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