Brazilian Comics: Origin, Development, and Future Trends

Brazilian comics have experienced a very idiosyncratic development. In the beginning, they received influences from different parts of the world: initially, from European humor and children’s magazines, and later on, from U.S. comic books. More recently, the influence of Japanese manga on Brazilian comics has been strong. However, aside from any cultural influence, it is also important to consider the significance of international economic contingence when alluding to comics in Latin American countries. Besides being a graphic art, comics are a communicative medium, part of a huge mass market with ramifications all around the world and closely related to other media. To a considerable extent, the history of comics in Brazil is a permanent struggle between the cartoonists’ needs to express themselves by means of the language of comics and the impositions of the modern entertainment industry, whose main object is the maximization of immediate profit. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.