Date: Mon, 15 Feb 1999 11:32:00 -0400 To: [c--m--x] at [indra.com] From: [r w boyd] at [crocker.com] (Robert W. Boyd) Subject: Re: Historietas [J--ov--e] at [aol.com] wrote: > Thank you for the info about the Village Voice. It is really interesting >to hear about Mexico's pulpy comics.....Ive been trying really hard to find >work by Latin American cartoonists.....But having no idea where to start my >search has not turned up much other than some porn...and some american comics >translated to spanish...Does anyone have any suggestions where i could find >such comics? and if theres any companies distributing them in the states?. >Also...since i know most of you like to be informed what comics are like on >all parts of the world....id like to say that if youre interested in knowing >what Cuban comics are like you can ask me questions. You've opened a huge can of worms. It goes without saying that there are lots of comics produced in Latin America. Since the focus of this list is alternative comics and/or art comics, I'll limit my comments to that. But here's some of the stuff worth knowing about: ARGENTINA: This country has the most "European" comics scene, and many Argentine artists have worked for European publishers and even immigrated to Europe. Two of the best in the latter category are Muñoz and Sampayo, who did such classic albums as Sudor Sudaca, Joe's Bar and Nicaragua. Muñoz is the draughtsman and has a powerful, distorted, inky expressionist style that has been imitated to death--but no one does with his courage and audacity. Sampayo has also written for other artists, including the grand old man of Argentine comics, F. Solano Lopez. The book they did together was Deep City (in English), and it's a classic. But Solano Lopez has done a lot more than that, including a lot of stuff in English. If you can find them, I highly recommend the four issue miniseries he did with Jim Woodring, adapting the movie Freaks. When discussing Argentina, you have to mention Hector Oesterheld and Alberto Breccia. They colaborated on one of the most innovative comics of all time--Mort Cinder--and many other projects. Alberto and his son Enrique worked with Oesterheld on Che, a biography of the Argentine doctor who became a Cuban revolutionary leader. Oesterheld's left-wing politics got him (and his daughters) killed by the military during Argentina's infamous dirty war. Enrique Breccia went on to become a successful cartoonist in his own right (as did Alberto's daughter, Patricia), and Alberto continued to do beautiful, innovative comics--but purged them of political content as long as the military was still ruling and murdering opponents. Once the military government fell, Alberto addressed this episode in Argentina's history in short satirical color stories and his huge series of graphic novels, Perramus. There are many Argentine cartoonists worth discussing, but I'll just mention two more. Carlos Nine is a man of prodigious talents whose work has never been published in English, but strongly deserves to be. He combines a delicate, graceful drawing style with distortions worthy of Muñoz, a sly way of imbueing his improbable fables with political undertones, and probably a lot more I'm missing because of the combination of my primitive Spanish and his Porteño slang. Also not translated is the indescribable Juan Pablo Gonzales/Max Cachimba. His drawing style is a little like Julie Doucet's, and his stories are like dark fables. (It seems a lot of Argentine artists are influenced by Borges--not in an imitative way, but in the sense that expressing yourself in sort, fable-like stories is quite normal.) There is an alternative comics magazine in Argentina called Lapiz Japones. Also worth hunting down are back issues of Fierro, which was a more "mainstream" comics mag, but which published a lot of stuff by Muñoz and Sampayo, Nine, Gonzales/Cachimba, Enrique and Patricia Breccia, and other good Argentine cartoonists like Fontanarossa. One last Argentine--Quino. He's the Charles Schulz of Argentina, and both his strip, Mafalda, and his gag cartoons are brilliant. BRAZIL: Brazil's comics scene is more like the U.S. Economically marginal, its best (and most successful) cartoonists come out of an "underground" sensibility. For instance, Angeli--an incredibly talented and rather successful cartoonist--lists as influences (among others) Crumb, Gilbert Shelton, Wolinsky and Vuillemin. Other great Brazilian cartoonists include Luiz Gê, Laerte, and Adão Itarusgarai. They all have albums, appear in newspaper strips, and tend to anchor Brazilian comics anthiologies that pop up from time to time. Some of these anthologies have been Chiclete com Banana (named after the great Jackson do Pandeiro song), Animal, Dundum, Big Bang Bang and most recently, CyberComix. Dundum is worth mentioning because it