Now I also teach to researching comics

Some years ago, I began to give a subject to level degree in which proposed the use of the comic strip as historic source. This work begins to flourish and today I am very pleasead while I see like two creative youths interested in the analysis of the image presented, in an academic event, the novelties of their investigations.

Aide Guadalupe Piña Rodriguez, graduate of the UAMCEH-UAT, sample, in a text that we carry out in a joint way, the vision around the caricatures that Ramón Cano Manilla expressed in its mural work. On the other hand, Samuel Cruz Pérez writes on the urban atmospheres and the personages of the comics of José Quintero, thesis that develops in the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the UNAM. It will be interesting the debate that stir up these works that will bring itself to light in the Second Seminar of Investigation in History and Anthropology that will be celebrated in the UAEH, in the city of Pachuca Hidalgo, the days 25 and 26 of February.

As it is an program directed chiefly to students of History there is a pair of round tables that are practically an invitation to enter to see how the investigators we develop our work. In the first one we will debate questions of methodology of the history. I will present a presentation on the possibilities that presents the political caricature of the 20th century to study the recent past, issue that is the reason of my vigilance since some months. The caricatures´fans, perhaps find attractive these presentations, that are only a small part of the activities of this program. This is a day of open doors to different thesis making workshops, articles and books of history and anthropology. They can consult the complete programming in Programa del Seminario
Thelma Camacho-Morfin
Traslated by Fabián Carvallo-Vargas.

Reviewing or to pontificate on comic strip.

Whit regard to an outline about the magazine El Chamuco and the book La Lata del Domingo (The pest of Sunday) of the caricaturist Paco Calderon.


A week ago was very pleasing to find me with a copy of the magazine Replicante that is published in Guadalajara, under the baton of Roberta Heron, the director of Daily Millennium of Monterrey, and whose publisher is the coahuilense Rogelio Villarreal, veteran of the publication of independent magazines (The Pusmoderna 1989-1996 and La Regla Rota,1984-1987).

Replicante is a quarterly magazine that itself about to diverse cultural aspects through thematic numbers. I found the issue number 11 that is about the humor. In its interior, the diverse articles are grouped in sections, the first one is called "News and outlines", continues "Thought and reflection" and closes the magazine the section "Replica to the politics".

I loved to find in the first section a segment called "Comics and monos" in here criticism on comic strip is done. As the happiness is perishable, my hopes were dashed when I read the texts that Jorge Flores-Oliver carried out about the biweekly magazine El Chamuco and the book La Lata del Domingo (The pest of Sunday) of the caricaturist Paco Calderon.

In the first one, the author throw a dozen reasons by the ones that in its words "The Chamuco, in its new epoch, cannot be taken in serious"; He consider it a poor balanced and obsolete magazine because is quite criticism toward the far right and not against the fundamentalist left. In the peak of the visceralness Flores-Oliver takes the cristal ball and announces that in the future the sketchers of the magazine will be launched against López Obrador, as well as some time, they praised to Marcos and now they attack him.

It qualifies the caricaturists as "VERY worthless [sic.]", without supporting in which bases its appreciation and without taking into account the good management of the language of the caricature and the comic strip that have the people of El chamuco. He complains about the use of characters as the rich potbellied dressed with black suit and the poor dresses of sandals. I consider that those conventions are part of the comic strip and caricature´s language because when we use them to represent the characters permits us to recognize them of a fast look.

The second text is a praise to the caricaturist Calderon, exalts its variety of graphic resources and stress the fact that he is not of left, like the majority of the Mexican caricaturists. He also mentions the good quality of the impression of its book.

In a Manichaean plan the author presents us two prescriptive outlines of what for him is good or evil to do in the field of the comic strip and the caricature. Fortunately the world of the graphic narration is very complex and with multiple tones and few times is governed for this type of criticisms that verge on the moralism.

On Replicante:

http://www.revistareplicante.com/

Thelma Camacho-Morfin
Traslated by Fabián Carvallo-Vargas

What are El Buen Tono`s comic strips?

At the beginning of the 20th century, Ernesto Pugibet, the owner of the factory of cigars El Buen Tono, thought up to announce its products through narrations that unite texts and images. To carry out its project included the creative talent of Juan B. Urrutia, a sketcher that had entered to work to the workshop of lithography of the factory from ends of the 19th century.

Urrutia carried out near 500 comic strips based on routine events and news that circulated in the press, in these comic strips the cigar was the panacea to resolve economic problems, physical disabilities or loving conflicts. As in the epoch not a legislation with regard to the publicity of the tobacco existed, the sketcher presented pregnant women and children smoking, thing that at present would be illegal. The comic strips appeared Sundays in the newspapers of national circulation among the years from 1904 to 1914 and in the year of 1922.

Aurrecoechea and Bartra in its book Puros Cuentos, they mention that these creations are the first elaborate by a sketcher that was dedicated in a professional way to the comic strip.
Thelma Camacho-Morfin
Traslated by Fabián Carvallo-Vargas.