A comparative approach to the edition and circulation of comic strips in Spain and Argentina in the 21st century

Abstract

Currently comics have gained recognition within readers, public institutions, journalism and intellectual and cultural fields. This change can be understood in correlation with a process of social and economic renewal. In box the Spanish and Argentine cases, the traditional comic publishing industry disappeared in the nineties. In the European country, comics became a renewed industry that is facing an increase in sales and a progressive consolidation within the publishing world. In the South American country, following the Argentinean Crisis of December 2001, small self-managed publishing enterprises have proliferated and they revitalized a small market.   

The objective of this research is to examine the social conditions that produced structural changes in the circulation of comics in Spain and Argentina over the last two decades. Our hypothesis is that social uses, reading practices, mechanisms of legitimacy and publishing strategies are cultural mediations between comics and readers. This reorganization in the forms of production and circulation of symbolic goods changed its way of insertion in social life. Therefore, cultural mediations made the Spanish and Argentine comic to be considered as a cultural product with a kind of legitimacy and visibility that it did not have before.