Historicising the Emergence of Comics Art Scholarship in Spain, 1965–1975

Abstract

This article traces the formation of comics art scholarship in Spain from 1965 to 1975. This decade witnessed the beginning of the study of comics as a serious object of cultural analysis. Reading formations surrounding the medium – in particular, historical and critical reading protocols – and a set of key critical debates were concurrent with the establishment and the development of mass communication studies as an incipient field of research in Spain in the mid-1960s. The aim of this article is to provide a close examination of the first generation of critics participating in and writing about the scene in relation to hitherto overlooked local and transnational contexts that shaped the constitution of the Spanish field of comics.