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Comics are not solely an American phenomenon. Around the world, readers flock to comics published in all languages, sizes, and shapes. The graphic medium presents an exciting way to learn languages, and, like American comics, international bande dessinée, fumetti, historietas, manga, komiks, and stripovi both reflect and create culture, providing a space for creators and readers to explore issues of identity, politics, and social justice.
Spanish-language comics, sometimes called historietas, muñequitos, história em quadrinhos, or cómics, and Spanish comics magazines, called tebeos, are published throughout Spanish-speaking countries. Social reality and everyday life are popular themes in many historietas, as are political cartoons. During the Francoist regime (1939-1978) in Spain, historietas were censored. Superhero comics were forbidden, while historically-based heroes rose to prominence.
Created in Spain in 1958, Francisco Ibáñez’s Mortadelo and Filemón, has been following the stories of two secret agents who work for an agency called the T.I.A (Técnicos de Investigación Aeroterráquea, a spoof of the American C.I.A.) for nearly 60 years. After the death of Dictator Francisco Franco in 1975, Spain enjoyed new freedom in comics publication and embraced adult content and satirical humor, such as the weekly publication, El Papus.
Spanish-language versions and translations of American classics were not uncommon as can be seen here in Marjorie Henderson Buell’s 1935 comic strip character, Little Lulu, or La Pequeña Lulú (1977) and Hopalong Cassidy (1979). Also on display is a Chilean Spanish comic from 1972, Agente Silencio Presenta Dimension Cero (No. 44).
Bande dessinée or French-language comics, particularly those created in Belguim, rose to international prominence after WWII with titles such as Tintin and Spirou. Unlike the thin, stapled floppy comics in the United States, bande dessinée were originally published as tabloid size newspapers. After WWII, they took on a book format, referred to as a "comic album," that is typically printed in large and colorful hardcover format.
Belgian cartoonist Georges Remi, who wrote under the pen name Hergé, created The Adventures of Tintin in 1929 and it quickly became one of the most popular European comics of the 20th century. The comic first appeared in Le Petit Vingtième and was later published in Belgium's leading newspaper Le Soir (The Evening) before appearing in it’s own magazine, Tintin. Early work in Tintin has been criticized for depicting disparaging racial stereotypes, as can be seen in Tintin au Congo (1947). However unintentional Hergé claimed his stereotypes were, he frequently redrew certain panels and pages with less offensive depictions before re-publishing Tintin in other countries.
The weekly Belgian comics magazine, Spirou, has been published since 1938. In addition to the adventures of their title character, a young journalist named Spirou, the magazine initially published American comics and other European-created comics. However, when the Nazis invaded France during WWII, the magazine was forced to cease publication of American comics until the war ended. In fact, during WWII, it became difficult for the European book trade to import American comics in general, particularly superhero comics that espoused patriotism for the United States.
In 1962, bande dessinée experienced a L’age Adulte, where comics began to be viewed as adult content. The genre grew in popularity between 1968 to 1975. The French comics anthology, Métal Hurlant was aimed at an adult audience. It was first published quarterly then bi-monthly from 1974 to 1987, and was revived for a brief publication run from 2002 to 2004. In 1978, the magazine, À Suivre, began publication, helping to change the perception of comics as more adult until it’s cancellation in 1997. Pilote, on the other hand, was a French comics magazine directed at an adolescent audience that began publication in 1959. After failed attempts in the 1970s to increase adult interest in the magazine, Pilote suspended publication in 1989.
Japanese manga rose in popularity after WWII. Read right to left, typically printed in black and white, translated into many languages and closely tied to anime, manga is a global phenomenon. Similar and sometimes mistaken for Japanese manga, Chinese manhua are usually in color and depict characters with more realistic physical features. Like English works, Korean manhwa are read left to right and usually show more realistic Asian ethnicity when compared to Japanese manga.
