Argentine comics (Spanish: historietas) are one of the most important comic traditions internationally, and the most important within Latin America,[1] living its "Golden Age" between the 1940s and the 1960s. Soon after, in 1970, the theorist Oscar Masotta synthesized its contributions in the development of their own models of action comics (Oesterheld, Hugo Pratt), humor comics (Divito, Quino) and folkloric comics (Walter Ciocca) and the presence of other artists (Hugo Pratt and Alberto Breccia).[2]
The first cartoons to appear in Argentina were editorial cartoons in political satire magazines at the end of the 19th century. These cartoons, originally single panels, quickly evolved to multiple panel constructions with sequential action. Many used methods such as text indicating dialogue emanating from the speaker's mouth, or text below the drawings for dialogue and explanation.
In the 1900s, comics continued to be largely political satire and commentary, but strips about normal life, called cuentos vivos (lively tales) began to appear. Text still frequently appeared below each drawing with dialogue or explanation. Comics continued to be published exclusively in magazines. Also during this time, translations of comics from the United States, such as Cocoliche (Happy Hooligan) by Frederick Burr Opper, showed up in Argentina.
During the 1910s, the amount of comics made in Argentina grew by leaps and bounds. In 1912, the first Argentine comic strip proper, with speech balloons and recurring characters, Las aventuras de Viruta y Chicharrón, by Manuel Redondo, began being published in Caras y Caretas. Later comics, such as Aventuras de un matrimonio aun sin bautizar (later known as Aventuras de Don Tallarín y Doña), followed, and by 1917, Las diabluras de Tijereta was one of the lone strips that still put text at the bottom of each picture. Billiken, a children's magazine started in 1919, already included some cartoons.
The popularity of comics grew in the 1920s, and children's comics gained popularity. The newspaper La Nación started publishing comics daily in 1920, and comics, both foreign and domestic, were a big reason for the popularity of the newspaper Crítica. In 1928, the first publication containing solely comics, the magazine El Tony, began its run of more than 70 years. The '20s also saw the first characters created (Andanzas y desventuras de Manolo Quaranta) and drawn (Panitruco) by Dante Quinterno. Also in 1928 Quinterno's most important character, Patoruzú, first appeared.
The 1930s saw most important newspapers featuring comic strips. Patoruzú had its own magazine, which began publication in November 1936. It became one of the most important humor magazines of the 1940s, with a record of over 300,000 copies printed for one edition. Also during the late 1930s superheroes from the United States, such as Superman and Batman, began appearing in local magazines such as Pif Paf (1939), giving a place to action comics.
Golden Age
Left:El Eternauta, an Argentine comics' classic, first appeared in the magazine Hora Cero, written by Oesterheld and drawn by Solano López. Right: The Chicas de Divito (Girls of Divito) were any of the girls that appeared in the covers of Rico Tipo. Unwittingly, they marked the women's fashion at that time in Buenos Aires.
The Argentine comic had its golden age between the mid-1940s and the 1960s, the so-called Golden Age of Argentine Comics[3] (la "Epoca de Oro" de la historieta argentina), when a number of foreign artists, including many Italians, arrived in Argentina following World War II.
José Antonio Guillermo Divito's magazine Rico Tipo, launched on 16 November 1944, contained many comic strips and was published until 1972. It included Adolfo Mazzone's classic Piantadino strip, Oscar Conti's Amarroto and many others. Intervalo magazine appeared in 1945, containing longer dialogs and text in comparison with comics edited in other houses. Patoruzito magazine also appeared in 1945, containing a number of children's comics in addition to the adventures of young Paturuzú. In 1948, local superhero Misterix got his own magazine, which also included other action comics, and which would become one of the most important the time period. Initially, it contained several Italian comics translated into Spanish, but later that gave way to local creations.
The late 1940s saw the arrival to Argentina of a circle of Italian writers and artists, which further improved the quantity and quality of the comics in Argentina. These included Mario Faustinelli, Hugo Pratt, Ivo Pavone, and Dino Battaglia, who were known as the Venice Group.[4] Some Argentines, notably Alberto Breccia and Solano López, were considered honorary members of the Venice Group. A number of new publications appeared, such as D'Artagnan and Fantasía. During this decade, Héctor Oesterheld, one of the most prolific writers, and Solano López also created the Hora Cero magazine.
Around 1960, of the 6 best selling publications, only one was foreign (Donald Duck magazine). Nevertheless, the arrival of foreign publications, mainly from Mexico, with better paper and ink quality and lower prices, started a financial crisis in the Argentine comic industry, and several publishers, including Oesterheld's Ediciones Frontera, had to close or be sold, which forced several artists and writers to go abroad.
