Global Fandom: Daniel Aguilar and Enrique Uribe-Jongbloed (Colom

Comics and fandom (studies) in Colombia

Daniel Aguilar and Enrique Uribe-Jongbloed, researchers of the GRIC at Universidad Externado de Colombia, have dedicated our efforts in studying a variety of different media and participation activities and scenarios. Based on our own experience, we have studied the way in which comics, rock music, role-playing games and television have created an environment of participants in different times of our media history in Colombia.

Rock music, which could be considered one of the prime examples of an expanding global phenomenon, can be traced back as one of the main areas where fandom turned into tribute and then into the formation of a very own local scene. We have studied the social formation of rock bands, particularly in Bogotá, and how that generated a space for social and political participation.

We have also studied comics, drawing from our experience and from interviews with collectors, comic buffs and artists, to try to map out the growth in comics consumption in the 1970s, the development of the magazine kiosks as sites of exchange, the traditional neighborhood garages that were turned into comic dens, where the social activity of renting comics to be read sitting on the sidewalk became an experience. Based on oral histories of our contemporaries, we have explored how comics consumers expressed their fandom. As there are new spaces (events, fairs, groups and associations) that have started to appear in the last 20 years, we have also started to undertake participatory observations in those events, to see how Colombians engage currently with their interests by the means of forums, debates, cosplay, collecting material and producing fan fiction/fan art.

Undoubtedly, in Colombia some of the strongest fan activities have been developed around Japanese Anime and Manga. This interest started in the1980s thanks to the increasing TV presence of Anime shows in Colombian television as evidence of global consumption of animation from Japan. It extended into the 1990s as a circuit of exchange and informal commerce and emulation that brought people together to acquire derivative products, whether officially imported or locally produced by fans, and the creating of videoclubs that used to showcase some of the most renowned works in improvised theatres for a small fee.

Although Colombian television series and telenovelas of the 1980s managed to have some cult following, this situation never reached heights of recognizable fandom. Perhaps the only exception could be seen in the costumes that most kids would wear around Halloween, which oftentimes included a couple of characters from local comedy series or telenovelas. The main case of a cult-telenovela in the late 1980s is, perhaps, “Calamar” (Caracol, 1989), which included an animatronic character “Guri-Guri”, which could be acquired as a toy, as the cover of notebooks, and as a small toy-present in a variety of consumer products (e.g. bags of chips). Guri-Guri is, thus, the only national case of a TV show turning into ancillary products, expanding the Telenovela spectatorship into fans. However, the hit Mexican TV sitcoms El Chavo and El chapulín Colorado, which have played on Colombian television since the 1970s to date, could also be deemed as carrying the example of fandom, including ancillary products and enough Halloween costumes. 

There is evidence of both a globalized expansion of fandom, such as the case of Anime and Manga fans, comics books consumers (which could either be fans of American Marvel/DC comics and Garfield, European larger formats, such as Tintin, Asterix, Mortadelo y Filemón, or Corto Maltés, Mexican comics like Fantomas, Calimán and Memín, Condorito from Chile or Mafalda from Argentina), as there is from Rock music from EEUU and the UK, at the same time as a growth of Latin American Rock bands or the growing internationalization of participation in global videogames, and also the consumption and fan development of local products, although in a more limited extension, which only seems to express itself in certain smaller scale events.

A typical comic from the 1970s (this a Mexican comic, but the setting was Colombia)

The division of consumption of comics books in the 1980s and 1990s can be traced to the cultural capital and economic background of the consumers and fans. Most comics in the 1980s were published in Spanish, distributed as small (half letter-size page) magazines published on newspaper-quality paper, with a very low price, which expanded their consumption. By the 1990s, the disappearance of the magazine kiosks and the bankruptcy of the distribution companies, led to the comics moving only into the specialized bookstore, often exclusively in English or their original language (French, in the cases of Tintin and Asterix), and becoming available only to those with more disposable income, cultural capital, and language abilities, which then becomes a middle- or upper-class activity. Recently, local comics have started to gather a new readership and a small-scale fandom, with a low price and easy accessibility such as the cases of Bogotá Masacre Zombie and Saic (see more about the comic scenario in Colombia in Uribe-Jongbloed and Aguilar-Rodríguez, 2020).

