Symmetry is a mysterious art, a dark secret for the initiated, a vice for the virtuous. “Will I be or won’t I be? Will you or won’t you?” someone struggling with bipolar issues and existential doubts might ask themselves. José Pablo García from Malaga sits in a Mexican restaurant, and this is it: for him, those circular phrases or words that are read equally from left to right and from right to left, have a magical breath, a kind of unfathomable mystery that has led him for years to read anything backwards, just in case. So he took the letter and said. “Quesadilla, I don’t know. But let’s see, Coca-Cola, okay… Crazy, coke. It was already there!
Garcia just posted Palindrostrips (Autsider Comic), a gorgeous volume of three-layered symmetrical illustrations: this is an anthology, a tribute to the best cartoonists with graphic humor, and each page covers the stages of civilization: from classical Greece to atomic apocalypse, the history of humanity fits in here. This is how the publisher classifies it: “Art with esdrújulas, world classics, declassified documents, embellished material, sensitive material, virtusosimo pinnacle.”
There is an underworld of people who turn words, constructing phrases, poems, plays, and even the Bible with them. They form a club that meets once a year in a village and plays with letters to see what comes out. “There are very talented people and very crazy people. Why don’t we say that? We all have the same mental defect.”
Garcia has been creating strange collages for more than a decade: he creates analogue images and accompanies them with images of the moment, creating creatures that function as a meme. Notable examples include: Urdangarin and King Juan Carlos I on board the ship Bribon. Did he steal the brother-in-law with the king on the port side? For some time now, he has been accompanied on the Palindrotiras social media accounts by Raúl Ortiz and Roberto Sánchez Peramento, who now also collaborate in the hard copy. He recruited first thanks to Ivan Redondo; The second was recorded with a palindrome: Without clothes Gasol and the lovebirds. Which is more He loves It was harvested on the date of calculation at X.
José Pablo García is the author of graphic novels that adapt the works of historian Paul Preston. the last, Franco and the Civil Warcollects the biography of the dictator, the volume on the coup and the conflict and The death of Guernica. The palindromes work to relieve his congestion, but one day they surface and make it up current, Get something from them. And that’s it.
How do you create a palindrome?
The only trick I have is to go down the street to read and change everything. I already have a radar and know how to spot words that will work for me and words that won’t. For example, I read “mulita” and see if I have time to do something. If it helps, I’ll start building the palindrome, or the phrase, or something else. I usually start with the heart, running along the sides. Then, if there’s any loose margin left, I’ll fill it in. There are words that already have a palindrome, such as Seville. “There you see Seville.”
But why did you go there?
I’ve been obsessed my whole life. They always seemed something very magical and mysterious to me. To the average person it seems completely impossible. It has a magical breath. When I learned how to make it, I went crazy and told myself I was going to exploit it. First, I generated a lot of ridicule from my Facebook contacts, with alternating turns that were so outrageous, so delirious, so surreal. Little by little I improved the style. So I opened an account. At first they were cartoons with a silly sense of humor. Little by little I was providing political and social commentary on the issues Popular topic.
What is palindrotera?
What I came up with as more than just an illustrated palindrome was to create a narrative sequence out of a single palindrome, which is new, because the palindromes have been illustrated several times. In Spain there are authors like Juan Berrio. But making comics out of a palindrome with a sequence, that a palindrome is a conversation between two characters… I don’t know of any similar case. There’s an author who’s published about three books, John Agee, that explains palindromes. And some small books in the eighties and nineties.
From there to this book there is a leap.
It has been a process for many years. I already had 2000 palindromes in some kind of database. Then it occurred to me to rely on Raul and Roberto, who are also much more prolific than me. Each one has 3000 palindromes to their credit. We select the best and classify them by topic.
In X, you use photographs, but these are anthologies of vignettes, in the way I’ve already experienced The Adventures of Joselito. Here are Hermano Lobo, 13 Percepe Street (Euro Street), Robert Crumb, Pedro Vera or Krazy Kat.
Publishing a photography book would be very ugly. All photos are taken from here and there and are subject to copyright. But since I’ve been drawing, I’ve collected the best palindromes in this account and illustrated them. I started doing auditions and it didn’t work out because it was a meaningless jumble and it became stressful. That’s why it occurred to me to write a history of graphic humor, going back to ancient Greece, because it was there that the first alternations were created. A palindrome is complicated for outsiders to understand. Once you’re in, they come out on their own, and a muscle and a series of little tricks are created. But if I add something else, to give it a little comedy that completes the meaning of the palindrome, which in many cases is ridiculous, it neither forms a head nor a tail…
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The history of this book is full of misunderstandings. When someone in the debater community detects a trap, alarms go off. This is what happened to Raul Ruiz when he watched in a report Vern A palindrome attributed to José Pablo García: “Pedro’s advisor is leaving,” said the portrait of Ivan Redondo. “He thought I was cheating and wrote me a very long and very annoying email. It is true that I did not check this correspondence.”
How can you check this? Do you have some kind of grimoire?
We palindrome scholars have a set at hand, the palindrome bible. There’s also a musician called Victor Carbajo, a prolific palindrome player and so forth, who has dedicated himself to collecting all the palindromes of the Spanish language. Today it has already reached 242,242. But I think he did at some point com. catacroker He has retired. The fact is that when I contacted Raul he realized that I had not received a penny for it and was encouraged to cooperate on the account.
Are there a lot of people devoting themselves to Spanish analogy?
Yes, yes, many people. There is a magazine called Sema Games. And Lex and Pixel competition. And I have my CPI certificate.
What is this?
International Palindromist Club. It is a kind of symmetrical community hostel. It was created in 1987 and was used for discussion and publication. Annual meetings are held, usually in northern cities, since there are very few rotational scholars living in the Despinabero area. I think there are two of us, and the rest are Basques and Catalans. Storytelling and plays are programmed… We are about 100 members and usually 20 or 30 of us get together. There is an Argentine documentary called Long live the palindromeWhich ends with one of the meetings that took place in the town of Lleida. Chile, Argentina and Mexico have many rotational scholars.
Are there any debaters that you particularly admire?
I think the best colorist in Spain at the moment is Raul Ortiz, the best and most polished. Peramento also makes very long palindromes. He has a kind of personal determination to do it. I think the head of the CPI published the Bible about ten years ago at Palindrome: he had been composing for five years. In the end, the only thing about the Bible is the biblical names and something else: it begins in Genesis and ends in Revelation. It’s a job… how the hell did you do it? But there are many biblical names. There are 5000 words in total. All of this has a certain meaning.
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This book reveals that pictorial alternation has been around since Classical Greece and that its inventor was Sotades of Maronia, “the Obscene,” its inventor. “It is the first time that a sampling of these flashes of ingenuity has been brought together in a book. This anthology is an acknowledgment of their hidden work and a tribute to them all.” It was completed for printing on October 25, 2025, the feast day of San Ugitti Jonas, the patron saint of alternating and aerobic phagocytosis.