Political instability
After the 1966 coup d'état, the comics industry suffered from both some censorship and from recurring economic downturns. The 1968 biographic graphic novel of Che Guevara by Oesterheld and Breccia was removed from circulation by the government and the originals destroyed. Nevertheless, action comic magazines such as El Tony and D'Artagnan continued to publish both foreign and local creations. In 1967 Robin Wood's Nippur de Lagash debuted in D'Artagnan, and in 1969 a sequel to the Eternauta was published.
Fontanarrosa's Inodoro Pereyra premiered in 1971 in Córdoba's Hortensia magazine, which became one of the few successful Argentine magazines from outside Buenos Aires. The satirical humor magazine Satyricón was launched in 1972, though tightening government censorship led to its closure in 1974. The same problem led Quino to put an end to Mafalda in 1973, after which he moved to Italy. Caloi created Clemente in 1973 as a secondary character in a comic strip centered on Bartolo the tram conductor; Clemente would however soon overshadow the conductor and became a fixture on the Clarín back page until his own death in 2012.
From their exile in Europe, Muñoz and Sampayo created Alack Sinner in 1974, which was later published in Argentine magazines such as Super Humor and Fierro. In 1975 Trillo and Altuna started one of the longest lived newspaper strips, El loco Chávez, published in Clarín.
In 1976 while working on a politicized sequel of the Eternauta that was being published in Skorpio, Oesterheld was kidnapped and disappeared by military governmentforces. A year later his four daughters, all leftist students, disappeared as well.
1978 saw the birth of satirical current events magazine Humo® by Andrés Cascioli and Ediciones de la Urraca. One of the first attempts of erotic comic was the 1979 Las puertitas del Sr. López by Altuna-Trillo, later published in Humor and Fierro (1984).
Renaissance
The return of democracy in late 1983 ended years of military censorship. A new cultural wave started in several arts. Applying the specialized anthology format in the tradition of magazines like the French Métal Hurlant and Pilote, Argentine creators began publishing Fierro; The magazine had a 100 issue run, from 1984 until 1991. In 2006, the newspaper publisher Página/12 initiated a second volume of the magazine.
The rise of self-publishing
Argentine creators started producing self-published zines in the 1980s.[6] This trend intensified during the 1990s with magazines such as El Cazador or Ultra. Participants in this trend attribute the boom to both economic and cultural factors.
On the economic side, technological developments and national crisis facilitated the dissemination of new methods. Increased availability of personal computers enabled creators to format, edit and print their own work. Other factors that contributed to the boom resulted from a crisis in traditional methods of production and distribution. In the 1990s, pro-trade reforms made it more difficult for local products to compete. Suffering a similar fate to many sectors of the Argentine media and industry in general, the comic magazines still working during the 1980s slowly decreased in quality and died off (e.g. Fierro, D'Artagnan, Nippur). While many creators found work in other countries or changed professions, others continued to reach local audiences by publishing and distributing their own work. Another side-effect of the crisis was that many creators started offering workshops for children and teens because job markets were tight. Passing on their own methods, creators armed a new generation of creators with self-publishing techniques.
Cultural factors that creators cite as shaping the self-publishing boom include a desire to read and produce stories that deal with local issues by local authors, a strong sense of autonomy matched by a tradition of collaboration and a commitment to free creative expression.[7]
Competing in a difficult market, Argentine creators have experimented with various formats and forms of collective self-help. At first, self-published works remained in dark corners of the comic shops and (less so) news stands and most of them failed to survive past the 2nd or 3rd issue (i.e. Ultra). To collectively address the challenges of independent publishing, creators formed the Asociación de Historietistas Independientes (Association of Independent Comic Creators, AHI), at the 1996 Fantabaires convention, from which later the group La Productora split.[8] Costs are sometimes shared, as in the case of publishing house Ex Abrupto, which co-publishes Suda Mery K!, a biannual anthology, with Viñetas con Altura of Bolivia and Feroces Editores of Chile.[9]
Héctor Germán Oesterheld, also known by the common abbreviation HGO, was an Argentine journalist, comics editor and writer of graphic novels and comics. He is widely celebrated as a master in his field and as one of the pioneering artists in Argentine modern comics.
The Eternaut is a science fiction Argentine comic created by Héctor Germán Oesterheld with artwork by Francisco Solano López. It was first published in Hora Cero Semanal between 1957 and 1959, initially published as a serialized comic strip. The story is focused on a handful of survivors of a deadly alien invasion in Buenos Aires.
