Today my good friends and colleagues Dale Pratt and Juan Carlos Martín visited campus. At noon we had a great conversation with some of our great students about graduate school. Then in the early evening we had our Tears in the Rain presentation.
I am so glad that so many of my students and colleagues were able to make it out, especially considering the big snow storm that blew in this afternoon. I felt like all three presentations went well, but what really made the evening great was the conversation we had afterward. We had great well-thought questions and a good chance to chat about memory, science fiction, and the future of humanity.
One of the best and toughest questions came from my colleague Iliana Portaro. She asked us how we would define graphic novel and how much we knew about the history of the graphic novel in Spain. I responded that for me a graphic novel is essentially a long-form comic or a collection of shorter issues that form a long arc. I like the definition that Scott McLoud gives for comics in his book Undersanding Comics: The Invisible Art, which is that comics are "juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence, intended to convey information and/or produce an aesthetic response in the viewer.”
As far as the history of comics in Spain are concerned, I really know next to nothing as this is a field I am just dabbling in for the time being. I did find this Wikipedia article in English that gives a general overview since the 1940s, and this one that gives a much more detailed view of things since the early 20th century. While these articles focus on the industry in Spain, I would also point out that there are notable works by people from Spain in international markets. Perhaps most notable among these are Blacksad by Juan Díaz Canales and Juanjo Guarnido (click here to pick it up at Amazon), and the highly touted artwork on the new run of Hawkeye by David Aja.
Like I said, I'm really new to all of this. If you have any suggestions about great comics from Iberia or done by Iberian or Hispanic American writers or artists, I'd be happy to hear about them in the comments below.
