extracted text of the website (
http://www.ota.com.br/)
(Carlos Zéfiro)In the end of the years 1950 and during practically the whole decade of 1960 they circulated secretly, by the whole Brazil, the calls catechisms, small magazines of 32 pages that fit in the pocket and they told pornographic histories. The principal author of that gender, and also the best, signed Carlos Zéfiro and during more than thirty your years identity was maintained in more absolute secret. Inspired in well-known Tijuana Bibles published in the USA in the decades of 30 and 40, those almost handmade comics were distributed through a wide secret net that covered the whole country and they made enormous success. Anybody that has in the the 50 year-old strip remembers them. On those times, it had not reviewed erotic sold freely as today. All were secret. They were sold hidden, of hand in hand and also in the normal newsstands, only that to the hidden ones. To buy the catechisms it was necessary to be of the owner's of the comics store trust. The man that hid for thirty years behind Carlos Zéfiro's pseudonym was Alcides Aguiar he Walks.
Alcides was public employee (and composer in the vague hours, being joint author of the Flower and the Thorn, of partnership with Nelson Cavaquinho and Guilherme of I Break). He drew the catechisms as an extra service to complement the budget. The thing began middle of game. Stimulated by the friend Hélio Brandão (also died already), owner of a store of books and comics used at the Praça Tiradentes (river of January), Alcides produced the first catechisms, possibly in the end of the fifties (as there are not registrations, it is very difficult to need the correct date). Hélio took charge of the impression and distribution secret of the catechisms, that arrived the more than 2 thousand different editions you making arrangements (being about 800 produced by Carlos Zéfiro). Other author that stood out in that period signed Chang, but it was not so known but nor it is more reminded. Many designers of professional comics also disguised your lines and they produced catechisms, published in the same outline by other " secret publishers ". The best were them produced by Carlos Zéfiro that, in spite of the deficiencies of the line, I wrote the best histories. The history of a standard catechism usually began, in the first pages, the character knowing a girl, seducing her more or less until the page 15, and then until the page 32 it was pure eroticism. The onlooker is that Zéfiro was not a designer, but he knew how to manipulate the drawing materials, and it was capable to do a complete comic tracing, in vegetable paper, positions of magazines of picture soap operas and of magazines published by Editormex (where it based your style) and erotic pictures supplied by Hélio. Therefore, the irregularity among the drawings of a same history is very big, because when there were not references to trace the drawings they were rough. Still asim, communicated a lot and they were a true fever between adolescents and adults of that time. During almost the whole decade of 60 that era practically the only erotic-pornographic visual literature available, since it had not still reviewed of nude woman (to not to be imported American Playboy) nor video-porn. The decadence of the catechisms happened because they began to appear magazines of Swedish fotonovelas and colored Danishes and the public's interest strayed. Another reason was the paranoia generated by the Brazilian military dictatorship, then in your peak. Hélio Brandão arrived to be arrested in the middle of the decade of 70 (during the World cup) and it passed some days in the chain, but he never gave the true identity of Zéfiro. After that, it decided to stop with the secret publisher, because he/she was having more headache than any other thing. The sales had fallen, it was difficult to arrange the impression outlines and distribution due to the surveillance and paranoia that intensified, and they simply stopped. Even so, the catechisms survived, in smaller scale, because reprints pirates continued to circulate. Until the decade of 80 (already when there was the political opening) it was possible she to get to buy the reeditions pirates in popular fairs. In the middle of the decade of 80 there was a revival of Carlos Zéfiro, that returned to the media when your work was dissected in books as Carlos Zéfiro's Erotic Frame, written by Ota (signing with your true name Otacílio d'Assunção) and published in 1984 by Record, that had 4 editions, however now it is out of catalog. Besides the book written by Ota, outos similar books were published (complilando histories of Zéfiro and your congeners) in the even períod for Publisher Marco Zero, under the collector's Joaquim Marinho cordenação, as well as a magazine Zéfiro that an only edition lasted, thrown by Codecri. The mystery about the identity of Zéfiro lasted many years, because the secret was very well kept. Alcides' larger fear was that, if it roots discovered, it could be dismissed by fair cause of the public service. Only in 1991 he met to reveal your identity, and even so for a circumstance it finds strange. Knowing that a your other friend, designer Eduardo Barbosa, was granting an interview for the magazine Playboy if true Zéfiro saying, Alcides decided " if gives " and to expose the farce.
In fact, Eduardo Barbosa desnehou several catechisms, but he was not Zéfiro. That revelation coincided with to I Bienal of comics, in November of 1991, when a homage was accomplished Alcides and your identity came to public. On that little time of life that remained her, Alcides had the fair homage and recognition for your work. Alcides died on July 3, 1992, of hemorrhage, one day after of it being honored with music band and everything in a solemnity where received a trophy HQ-MIX. Carlos Zéfiro was never forgotten and it returns and your stocking name comes to the tona. A cultural house in Anchieta (suburb of Rio of Janeiro/RJ) he has your name, and the singer Marisa Monte, in your CD Barulhinho Bom, it used drawings of Zéfiro to illustrate the lcover and the folder of the CD. Recently the histories of Zéfiro have been reedited in editions you in the same original format.
He was born at Buenos Aires on July 16, 1914. Son of a doctor notable, he rejected the paternal career to follow your vocation. Guillermo Divito started his career in 1931 in Pages de Columba. Some time later he collaborated with Dante Quinterno, poducing such comic strips as 'El Enemigo del Hombre' and 'Oscar Dientes de Leche', and soon he would pass to draw to for Patoruzú (famous Argentinean magazine) where it creates your first characters. 
