Jan

Jan, JaN or JAN may refer to:

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Janů

Janů is a Czech surname, it may refer to:

Jan (comics)

Jan is the pseudonym of Juan López Fernández (born 13 March 1939), Spanish comic book writer and artist, most famous for his creation Superlópez.

Biography

He was born in the town of Toral de los Vados, in the province of León. Completely deaf from the age of six, his parents encouraged him to draw and in 1956, he began to work in a studio in order to learn animation.

He emigrated to Cuba in 1959 where he worked in Televisión Cubana (Cuban Television) and the Instituto Cubano de Arte e Industria Cinematográficos (ICAIC) (Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry). He also collaborated on some periodicals for children at this time, and later on, on actual comic books and newspaper supplements.

Jan returned to Spain in 1969, and worked in the now defunct publishing house Editorial Bruguera until 1985 where he helped illustrate the work of other comic book artists.

In 1973, however, Jan created Superlópez, a parodized version of Superman. It was a series that began as a single page and later expanded into full albums, with adventures involving supervillains and criminal organizations. It also dealt with issues affecting contemporary Spain, namely the illegal drug trade, the transition to democracy post General Franco, etc.. The stories had originally been written by Efepé (pseudonym of Francisco Pérez Navarro), but Jan later took over this duty as well.

Richter 10

Richter 10 is a 1996 novel by Arthur C. Clarke and Mike McQuay. The protagonist is Lewis Crane, who develops a hatred of earthquakes due to a major earthquake hitting his house when he is seven years old, killing his parents. The book's title is a reference to the Richter scale, on which 10 was considered (when the scale was devised) to be the most power an earthquake was likely to ever have.

The plot deals with predicting earthquakes months or years in advance, and eventually banishing them forever from earth by stopping all tectonic activity.

Plot summary

There are four defining episodes in the story, and a variety of subplots and minor threads — many of them unrelated to the main story. The story begins late in the 20th century, and tracks the life of the main protagonist, Lewis Crane. The first of four episodes opens the story. An earthquake in California in the late 20th century has left seven-year-old Lewis Crane a crippled, homeless orphan.

The second major episode shows Crane as an adult, world's foremost earthquake expert, a Nobel laureate, and a ruthless scientist and entrepreneur dedicated to relieve the misery of those affected by earthquakes. He is also the moving force behind Foundation, an organization dedicated to scientific research on earthquakes. His Foundation has just perfected the technology to predict earthquakes to within minutes of due time, intensity, and geographical areas that will be affected. His first prediction is for Sado island in Japan—most of the island will be destroyed, as will the inhabited village of Aikawa.