Introducción a «la otra» novela gráfica para adultos = Introduction to ‘the other’ graphic novel for adults

Abstract

Between the end of the fifties and the seventies of the last century, one of the most common editing formats in Spain in the comics industry were known as graphic novels. Vertical format pocket books with 48 to 128 pages in black and white, they insert in the cover front the theme ‘adult graphic novels’. Heirs, in the treatment of genres, of the popular literature and the horizontal books of adventures, these comics generated thousands of pages created basically by Spanish authors, but also imported from countries like France, Italy or Britain. They replaced the adventures comics in horizontal format when these began to decline, offering a new approach in its arguments, something more modern and vital, and in the aesthetics of his drawings. Spanish publishers conceived these graphic novels for adults as a way to avoid coercive legislation that oppressed the children and young comics, but with the existence of censorship were not able to go to an adult reader. In fact, it is clearly designed for a youth readership.