The Circus

Víctor Arriagada Ríos, better known as Vicar, was one of the most productive artists of present-day Disney comics, but he started his career in his native country Chile. Born in Santiago in 1934, he was trained as an electronics engineer at the Technical State University of Chile. He began his career drawing the title comic for the Mampato supplement of the daily El Mercurio. He then joined the magazine Barrabases, for which he created the series 'Locutín' and 'Hipólito y Camilo' in the 1950s. He was also present in El Pingüino with the blind character 'Quevedo', and 'Frasecitas', and later 'Paquita' and 'Mitigueso'. One of his best known characters from his Chilean period was 'Huaso Ramón'. He was also present in the magazine Topaze with 'El Paleta', a satirical series about president Jorge Alessandri. From 1959, he made several independent strips without a main character in the magazine El Saquero, el Deporte en Chunga, published by Pepo. In the early 1970s, Vicar made the title comic for Guido Vallejos' magazine Viejo Verde, which was also popular in Germany. He lived in Barcelona, Spain between 1960 and 1965. He was affiliated with the Bardon Art studios from 1960 to 1966, doing artwork for several foreign publishers, such as the Danish PIB agency ('Petzi'). Through Bardon, he also made the humorous comic strip , that appeared in France as 'Bang Bang Sam'.