Internet characters introduced in 2003