In 1979, El Vibora magazine published its first issue. Despite being born in what was already a democracy, one of the most subversive and rebellious comics publications in the kiosk still showed certain attitudes inherited from that dictatorship, almost four decades later, that they wanted to leave behind at all costs. It penetrated the depths of Spanish society.
Among the gestures that could not be eliminated was machismo, both in the way women were represented in published comics and in the treatment of writers in the newsroom. In this sense, female comic book creators have had to live with the extreme sexualization of female characters by writers like Robert Crumb. and realities like women with big breasts, long legs, and wide hips and having to wait until 1984 for a woman to sign the magazine cover.
“I was allowed to do a cover because Joseph Marie Lo Ducaa famous intellectual and co-founder Cahiers du CinemaWrote Josep Maria Berenguerpublisher Viperyou’re the best writer in her magazine MaracaiboI started publishing under this pseudonym in 1981, after Alfredo Pons loved a comic book I took to the newsroom and offered to write a screenplay for me. While the writers supported me, Berenguer was so misogynistic that he paid me less than male writers and kept me waiting for months. Viper. So much so that I was the only woman allowed to do covers throughout the 1980s,” recalls the illustrator. Laura Perez Vernetti whose cover JellyfishIt was recently acquired by the MNAC Museum in Barcelona.
“Originally, the comic is a masculine colonized territory where the gaze, speech, and public, conceived by the creators and producers, form part of a conversation between men from which women are excluded. This means that, like witches, there have been no women as this discipline has existed since it began in the 19th century. coming,” explains the illustrator. Marika VillaIt emphasizes that it must be women themselves who “save ourselves by pulling our hair out of the lagoon of silence that has eclipsed us until this second, like Baron Munchausen.” On resilience, cracking the traditional discourse, saving the unseen and supporting new generations, we managed to laugh at ourselves for saying that we will never come out of the shadows and return to silence again.
adult writers
The result of this claim made by the female illustrators of their own works is as follows: Little women of the world, unite!The exhibition revisits the works of adult comics writers from 1967 to 1993, Reina Sofia Museum Library and Documentation Center Area D until June.
“While male writers are publishing Viper, Cairo anyone stars known, the authors have escaped attention. In fact, many of them simply signed with Laura, Pilar… When we looked at that subject, we saw the production they had and realized that they were covering extremely interesting, very powerful topics and still referencing concerns even today. very current.. For example, open sexuality, abortion, women’s employment and all the discrimination they are subjected to, not from a legal point of view, but from a social point of view, at least after the eighties. The curators of the exhibition, Alberto Medina and Guillermo Cobo, also explain the name of the exhibition and the choice of that very specific time period: “The title comes from a caricature of Nuria Pompeia, who also determined the history. The beginning of the period covered by the exhibition. This author published it in 1967. motherhoodis an album that deals with motherhood from a non-idealized point of view, in full Francoism, without text, only with drawings. The second date, 1993, responds to the fact that it was the year the Virus publishing house launched. Trading powder for glitterher third album published in Spain with a collective authorship and a feminist approach”.
The first album of these features is dated 1979. magazine that year Totem has published a special issue dedicated to female comic writers, featuring works by international firms as well as Spanish artists such as Marika Vila. Mariel Soria anyone Montse Clave. “Although it was a landmark, the editorial of the publication was very lukewarm because while it is so important to recognize the work of the authors, it came to say that with the publication of that issue it was enough and another was gone. In fact, it would not be until 1992 with its publication. women’s rightswhen a collective album of works by women writers was made,” they remember. Alberto Medina And Guillermo KoboConfirming how easy a start in the comic book world was for working women in the 70s and 80s. “Many used self-publishing and self-distribution to publicize their work. For example, Montse Clavé organized two fanzines through a communist organization called 091, and there were similar authors in the eighties. Martha Guerrero The usual thing, then, was that they were still published by professional publishers, as self-published magazines did. undergroundnot as conceptually as in distribution or endings”.
But the relationship with professional publishers has not been easy for these creators. “Marta Guerrero was allowed to make comics. sick voices anyone Dolores but they already took very little delivery jesus feuwhat was it doing Crazy Heartthey thought about it a lot Light because it wasn’t as sickly as men at the time when it came to addressing sexuality. However, when there are two build numbers in the middle of the pandemic Viper In digital, Feu’s stories were not included because the current editors found them too risky,” Medina and Cobo recall.
Tired of the instability of the industry and tired of working in unequal conditions for male writers, Many of these writers left the profession. “In fact, they were fired as writers, first for not being considered as readers, and later for their lack of sensitivity and care for the medium’s female artists. They left the masculinized space and developed their own style. Work with more warm-hearted and sensitive people in the illustration or design field, but some, other they have willingly and resiliently endured their careers by entering the disciplines, but they have never completely abandoned comics,” explains Marika Vila. several writers of that time still active, along with Laura Pérez Vernetti. “In the 1970s and 1980s, many women writers left because publishers didn’t publish them. As comic book sales fell in the 1990s, publishers fired female writers earlier than men. and for a woman the harshness of the comic book world was so great that for a cartoonist there was no choice but to abandon this art”, confirms Pérez Vernetti.
work to do
After dozens of times ignored, you show how Little women of the world, unite! Adult comic writers (1967-1993) allow the general public to rediscover—or directly discover—a generation of female writers wiped out by a masculinized and patriarchal society who tackle the same issues they share with their male counterparts with a different sensibility. to them, while denouncing the injustices that affect them simply because they are women.
“According to me we are in the moment of fruit picking, but the worst thing we can do is believe it is final. The work continues to be done and to ensure its permanence it is necessary to continue to give it content and roots, and to remember that beyond exceptional it is still very fragile. Reality is not expressed in silence, it is the voices that show our diversity and give the power to change the discourse of art”, comments Marika Vila.
To this end, Alberto Medina and Guillermo Cobo, Reina Sofia Library is the acquisition of comics by new women writers “so that, without having to resort to curatorial discourse, readers are those who directly consider whether or not the female creators of the seventies and eighties had an influence on existing women writers. “.
“There are so many female comics writers today, they’re covering new topics like good ones and candid stories, biographies of female artists, feminist issues, psychological problems. handicapshomosexuality a underground Humor from a women’s point of view…” says Laura Pérez Vernetti, highlighting another recent success these new artists have achieved: “They have succeeded in increasing the number of female readers because previously comics were only directed and read by men.”