Barcelona, City of Comics introduces readers of English to a range of Spanish- and Catalan-language comics published after the death of dictator Francisco Franco in 1975. During this time of palpable social change, the Catalonian capital regained its reputation as the hub of comics publishing in Spain. Comics collectives such as El Rrollo and Butifarra, as well as individual artists from Montse Clavé to Mariscal, contributed to a thriving comics subculture that drew from and pushed beyond the countercultural comics tradition in the United States. As the Salón Internacional del Cómic de Barcelona (1981–) drew greater attention to the city, comics magazines teemed with graphic depictions of urban scenes. On the comics page, themes of architecture and city life were employed as social critique, while the city of Barcelona itself increasingly solidified its reputation on the global stage through urban planning. With a foreword by Pere Joan, Barcelona, City of Comics delves into the relationship between comics and urbanism in one of Europe's most notable global cities.

Spanish comics have attracted considerable critical attention internationally: dissertations have been written, monographs have been published, and an array of cultural institutions in Spain (the media, publishing houses, bookstores, museums, and archives) have increasingly promoted the pleasures, pertinence, and power of graphic narrative to an ever-expanding readership - all in an area of cultural production that was held, until recently, to be the stuff of child's play, the unenlightened, or the unsophisticated. This volume takes up the charge of examining how contemporary comics in Spain have confronted questions of cultural legitimacy through serious and timely engagement with diverse themes, forms, and approaches - a collective undertaking that, while keenly in step with transnational theoretical trends, foregrounds local, regional, and national dimensions particular to the late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century Spanish milieu. From memory and history to the economic and the political, and from the body and personal space to mental geography, the essays collected in Consequential Art account for several key ways in which a range of comics practitioners have deployed the image-text connection and alternative methods of seeing to interrogate some of the most significant cultural issues in Spain.

Spanish comics represent an exciting and diverse field, yet one that is often overlooked outside of Spain. Spanish Comics offers an overview on contemporary scholarship on Spanish comics, focusing on a wide range of comics dating from the Francoist dictatorship, 1939-1975; the Political Transition, 1970-1985; and Democratic Spain since the early 1980s including the emergence of the graphic novel in 2000. Touching on themes of memory, gender, regional identities, and history, the chapters in this collection demonstrate the historical and cultural significance of Spanish comics.

Masters of Spanish Comic Book Art is a celebration of the great artists who revolutionized horror comics in the 1970s with their work on Warren's Vampirella, Creepy, and Eerie horror comics. This first-ever comprehensive history of Spanish comic books and Spanish comic artists reveals their extraordinary success -- not just in Spain and America, but around the world. Containing artwork from over 80 artists, this in-depth retrospective includes profiles of such legends as Esteban Maroto, Sanjulian, Jose Gonzalez, Jordi Bernet, Enrich, Victor De La Fuente, Jose Ortiz and Luis Garcia Mozos. With 500 illustrations, over half scanned directly from the original artwork, Masters Of Spanish Comic Book Art honors the "Golden Generation" whose artwork inspired the imagination of comic book lovers everywhere.

Born in Mallorca, Pere Joan Riera (known professionally as Pere Joan) thrived in the underground comics world, beginning in the mid-1970s with the self-published collections Baladas Urbanas and MuŽrdago, both of which were released almost immediately after the death of the dictator Francisco Franco and Spain's transition to democracy. The first monograph in English on a comics artist from the Spain, The Art of Pere Joan takes a topographical approach to reading comics, applying theories of cultural and urban geography to Pere Joan’s treament of space and landscape in his singular body of work. Balancing this goal with an exploration of specific works by Pere Joan, Benjamin Fraser demonstrates that looking at the thematic, structural, and aesthetic originality of the artist's landscape-driven work can help us begin to newly understand the representational properties of comics as a spatial medium. This in-depth examination reveals the resonance between the cultural landscapes of Mallorca and Pere Joan's metaphorical approach to both rural and urban environments in comics that weave emotional, ecological, and artistic strands in revolutionary ways.

It all begins with a man speaking about how everyone is blind to the powerful message of Gaudi's works. It begins when Toñi, a mere employee, saves an old man from being run over on the same spot where Antoni Gaudi was hit by a tram. It begins when Jaime Calvo, a cold and calculating detective, is ordered to investigate on how a realtor can be murdered in Casa Vicens, the first house created by Gaudi, without any clues whatsoever. When a serial killer named Trencadis leaves corpses at the most important Gaudi buildings and the police cannot stop him, a ordinary woman finds herself trapped in the middle of the case... guided by an old man that appears to be the ghost of Gaudi.

"Masters Of Spanish Comic Book Art is a celebration of the great artists who revolutionized American horror comics in the 1970s with their work on Warren's Vampirella, Creepy, and Eerie horror comics. This first-ever comprehensive history of Spanish comic books and Spanish comic artists reveals their extraordinary success -- not just in Spain and America, but around the world. Their global influence has been little known until this celebration of their contributions. Containing artwork from over 80 artists, this in-depth retrospective includes profiles of such legends as Esteban Maroto, Sanjulian, Jose Gonzalez, Jordi Bernet, Enrich, Victor De La Fuente, Jose Ortiz and Luis Garcia Mozos. With 500 illustrations, over half scanned directly from the original artwork, Masters Of Spanish Comic Book Art honors the "Golden Generation" whose artwork inspired the imagination of comic book lovers everywhere."--