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Abstract
This article traces ways in which comic fanzines of the late 1970s and early 1980s transgressed against and conformed to accepted Spanish constructions of gender and sexuality of the day. Research is drawn from close readings of comics found in zines of the period, such as 96 Lágrimas, Ediciones moulinsart and Kaka de Luxe. Young Madrileños literally drew on images and tropes from a variety of sources, from punk musicians to Tintin in the Congo, making them their own. Through fanzines, often sold in Madrid's Rastro, a Roma marketplace, young people became cultural producers, creating a culture that was postmodern and anti-fascist.
Keywords: comics, gender, Madrid, Movida madrileña, punk, sexuality, Spain, youth
A New New Wave: The Zine and Comics Scene in Spain
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Madrid was in the throes of a cultural and political change that upended the far-right authoritarian dictatorship of General Francisco Franco, who had ruled Spain from the end of the Spanish Civil War in 1939 until his death in 1975. In a country that had actively promoted nationalism and militarism, positioned women below men and arrested and killed queer people, those who did not conform to Francoist norms of gender and sexuality (the anti-authoritarian youth culture that arose in the years leading up to Franco's death) radically contrasted with the fascistic ideology of National Catholicism of the regime by promoting pluralism as Spain transitioned to democracy.1 As the Spanish historian Pamela Beth Radcliff argues, 'One of the best places to investigate the place of gender in Spain's emergent democratic culture is in the political press of the transition'. For Radcliff, print culture of the transition 'was a central building block of the revived public sphere, which began to take shape in the mid 1970s as censorship declined and the circulation of information reached a critical "take-off" point'.2 Another place we might look is the largely unregulated Spanish fanzine culture of the 1970s and early 1980s, which one might argue was part of the unofficial political print culture.3
In the first issue of La liviandad del imperdible [The lightness of a safety pin] (see Fig. 1), the now legendary Madrid fanzine dedicated to anarchism, punk and comics, dated October 1977, the authors, composed of...