Toni Planissi: "It's a story of characters so concerned with building their truth, that they end up forgetting it"

ManacorToni Planissi (Manacor, 1973) is a discreet man and an extraordinary author. A modesty that quickly dissolves when one begins to leaf through the pages of his new graphic novel Todas las mentiras conducen a la verdad, the story of two worlds confronting each other to defend a reality that each one believes to be their own and unshakeable. An ironic critique of politics, religion, and the foundations of agreed-upon truths, but often sustained by lies.

"I started the story on a rooftop in Sineu, during the evenings confined during the pandemic, while watching the pigeons move, their way of walking or moving their heads. That was the beginning," he confesses while holding the book, the first release from the new Manacor publishing house 07500, linked to the active magazine of the same postal code, directed by Sebastià Sansó.

"While observing, I began to meditate on life, on God, what is just and unjust… and from these reflections, a plotline emerged about a planet B and the struggle between two ways of doing and understanding the world," adds Planissi, who, as in other titles already published with Xisco Fuster as screenwriter, once again draws in pencil, in black and white and only with small bluish touches of watercolor for some precious cloudscapes.

"I have always liked black and white films, the shadows of indirect lights, the way images are created." All this related to a humor that draws from Monty Python and an evocative surrealism that makes you unable to stop observing how the pages unfold. A particular way of doing things that already led him to be the best-selling Catalan comic author in the history of the Balearic Islands with The Last Days of the Majorcan Empire.

"Three years ago we set out to publish a magazine on paper. A publication in which, every January, we try to tell stories that depart from the norm and the usual margins that guide daily journalism," recalls Sansó. Toni Planissi was, precisely, the author of the cover of the third issue of the magazine: a non-dystopian allegory of the collapse in which we Mallorcans are immersed, as a direct consequence of ever more uncontrolled and disturbing mass tourism.

"I have something else. A very personal story that I want to show you, in case you think we can do something with it," said Planissi when the editor handed him the copy with his cover. "When I started to see the plates, with such a unique drawing, I immediately assumed that we had to publish it, no matter what." "It is a story of characters so concerned with constructing their truth that they end up forgetting it."

From paintings to comics

He begins his artistic career as a landscape painter. From 2003 onwards, he begins to collaborate in the local press, first with comic strips and later through the illustration of full pages in which, periodically, he brings out the colors of island society and politics.

In the company of Miquel Orlandis and Xisco Fuster, in 2010 he publishes Pollamari (Desidia Edicions), a surrealist and cult poetry book. The admiration that the book awakens in the Mallorcan media and critics activates a growing interest in his future works.

The Fuster-Planissi tandem, in fact, continues to generate his most ambitious work, published in 2014 and titled Els darrers dies de l’Imperi Mallorquí (Edicions del Despropòsit), a satire of the life and (bad) customs of a decadent society, which would be followed by Un infern a Mallorca (Edicions del Despropòsit) four years later. In 2024 he finally publishes Una preqüela de l’Imperi Mallorquí (El Gall Editor).

If you want to buy a copy, you can do so here.