Francisco Solano López was an Argentine comics artist. He was the co-creator of El Eternauta.
Joaquín Salvador Lavado Tejón, better known by his pen name Quino, was an Argentine cartoonist. His comic strip Mafalda is popular in many parts of the Americas and Europe and has been praised for its use of social satire as a commentary on real-life issues.
Ernie Pike is a comics series written by Héctor Germán Oesterheld and originally drawn by Hugo Pratt, starring a World War II and Korean War reporter. It was first published in the magazine "Hora Cero" in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1957. The reporter, loosely based on the real reporter Ernie Pyle, acts as a narrator of stories, without being directly involved in them. Such stories do not narrate real battles or exploits of noteworthy military people, being instead tragic stories of unknown soldiers, made up by the author. Oesterheld worked again with the character during the time of the Vietnam War, and Ricardo Barreiro used it for a brief story about the Falklands War.
Alberto Breccia was an Uruguayan-born Argentine artist and cartoonist. His son Enrique Breccia and daughter Patricia Breccia are also comic book artists.
Patoruzú is a comic character created in 1928 by Dante Quinterno and is considered the most popular hero of Argentine comics. Patoruzú is a wealthy Tehuelche cacique with great estate properties in Patagonia, and possesses both superhuman physical strength and a charitable yet naive heart. He was originally only a side character in Quinterno's series "Don Gil Contento", but became so popular with readers that the comic was renamed after him.
Carlos Trillo was an Argentine comic book writer, best known for writing the Cybersix comics.
Maitena Burundarena, better known as Maitena, is an Argentine cartoonist.
Argentine humour is exemplified by a number of humorous television programmes, film productions, comic strips and other types of media. Everyday humour includes jokes related to recurrent themes, such as xenophobic jokes at the expense of Galicians (Spaniards) called chistes de gallegos, often obscene sex-related jokes, jokes about the English, the Americans, blonde women, dark humour, word and pronunciation games, jokes about Argentines themselves, etc.
Dante Quinterno was an Argentine comics artist, agricultural producer, and prolific editorial businessman, famous for being the creator of the Patoruzú, Isidoro Cañones and Patoruzito characters.
Enrique Breccia is an Argentine comic book artist and writer.
Oily Boogie or Boogie, the Oily is a character from comic strips in Argentina, created by Roberto Fontanarrosa. He is a fictional Vietnam veteran, soldier and bounty hunter, and is used to make parody of racism, violence, nationalism, and sexism, which are included as exaggerated character traits.
Rico Tipo was a weekly Argentine comic magazine that appeared from late 1944 until 1972, founded and directed by Guillermo Divito. It was among the main comic magazines in Argentina, others being Patoruzú and Satiricón. Rico Tipo was much more successful, adapting to changing tastes through a period of 36 years.
Skorpio is a weekly anthology comic magazine published in Argentina from 1974 to 1996 and in Italy from 1977 onward.
Editorial Frontera was an Argentine publisher of comic books, which lasted from 1956 to 1961. It was established by the author Héctor Germán Oesterheld.
Vida del Che is an Argentine biographical graphic novel written by Héctor Germán Oesterheld and illustrated by Alberto Breccia and Enrique Breccia. The Historieta narrates the life of the revolutionary Che Guevara from his childhood to his assassination in Bolivia. It was originally published as a book in Argentina in 1968, only three months after Che Guevara's death. The illustrator Enrique Breccia, son of Alberto and equally famous in the field of the illustration, participated in the final stretch of the artwork, which was also his first comic.
The Eternaut 1969 is a reboot of the Argentine comic book The Eternaut, by writer Héctor Germán Oesterheld and Alberto Breccia.
El Eternauta, segunda parte is a 1975 comic from Argentina, by Héctor Germán Oesterheld and Francisco Solano López. A sequel to The Eternaut, it was written during the Dirty War. Oesterheld, a member of the Montoneros guerrilla at the time, was a victim of an enforced disappearance while writing the story.
References
↑ Lypszyc, David, "Argentina, cómics until the 40s" in Comic History nº 15: Argentina surprises with its first classics, by Josep Toutain and Javier Coma. p. 393.
↑ C. Scolari, P. Bertetti, M. Freeman, Transmedia Archaeology: Storytelling in the Borderlines of Science Fiction, Comics and Pulp Magazines, Palgrave Macmillan, 2014, ch. 3.1.
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