Liniers (cartoonist)

Ricardo Siri (Liniers) (born November 15, 1973) is a cartoonist and author from Argentina.

Interview (2021)

 * Being from the “Star Wars” generation, trilogies are important to me.


 * I have no idea what “the reader” wants or who they are; I’ve always drawn the strip that I would like to read and then hoped that someone else would find it worth reading, too.


 * Every parent wishes their kids came with a Pause button. But they don’t have one, and you begin to realize that every age is fascinating. Still, I think I made these books to keep a piece of their childhoods with me. Later, I’ll get to show them how incredible—how small, goofy, and wild—they all were.

Interview (2017)

 * Buenas Noches, Planeta is a short story about a stuffed little deer, that my actual daughter has, and when I asked her what's the name of your new friend she said "Planeta," which is planet in English, and I thought it was the weirdest, funniest, coolest name I have ever heard for a stuffy. So then the story came out of that.


 * my favorite illustrators and cartoonists in history were published (in the New Yorker)


 * Kevin Johansen is an American-Argentine musician who was born in Alaska. We have been doing a show together for the last 10 years in which, while Kevin sings with his band, I sit right next to him on a desk and I draw. It's the nerdiest version of a rock star. And it's fun!


 * I always think that in a boxing match you should always put a normal person in there, to throw in some punches. You need something to just compare how good people really are at what they do!


 * Andrés Calamaro is a legendary, very famous, mythical musician in Argentina and in Latin America, and I have done cover art for him. I did one too for Kevin, for an album called Logo, and in that one I put a Zeppelin. And then, the cover I did for Calamaro for La Lengua Popular


 * La Editorial Común is a project in which we started publishing comics of cartoonists in Argentina. Argentina is strange country, and for some reason there's always been a lot of cartoonists and comic artists that come from there, and most of them end up working here in the U.S. or even in Europe. But those books sometimes are not published in Argentina. So maybe nobody knows in Argentina who José Muñoz is, or who Trillo is, or who know who Altuna is. They are very amazing cartoonists. And for some reason in Argentina a lot of their books are not available. So we started trying to do something about that, and also try to get hype for the boom of the graphic novel in Latin America, which had been happening over the last 30 years in many other parts of the world. And especially we wanted to do it in Argentina because people there are still kind of, you know, they have this idea that comics are just adventures and jokes. And that's kind of saying the same thing like good movies are just Chuck Norris films and Jerry Lewis. And those are good films! But now, La Editorial helps us get more of those books down there.


 * So in my cartooning there's an influx of a lot of influences that are not only from cartooning, but to mention some: Hergé and Tintin, Quino and Mafalda, Art Spiegelman and Maus. And these works have influenced me more as a human being than as an artist. Also I could mention Woody Allen, Kurt Vonnegut, John Steinbeck as some others. A lot of my influences will show up in my daily strip, so I have strips were maybe Chaplin shows up, or strips where Snoopy shows up, or strips where I put a little phrase by Vonnegut or Steinbeck, or, you know, Harper Lee, stuff that I read while growing up. And knowing that they impacted me somehow. You know, Woody Allen, and Monty Python, and just all of that is in there, and also a lot of Latin American culture. So I am just this big salad full of different ingredients. And I generally don't think it's very nice when an artist tries to go like, "Hey, I just appeared out of nowhere! I am such an original." I mean, say thanks, man!


 * Macanudo is like a schizophrenic strip so it's everything I grew up reading, like Peanuts, like Calvin And Hobbes.


 * The Simpsons is like a Bible for comic artists!