was a totally insane showcase of a lot of young talent (including Adão, who was just starting out) published in Port Alegre, Brazil's southernmost major city. A lot of great cartoonists come from Porto Alegre, for some reason, and often move up to São Paulo (center of publishing in Brazil) to make their fortunes. Two guys from Porto Alegre worth mentioning are list-lurker Fabio Zimbres, who was an editor for Animal and whose own cartoons appeared in Dundum, Big Bang Bang, and currently CyberComix. He is also Mr. Brazilian Small Press and keeps in contact with lots of the young, self-publishing cartoonists who are coming up in Brazil. His boosterism probably helps these guys a lot since for the most part, it's as hard or harder to make a living as an alternative cartoonist in Brazil as it is in the U.S. Some of the guys he has promoted and published in his miniTONTOS series are now appearing in CyberComix (including MZK). [I would be remiss if I failed to mention that I have Fabio's first English-language mini for sale--email me off-list for details.] Also a brilliant Porto Alegre cartoonist was Jaca who did stuff for Animal, Dundum and Big Bang Bang. His work is pretty indescribable, but from what I understand, he left comics for the greener pastures of design. It's an old story... To check out some of the CyberComix stuff, look at their website -- www.cybercomix.com.br MEXICO: Mexico's comics scene seems to have developed on a completely different path than the U.S. or Europe. Well worth getting are the volumes of Puros Cuentos (there are 3 so far, I think). These are incredibly well-illustrated, hyper-detailed histries of comics in Mexico. The volume I have (III) is over 500 pages long and only covers 1934-1950! For Mexican "alternative" comics (the term "alternative" is a little inappropriate since the whole structure of Mexican comics is so different than that of the U.S., where the mainstream/alternative axis makes perfect sense), the starting point is Rius. This is the psuedonym of Eduardo del Rio, and he started doing cartoons in the 50s. He was influenced himself by Abel Quezada (among others), who was doing very biting satirical cartoons at the time and was very creative in formatting them, often combining typeset text with sequential drawings, which was to become a trademark of Rius. Rius became more and more left wing (especially after the Cuban revolution) and wrote and drew the international best-seller Marx for Beginers. His comic books, Los Super-Machos and Los Agachados were very popular, especially with college students. He visited Cuba in the '60s, and there's a picture of him sitting with a bunch of other cartoonists and Che Guevarra, who later gave him a signed copy of La Guerra de Guerillas. (These are reproduced in Rius's autobiography, Rius Para Principantes. It's worth noting that Rius now is anti-Castro and has made fun of Castro in his magazine El Chamuco.) Rius is the guy that younger alternative cartoonists start with. The generation that followed Rius have the same kind of relationship with him that one has with any father figure--simultaneously one of mentoring and nurturing one one hand and rebelling on the other. An important comic for new Mexican alternatives was Galimatias. This brilliant zine was where a lot of the best cartoonists today go their starts. I think it may have been a student-run magazine. Three of Mexico's best cartoonists, Jis, Trino and Falcon, helped put it together. The three of them have gone on to do brilliant work, both in collaboration and solo. Falcon has become a popular syndicated political cartoonist (of a highly skeptical sort--he scoffs at Rius's left wing utopianism. He especially made fun of Rius's uncritical support of Subcomandante Marcos). Trino is a children's book author, animator and newspaper cartoonist. Jis primarily works for newspapers and magazines. Both Trino and Jis did work for El Chamuco, Rius's excellent satire magazine. (Is this still being published?) Most of the above cartoonists have solo and collaborative books published by Grijalbo. There are several volumes of Jis and Trino's utterly demented strip, Santos Contra La Tetona Mendoza. I hope this helps, Julio. Of course, this barely scratches the surface. We have listers in Mexico, Brazil, Chile and Argentina who could easily add to what I've written (and correct all my mistakes). And who knows what's happening in Colombia, Venezuela, Peru, etc.? --RB ********************************************************************* Robert Boyd * Stripburek Westhampton House * Actus Tragicus P.O. Box 512 * And more. Write for a free catalog. Easthampton, MA 01027 * ph. (413) 527-2027 _________________________________________________________________ To leave this mailing list, send mail to [m--r--o] at [indra.com] with the message UNSUBSCRIBE COMIX