“Representing Memory in Graphic Novels in Argentina”. Carolina Center for Jewish Studies. UNC-Chapel-Hill. 12 November 2019.

1. Representing Memory in
Graphic Novels in Argentina
Martín Sueldo

2. What is a graphic novel?
• A 21st Century artistic/cultural expression.
• Advanced printing capacities.
• Book format using comics language.
• Sequential yuxtaposed panels representing scenes.
• Differences with comics and comics books.

3. Where comics came from?
• Rodolphe Töpffer (Switzerland) made his histories en estampes at the end of 1820.
• Joseph Pulitzer (New York World) and William Randolph Hearst (New York Journal)
• The approach depends on whether we see it an artistic expression or a mass
culture product.

4. Rodolphe Töpffer

5. Balloons
Comics language in the US  balloons for characters
to speak.

7. Hogan’s Alley
• First balloons

8. Happy
Hooligan
(1900)

9. • Comics books  30’s
• Classics Illustrated (Gilberton)  40’s
(1941/1971)

10. Graphic Novel
• Related to “The Alternative Comic” (60’s & 70’s). Not related to Superheroes.
• More defined and stable. There is not a fixed number of panel set by
publishers/journals/magazines.
• Combination of visual-iconic and linguistic codes to create a language and to tell a
story or dramatize an idea.
• Diverse drawing styles. It is not as homogenic as the comic.

11. Graphic novel
• It uses a solid language developed by comics over more than 100 years.
• It is a book; publishing houses have a section.
• New Technologies also allow multiple forms of marketing and selling. Hence, new
small publishers.
• It can also be transmedia storytelling. Animation is also part of the current
context.
• Authorship: writer and/or illustartor

12. Will Eisner: “the Reading of a comic book is an act of
both aesthetic perception and intelectual pursuit.”
2005
1985

13. 1978: First time
“graphic novel” is
used as a marketing
strategy or to find a
place within cultural
industry.
It is a collection of
stories

14. Art Spiegelman “Maus”.
• 1992 First Pulitzer Award for a graphic
novel.
• 1980-1991 published in Raw.

15. Graphic Novel in Argentina
Each country in Latin
America constitutes a
different system. It is easy
to fall into stereotypes or
overgeneralize features.
Beginning of 20th Century:
Immigration brings
comics artists to
Argentina. Arrival of
American comics.
1968: Primera Bienal
Mundial de la Historieta
(First World Comic
Biennale) at the Di Tella
Institute in Buenos Aires.

16. El Eternauta
(Héctor Oesterheld, 1957-1959)

17. 1968
advertisement
of the World
Comics
Biennale in
Buenos Aires

18. Dear
Patagonia
(2011)

19. Dear Patagonia

20. Dear Patagonia

21. 155 (Agustin Comotto, 2016)

22. Simón Radowitzky
• (Ukraine, 1891 – Mexico City, 1956) was a militant
Ukrainian Argentine worker and anarchist. He was a
prisoner of the penal colony in Ushuaia. He was held for
the assassination of a head of police responsible for the
brutal repression of Red Week in 1909 in Buenos Aires.
Radowitzky was pardoned after 21 years, he left
Argentina and fought with the Republicans during the
Spanish Civil War.

24. 155

26. Camino a Auschwitz y otras historias de resistencia (2015)

27. Camino a Auschwitz y otras historias de resistencia (2015)

28. • “The denounced work approaches in a polemic and original fashion the
phenomenon of the Holocaust and the horror of the concentration camps,
however this does not imply it is despising or distorting the phenomenon per se.
It does not constitute a discriminatory behavior in terms of the law 23.592”
INADI (National Institute
against Discrimination,
Xenophobia, and Racism)