Whereas the informal or small-scale stores of Anime and Manga products became a staple of middle and working class neighborhoods –alongside the videogame parlors where you could rent a Nintendo to play for periods of 30-minutes–, the specialist store or Hobby shop appeared in the Bogotá under Libreria Francesa (The French Bookshop), opening up to four shops in the height of their business in the late 1990s. Libreria Francesa’s Hobby Center was the place where Role-Playing games, collectible card games, comics, miniatures and toys could be acquired. They catered for a more exclusive upper and upper-middle class, with English or French language skills and more disposable income. The tabletop RPG boom of the late 1990s and early 2000s sparked the creation of local clubs and guilds at the various public and private universities and saw the creation of independent gaming clubs, none of which lasted a decade (for more on RPGs in Colombia, see Uribe-Jongbloed, 2020). By the 2010s the various book and entertainment fairs (SOFA, FILBO, COMIC-CON, among others) became the gathering place for comics collectors, cosplayers and RPG aficionados, local libraries offered comics reading groups, and Entreviñetas became a staple yearly event for people interested in a more academic take on comics, at the same time as the Cali Shinanime became the main meeting point for Anime and Manga fans.

Through this general perspective of Colombian fandom, mainly focused in Bogotá and side-stepping videogameas, we hope to have given you a quick view of how fandom’s interconnected cultural links have taken shape in the last decades. The political change brough about by the 1991 Constitution which opened up the national market to foreign investment and acquisitions, increased competition and limited market protectionism, can be seen to underscore the wane of the comics boom of the 1980s and their cultural structures, at the same time as providing entry to other media products –such as Anime, Manga, figurines and miniatures, RPGs–. The 1990s also saw the appearance of cable television and increased competition to the two national broadcasters, which until then provided a unified audiovisual culture to the country. Cultural capital, in terms of linguistic skills in foreign languages, and increasing disposable income, became two of the main driving forces for the development of a more active fan culture base, and provided the original boost for a more global concept of fandom. The 1993 Book Law which made books tax-free, classified comics in the same line of pornographic magazines as objects of no cultural value and responsible for full Value Added Tax, making comics expensive to produce and acquire, driving the last nail in their coffin. The 20 years it took to repeal that classification, and provide comics with the value and tax-free status of cultural products, saw the extinction of all but the staunchest comic book fans, which became a cultural elite very distant from the more popular comics consumers of the previous decades. 

Although more widespread today, fandom in general is often restricted to middle and upper-class highly educated strata, although at least it is now no longer as male-dominant as it was in the early 1990s, joining a more international trend in that aspect. Despite some local products receiving some attention, it is still well below the fan interest brought about by the largest international film, TV, videogame and comics franchises.

FICCO (Independent Colombian Comic Festival)

Contemporary Comics from FICCO

As academics and activists in favor of local comics we also participate as collectors and supporters of nationally produced comics and initiatives, including FICCO, and supporting fellow academics in comics, such as María Camila Núñez and her Youtube vlog “Los comics son buenos”. Fandom studies has not become an academic trend as such in Colombia, but it is clearly on the rise as fandom becomes a more socially recognized topic.

Daniel Aguilar-Rodríguez

Rock and roll drummer, vinyl collector, Gaphic novels and comics lover, Sci-Fi literature enthusiast, DnD Player and Star Wars freak. Probably what you would call a nerdDoctor in Sociology, from Kansas State University, Magister in Sociology from Univesidad Nacional de Colombia and Bachelor in mass communication from Universidad Externado de Colombia, where he currently works as lecturer and researcher, and as head of the research group GRIC.

Enrique Uribe-Jongbloed

Writer of the comic book Doppler. Founding member of El Cómic en Línea and Escrol. DM, boardgame and Sci-Fi enthusiast. Supporter of FICCO.

PhD from Aberystwyth University (Media Studies), MA in World Heritage Studies BTU-Cottbus and BA in Film and Television Studies from Universidad Nacional de Colombia. Lecturer and researcher at the School of Social Communication and Journalism, member of the GRIC research group, Universidad Externado de Colombia.