İpier

Ignacio Pietro Carnicer (November 25, 1919 – June 29, 1988) known by the stage name İpier, was a Colombian-Turkish cartoonist. He is worldwide famous for being the creator of the comic book series The Archaeological Adventures of Joe Rabbit, Joe Rabbit began in 1947, when Ignacio was already living in Turkey, and that after his retirement was continued by his daughter, Mirabel Del Carmen Carnicer. Other 3 secondary comic books made by İpier were also extremely successful, Roadside Mutt (1975) and the adults The Cat of Istanbul (1965) and its sequel Süyümbike and the Alley Kittens (1983), which turned out to be the last work of Pietro Carnicer.

Eary life


Ignacio Pietro Carnicer was born on November 25, 1919, in Toca, a city in the Colombian department of Boyacá. His family was working class, his father worked in a cement factory and his mother as a fruit seller at local fairs. Married since 1908, they moved to the city after the death of İpier's disabled uncle, whom he never met personally, since he died in 1912. Pietro had to start working at the age of 5, in order to buy school supplies, he worked helping his father in the factory where he worked, and in 1925 he entered elementary school, having studied until the 5th grade. In 1929, with the onset of the Great Depression, Ignacio had to leave school as his father had lost his job, and thus the family lost a substantial part of their income, Carnicer began to work at fairs helping his mother.

In his free time, while he wasn't helping his mother at fairs, he read newspapers, he loved comic strips and this love started to develop in him the dream of being a cartoonist, he started to perfect his drawing ability, which caught the attention of one of his aunts, Luísa, who lived in Bogotá, and who was impressed by the boy's drawings.

Carnicer grew up with this endless training, and then in 1936, when İpier was already 17 years old, his aunt invited him to visit the Colombian capital, Bogotá, he accepted the invitation, and spent a few months there, where he earned money making cartoon portraits of pedestrians who paid him, he returned to Toca, with some profit, and spent on pens, pencils and brushes, to keep improving his drafts.

in 1940, when she learned that the newspaper Expresso de Colombia had opened vacancies for new cartoonists, her aunt Luísa visited her again and brought with her a friend of hers who was one of the newspaper's executives, Isaac Ríos, and showed him the various cartoons that his niece made, which surprised Isaac, who after talking to the boy convinced him to start making comic strips in the newspaper in exchange for a generous salary, the young man asked the newspaper to cover his and his parents' move to Bogotá, which the executives agreed to in a letter sent to Pietro a few days later, so İpier and his parents moved to Bogotá, where they could dream of better days financially after years of poverty, the cartoonist then decided to start taking writing classes so that he could start writing in a formidable way, he spent around 6 years taking writing classes until he was finally able to write pleasantly.

Early career as a cartoonist and marriage: 1940–1946
The first edition of the newspaper Expresso de Colombia that featured a comic strip made by İpier was published in July 1940, featuring what was initially its most prominent character, Robito, who achieved national fame in Colombia, making Igancio one of the most important members of the newspaper. In the first strips he produced, Robito did not speak due to the fact that İpier did not know how to write properly due to his poor level of education. An event shook Ignacio in his early career, when his father died in February 1941, when he was 59 years old, this affected the young cartoonist's creativity, making him have to take a break from comic strips.

When he recovered from the blow caused by the death of his parent, he returned full of creativity and with new ideas, so he began to create "mini-sagas" within his character comic strips, a decisive fact that would influence the Colombian cartoonist when he created The Archaeological Adventures of Joe Rabbit 6 years later. Robito's fame spread throughout the Colombian territory and simply fueled Expresso de Colombia during its existence, which the newspaper rewarded İpier with its own office at the newspaper's HQ, he started working there in the middle of 1941, and from then on, he made non-stop comic strips, for about 5 years. In 1946, the newspaper suffered a reprisal from the Government of Colombia, led by the liberal Felizardo Santacruz, and after denouncing this act, it was definitively closed, and its main members were temporarily arrested, including İpier.

During the time he was working at Expresso de Colombia, Ignacio met Isabella Del Carmen, a 19-year-old girl who was an assistant to one of the newspaper's reporters, at first they didn't talk much to each other, but one day, Isabella was broke and couldn't buy food for lunch since she worked there all day, İpier invited her to have lunch with him at a simple restaurant close to their workplace, she accepted and went with him, there they talked and she said that she had accepted to work there due to the fact that there were not many options and that she was afraid to stay unemployed after finishing high school, he joked with the fact and said he was at an advantage, because he finished the basics of studies, unlike him who did not even finish elementary school, after that day, they started talking more in their spare time. After a while, Isabella started to show some more love interest for the cartoonist, who still didn't notice anything else in the young woman, she then started flirting with him, who started to correspond, the relationship between them was evolved, they then started dating, and so it was for 2 years until the end of 1943 when he proposed engagement to Isabella, the young woman accepted and they spent 4 months engaged, until they finally got married in March 1944.

