PROFILE

Born in Santander (Spain) 7/9/1983, Marta G. Luque, best known as 'MGL' or 'Sniper' , started drawing at the age of 3. She was able to read, taught by her mother, before going to school; aged 6 started writing her first short tales. Her father was an artist who left his career to become an engineer. Her two brothers, aged 17 and 13 when she arrived, were a big influence to her. Sharing the same interests, introduced her into the world of comics, literature, computers, cinema, and music; they made the base to her future personality, likes and dislikes.

Grew up reading american, french & spanish best comics (Spiderman, Fantastic Four, Superman, Asterix, Mortadelo&Filemón, Superlópez, etc) Also reading newspaper's cartoons (Snoopy, Garfield, Calvin&Hobbes)

Reading novels (Herman Melville, Jules Verne, Gustavo A. Bécquer, Rudyard Kipling, Michael Ende, Miguel Delibes, J.R.R Tolkien, Philip K. Dick, ...) Watching Hanna-Barbera series, Walt disney's films, and american cinema (Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Empire of the sun, Blade Runner, Die Hard, Top Gun, ...)

Favourite directors: Ridley Scott, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Tim Burton and Mamoru Oshii.

Favourite actors/actresses: Harrison Ford, Tom Cruise, Meg Ryan, Sean Connery, Julia Roberts, Nicolas Cage, Bruce Willis, Sigourney Weaver, Val Kilmer, Whoopi Goldberg, Keanu Reeves, Winona Ryder, Tommy Lee Jones, Geena Davis, Michael J. Fox, Robin Williams, Ethan Hawke, Ewan McGregor, Liam Neeson, Nick Nolte, Susan Sarandon, John Malkovich, and Christian Bale.

Favourite scriptwriters: Quentin Tarantino, Larry&Andy Wachovski, Warren Ellis, Alan Moore.

She also enjoys going to the theatre (Shakespeare, Dario Fo, Fernando Arrabal, El Tricicle )

Listening to classical music, and music from the 60s 70s 80s and 90s (Favourite groups Queen and Presuntos Implicados)

Her first contact with the japanese culture were her brother's Mazinger Z playing cards and the Saint Seya and Captain Tsubasa anime series on TV, later Ranma 1/2 appeared. Aged 14 started to buy her own comics, new american regular series from a rookie company, Image: Gen13, DV8, WildC.A.T.S.

Then manga changed her life. After seeing in a shop the last number of Dragon Fall, a funny tribute to Akira Toriyama's Dragon Ball, by a spanish artist (Nacho Fernandez), she fell in love. Then many titles became to increase her monthly spending.

Masamune Shirow was the next stage. Human drama, hard plot and well-grown characters impacted her. Katsuhiro Otomo's Akira made a similar effect. Future in modern sci-fi (cyberpunk) often shows a destroyed world after a catastrophical event, or a weak, lost, mankind fighting for survival in a cruel and artificial society.

Meanwhile she bought some weird alternative comics, Cels Piñol's Fanhunter: stupid stories, dreadful pictures, mad characters, crazy thing. It changed all her ideas of comic-making.

Few years later, more titles from Image, Danger Girl, Battle Chasers and Divine Right showed her what amerimanga was, brand new influences to her drawing style.

First computer she saw: her brother's Commodore, with tennis games. Then the first PCs and flying simulators. Aged 8 she received a Game Boy with 12 games as Christmas present. In 1994 she had her own computer, 486x. In 1997 she won a Playstation in a radio program by writing an article. Her first psx games, Final Fantasy VII and Need for Speed II (She loves race games, beat 'em up and adventures RPG)

Nowadays she's studying 2º Bachiller (Latin, Greek, English, Literature, Philosophy, History) at IES Santa Clara, wants to learn japanese, and hopes to go next year to Salamanca's university and become a journalist. She'd like to work in comic/film scripts, doing illustrations, writing articles/novels, or/and webdesigning.