Spaniard addendum

An interesting grace note to the blathering argument of the graphical novel is the fact that in the 1960s in Spain, La Novela Gráfica was a term used as a label on a type of comic of digest-size, such as this title aimed at a female audience (November 1960).


There's a lot of blather about the term being pretentious in its being a composite of a literary and an Art reference, but here it is, 4 years before it is said to have been invented in 1964 (insofar as the Spanish is a relative of the American), on a fairly commercial product. Knowing this kind of magazine, I would imagine the interior would be somewhat less attractive than that very nice cover, which does show how good the best of those commercial ink illustrators were back then.

Picture from the blog of Pepo Perez, an artist of merit, whose blog I have referenced a few times over the last week. His drawing has a fresh spontaneity that appeals to me very much. Here he is in collaboration with writer Santiago Garcia in an immediate response to the subject of the political protests in Spain in May.


It was translated into several languages; whole thing is in English here.