İpier and Isabella remained married for 44 years, until İpier's death in 1988, the marriage produced a daughter, Mirabel Del Carmen Carnicer, who was born on October 15, 1949 and who would continue her father's work, ensuring that they would not fall into oblivion. Isabella was also an excellent cartoonist and helped her husband to produce his works, drawing the comics together with him, there is even a rumor that she was the one who knew how to draw the cartoon model of Ipier's works and trained her partner and later his daughter, Mirabel, to draw just like her

Temporary arrest and self-exile in Turkey: 1946
İpier was temporarily arrested, when his newspaper was closed at the behest of President Felizardo Santacruz, accusing Expresso de Colombia of "conspiracy", due to the fact that the newspaper's executives were linked to figures of the Conservative Party, which made all of them temporarily imprisoned until September 1946, when they were released under Habeas corpus, when Carnicer was released, he shouted: "Colombia, how much you regret it?! Felizardo, you are a filthy and cursed despot!".

After that, Ignacio decided to leave Colombia to self-exile in any other country, which he decided to be Turkey due to the large number of Colombians there, this desire was radicalized after the death of his mother, and so in the At the end of 1946, İpier and his wife decided to leave the country. Upon arriving in Turkey, Pietro spent some time unemployed, until he met the Japanese Okamoto Tetsuhiko, who was 25 years old and was also looking for a new job after moving to Turkey with his girlfriend. İpier and Tetsuhiko found much in common in their goals, Tetsuhiko could speak Spanish convincingly and sought to convince the head of the newspaper where he worked, İstanbul Anı (The Istanbul Moment), to start publishing comics, and on the other hand, Pietro wanted to return to work, so they became partners in work, and finally convinced the head of the newspaper to start producing comics after seeing the ability of the cartoonist. So İpier returned to his work at the end of 1946, İstanbul Anı commissioned 5 Robito comics to be serialized weekly however, unlike in Colombia, Robito's adventures did not please the Turks, as they were too shallow and comical. So İpier had a genius idea, and decided to convince the executives of the newspaper where he was starting to work to do an opinion poll asking what kind of comics would please readers, the poll showed that most readers would like comics with adventures linked to historical objects and beings, such as the Brazilian Roman Odysseys.

Unlike Groselho, İpier liked something more modern, and did not want to follow this pattern that would please Turkish readers, until then his partner Tetsuhiko arrived one day inspired after reading a book on archeology, Ignacio then left it to his partner to decide what this new story would be created, Okamoto was an admirer of anthropomorphism and then idealized an anthropomorphic rabbit who would be an archaeologist, who would travel the whole world and discover various valuable artifacts that would make him get involved in trouble with dangerous criminals, İpier he still didn't like the idea, but let time pass and see what the idea would give, the protagonist rabbit was named "Tay Tavşan" (renamed to "Joe Rabbit" in US and UK magazines), that's how it originated The Archaeological Adventures of Joe Rabbit, Isabella also helped her husband produce the comic, and so the trio produced the first volume of that comic book series.

The Idol of Kızıl Kule
On January 27, 1947, the first volume of Joe Rabbit, titled The Idol of Kızıl Kule, began to be serialized weekly in İstanbul Anı. The comic, even though not pleasing İpier, was exactly what readers wanted, the story takes place in the city of Alanya, Turkey, archaeologist Tay Tavşan (Joe Rabbit) explores the historic Kızıl Kule, a tower built during the reign of Kayqubad I, however, while visiting that tower, he finds a bronze and silver statue, which with his skill as an archaeologist, discovers that that object is dated from the thirteenth century, the exact century in which Kayqubad was the Sultan of Rum. The story follows Joe's search for the last descendant of Ebu Ali Reha, the architect who built that tower, and being pursued by Syrian criminals who seek to claim the valuable object from their boss, a cheetah who is both a criminal mastermind and a powerful politician which is referred to as "Venati".

The story pleased the newspaper's public, and the executives then talked to İpier and Tetsuhiko, asking him about releasing the story in comic book format, as well as Roman Odysseys, seeing the enormous profit that creation could offer, after the end of serialization in December 5, 1947, Kızıl Kule was published as a comic book in early 1948, and it was a bestseller, after all the success at last İpier changed his mind and started to like his creation.

