Spanish Comics Research Articles

Detalles realistas para una guerra idealizada. Una aproximación a las Hazañas Bélicas de Boixcar

Hazañas Bélicas has been studied by some of the main specialists on the history of the Spanish comics. However, there are questions that require a more detailed study, as the successive publish of this comic, the election of wars as contexts for the stories and the fascination on war technology. This article analyzes these subjects taking a selection of the comics published between 1950 and 1956. Among its main conclusions, it’s to be noted the preference of the Second World War as context for the stories, the preeminence of American and German heroes and the minuteness of the representation of war technology.

The New Spanish Memory Comics

Since the end of the 1990s, more and more Spanish comics have focused on the recent Spanish past, including the memory of the Civil War (1936–1939) and the succeeding dictatorship. This article offers an analysis of a particular comics volume, Cuerda de presas (2005) by Jorge García and Fidel Martínez, and discusses the way in which it interprets the role of the past in Spanish society thirty years after the political transition to democracy. I argue that Cuerda de presas participates in the questioning of the dominant memory about the past. It does this by undermining narrative coherence and by pointing to the plural and unstable characteristics of memories. Charles Peirce's semiotics constitutes the framework for the analysis, according to which there is a dynamic relationship between Cuerda de presas and Spanish society.

Paranomasias y otros juegos de palabras en la comicidad de Rompetechos

Rompetechos is one of the most popular Spanish comics. Its author, Francisco Ibáñez, is also the inventor of Mortadelo y Filemón. This article analyzes 17 short character stories to discover the weight and structure of the linguistic gags in his funniness. The study concludes that Ibáñez uses puns to evidence Rompetechos’ myopia and accentuate his humour resulting funny entanglements. Puns are built basically upon the substitution of letters (paranomasias) and less frequently the addition (empotres) and subtraction (descartes). The dialogue that the pun needs to be spontaneous and truthful is got by Ibáñez through a crazy reading of successive signs.

Autoras contemporáneas en la historieta española. Revisión de la etiqueta ‘cómic femenino’

This article, whose title is so generic, does not intend to be an exhaustive and historiographic list of women authoring contemporary Spanish comics. A priori, the deficiencies of the global label “woman comic” are questioned and the representative work of a group of draftswomen and scriptwriters is shown, since the 1980 decade (Madriz, El Cairo and El Vibora) to nowadays publications: Laura Perez-Vernetti, Ana Juan, Ana Miralles, Sonia Pulido and Clara- Tanit. These authors are linked by a generational bond and offer a series of sights, paintstrokes, subjects and diverse plastic styles. The woman production phenomenon is observed along with its reception in ad hoc-collections published by some publishing houses through retrospectives, symposium and exhibitions which are still alerting about the so needed visibility. At the same time, both the atraction and the tendency towards the drawing art and equally the links between comic made by women and the concept related to the author comic, literature and egotistic tales are studied too.

En el umbral. El cómic español contemporáneo

These days, when we talk about contemporary Spanish comics, or comics produced primarily in Spain for the Spanish market, we have to contemplate two main trends: the graphic novel and the humor comics. The fall of the traditional industry opened the door to the realization of authoral ambitions that previous generations of artists couldn’t fulfil.

Det perverse artefakt. Konflikt og erindringer i spanske tegneserier

THE PERVERSE ARTIFACT. CONFLICT AND MEMOIRS IN SPANISH CARTOON SERIESWithin the last 10 to 15 years, the Spanish debate about historical memory has gained much force, with a specific focus on memories of the Civil War (1936-39) and of the succeeding dictatorship that ended with a process of democratization at the end of the 1970s. Although the big Spanish political parties disagree on several memory related issues, they agree that the main objective is to secure a reconciliation of the Spanish population that – at least according to some parties, organisations and analysts – is still divided by the memories of the Civil War and the repressive Francoist dictatorship. Spanish comics from the end of the 1990s and the 2000s question the common and coherent narrative of the War and the dictatorship that is implied in this idea of reconciliation. This article offers an example of the ways in which the comics do this by activating two interconnected strategies. First, the comics destabilize place and narrative structure, andsecondly, they suggest that madness and a perverted gaze are the only sensible perspectives from which to contemplate Spain’s repressive and violent past. The analysis draws on the context of both the memory debate and the development within the Spanish and international comics field.