Japanese Manga has numerous sub-genres, often separated by gender. Shōjo manga is intended for young girls and Josei manga is aimed at women. Shōnen manga is aimed at young boys and seinen manga is aimed at men. Shōjo and josei tend to focus on romance, daily life and women's experiences, while shōnen and seinen include more adventurous and action-packed stories with male heroes, slapstick humor and occasional sexual content. On display are examples of both shōnen and shōjo manga. Nobuhiro Watsuki’s るろうに剣心 : 明治剣客浪漫譚 / Rurōni kenshin : Meiji kenkaku rōmantan, tells the story of a wandering swordsman who protects the people of Japan. It was originally published as a series in Weekly Shōnen Jump from 1994 to 1999. The magazine, Weekly Shōnen Jump, began publication in 1968 and is one of the best-selling manga magazines in Japan. Another example of shōnen manga, Hajime Yadate and Shōji Kawamori’s 天空のエスカフローネ・フィルムブック / Tenkū no esukafurōne : firumu bukku, was one of the first manga series to appear in the monthly magazine, Shōnen Ace, that began publication in 1994. Yoko Kamio’s romance, Boys Over Flowers, was serialized in Margaret, a biweekly Japanese shōjo manga magazine, from 1992-2003. A Shogakukan Manga Award winner and one of the best-selling shōjo manga of all-time, the series follows Tsukushi Makino, a student from a working-class family with a strong sense of justice, who navigates a complex class structure at the elite Eitoku Academy.
Other forms of manga include dōjinshi and garo. Dōjinshi are works that are published by independent or alternative presses, or self-published by the mangaka, or manga artist. Like the American Underground Comix scene, garo rose in popularity in the 1960s with alternative and edgier manga, popular during periods of social unrest and with college students.
In Japan, people of all ages read manga with the market value of the industry reaching an estimated 282 billion yen. Tokyo is host to the world’s largest comic convention, Comiket. Held twice a year, this dōjinshi fair is attended by over 500,000 people in winter and closer to 600,000 in summer. Approximately 57% of attendees are women. Japanese conventions for commercially-published manga see annual attendance numbers comparable to North America’s largest conventions, San Diego Comic-Con International and New York Comic-Con, with over 135,000 at AnimeJapan and well over 150,000 at Jump Festa.
Italian comics, called Fumetti, trace back to the mid-19th century. In 1908, the comics magazine Il Corriere dei Piccoli, nicknamed Corrierino, hit newsstands as the first weekly Italian magazine to feature fumetti on a regular basis. Although fumetti often took inspiration from literary greats and American comic strips, censorship prevented Italian publishers from including foreign comics under Mussolini’s fascist regime. Instead, characters and storylines that depicted Italian superiority were the norm.
A notable exception to the censorship was Topolino, the Italian name for Mickey Mouse. During the 1960s, Italy experienced a rise in Fumetti Neri, or Black Comics, that dealt with dark, violent and erotic themes. One example is Guido Crepax’s Valentina, a comic strip published from 1965 to 1996 that became increasingly erotic and dealt with themes of bisexuality and sadomasochism.
German comics rose in popularity after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
On display are Manos Der Dämonenjäger (No. 19), or Manos the Demon Hunter, a comic series, published in the Bastei-Verlag in the 1980s, and Argstein Der Verbotene Wald (2006), or Argstein - The Forbidden Forest.
Throughout much of Eastern Europe, and also in the Philippines, comics are called komiks. Fatal Error (2016), from the country of Georgia, addresses social issues such as domestic violence, minority discrimination and substance addictions, while highlighting the importance of teamwork and gender equality. The komik was produced by Empower Women, a student group at the Tbilisi campus of San Diego State University Georgia, and a group of young Georgian artists. The project was funded by U.S. Embassy Tbilisi and facilitated by San Diego State University – Georgia, with the assistance of the U.S. government’s Millennium Challenge Corporation.
Ke Koho Pololei “The Right Choice” (1994) was a project by the Native Hawaiian Drug Free Schools and Communities Program. The comic is intended to help young Hawaiians make healthy decisions regarding drugs, alcohol and tobacco. Opened from one side, the comic tells a story from the boys’ point of view, while opening it from the other side tells the story from the girls’ viewpoint. While English and Hawaiian are the official co-languages of the State of Hawaii, many residents speak a nonstandard English called Hawaiian Pidgin English, Hawaiian Creole English, HCE, or simply Pidgin. Ke Kolo Pololei uses such nonstandard English in an attempt to appeal to Hawaiian students in intermediate through high school.
Κλασσικά Εικονογραφημένα, is the Greek language version of the American series, Classics Illustrated. The series first began publication in the Greek language in 1951. On display are the stories of Ηλεκtρα (Sophocles' Electra) and Διογένης ὁ Κυνικός (Diogenes the Cynic).
Curated by Pamela Jackson
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