Stage name origin
When he was about to publish Kızıl Kule as a comic book, Ignacio noticed that at no time had he signed his signature on the work, however, instead of writing down his common name, as he would sign earlier, he decided to have the idea of creating a stage name, he then decided to take the initials of his forename (I) and middle name (Pi) and the last two letters of his last name (Er), which was left as "Ipier", Isabella however suggested that he change the "I" for the letter of the Turkish alphabet "İ", so his name would become "İpier", after he heard from a Turkish woman how the name was pronounced, found the pronunciation pleasant and adopted the artistic name, from then on he would not more use it the real name on their creations.

The Temple of Guazcar


After the success of Kızıl Kule, İstanbul Anı commissioned a new story of Joe Rabbit, giving İpier and his group carte blanche to do as they pleased, so the new adventure was set in Peru, during an expedition of Joe through the Latin country, there he collides with a caracal journalist named Tina Tufted, who the rabbit discovers in the future will be his roommate, the journalist is in the country to cover a great criminal scheme that seeks to steal Inca relics to traffic them to merchants from all over the world in exchange for cold hard cash, and that half of that profit they spend to bribe police and other authorities so that they will never be discovered. They end up being captured by the faction coordinated by the Brazilian male ocelot Pardal, a mobster who is also a member of the Federal Police of Brazil, and who, having an influential rank in the institution, prevents any type of investigation from taking place. They discover that the organization hides these stolen artifacts in an ancient temple, which takes the name of Templo de Guázcar, and after discovering it, they put together the pieces that can finally dismantle the criminal group.

The caracal journalist Tina Tufted was idealized by Isabella Del Carmen, who was inspired by herself when she works at the Expresso de Colombia and who sometimes took notes on the reports that were published in the newspaper. Guazcar followed the success of its predecessor, and this time it was İpier who wanted the story to become a comic book after its serialization (June 3, 1948 – February 24, 1949), the book version was published in July 1949, when its successor was already serialized in the newspaper where İpier worked. The new character got so much charisma that she was already put as a protagonist right away.

The Arab Pyramid of Diamonds
In 1949, after the after the successes of Kızıl Kule and Guazcar, İstanbul Anı wanted to evolve the serializations of Joe Rabbit, wanting to increase its serialization length and plot, they asked Carnicer to decrease and increase the complexity of the plot and add parallel plots to the script of the comics, published weekly. İpier accepted the newspaper's plans normally without much grumbling, and decided that the new adventure that the archaeologist rabbit would have would be in the Middle East, in the middle of the desert, in search of the fictional Pyramid of Shiriah, so arose The Arab Pyramid of Diamonds, the adventure began to be serialized on İstanbul Anı from May 5, 1949 having been closed on February 9, 1951, almost 2 years later. The story pleased the readers and made the newspaper assume this posture of stretching The Archaeological Adventures of Joe Rabbit, The story had a main plot, which aborted about the persecution that Joe Rabbit suffers when looking for such a pyramid alongside Tina Tufted and a subplot, which aborted the fact that Tina Tufte discovered a great scheme of embezzlement of money and threat to the national integrity coming from the persecutors.

In 1952, the first international release of a volume of The Archaeological Adventures of Joe Rabbit, when the book was released in Eastern Europe, pleasing readers and then it was released in western europe, being well received by critics. Pyramid of Diamonds became a pillar for the popularization of Joe Rabbit in Western culture. The first country to publish Joe Rabbit outside of Turkey was Romania through Editura Politehnium, after that several other publishers from several countries of Eastern Europe, such as Serbian Literary Guild, Matica hrvatska (Croatia), Obzorja (Slovenia), NIP Nova Makedonija (North Macedonia) among others.

International publications
With the beginning of publications in Europe, the popularity of İpier's creation gradually grew during the 50s, in 1953, Guazcar arrives in the United States, being a moderate success and paving the way for the popularization of the work there and finally to reach Latin America, and in Colombia. During this phase, İpier took advantage of the moment to create his own studio and hire more employees to produce new stories more frequently, this was followed by other hits by Joe Rabbit, such as The Elixir of Tutankhamun (1953), The Seal of Burma (1954), The Blessed Vault of Fruchtbares (1956), among others, however, the direction that İpier's work was taking displeased some İstanbul Anı executives for very obvious reasons, with the growing popularity of The Archaeological Adventures of Joe Rabbit, the cartoonist could seek to leave the newspaper and create its own magazine, which would cause İstanbul Anı to lose the sales leadership it had achieved thanks to İpier's work.