The Spanish comic strip since 1995

Abstract

In the last fifteen years comic has changed dramatically in Spain. The small size of the comics industry in the Spanish market doesn’t allow comic creators to turn his job into a profession, but the medium has attained prestige, critical attention on the cultural spaces and a place in the bookstores. Those changes are the consequence of some significant facts of the period: after the extinction of former comic magazines, comic books substituted them as the first format for comics edition, and a number of critical fanzines and self-edited fanzines and magazines were published by the authors themselves. Newborn and independent smallpress, more focused on the aesthetic values than on the economic profits of comics edition, have defined the new author comic, often printed in the format of books and associated to the “graphic novel” label.