The great little celebration of the centenary of the Colombian comic at the Book Fair | Filbo 2024

‘Mojicón’, a boy dressed in a black jacket, shorts, bow tie and cap, created by the caricaturist and painter Adolfo Samper, appeared for the first time, in comic strip format, on January 19, 1924 on the last page of the Bogotá afternoon newspaper Mundo al Día, and lasted six years, until the newspaper closed in 1930.

“With that character, Colombians learned to enjoy comics, to read the cartoons, to relate the images and the texts, the ‘balloons’ (of text) and also to see ourselves reflected in them,” Pablo Guerra, from the independent publisher Cohete Cómics and leader of the ‘Year 100 Colombian comics’ initiative.

To commemorate the centenary, the District Institute of Arts (Idartes) of Bogotá also invited Colombian artists to participate in the ‘Cien Mojicones’ call, to make their own versions of the character.

Activities for everyone

To celebrate this centenary, members of the initiative teach workshops at FILBo to teach children and young people about the national comic and its history.

“We wanted to make visible the heritage value of our comic, which is not being preserved and conserved, as an act of gratitude to the creators who opened this path and laid the foundations on which we are working,” Guerra details when commenting on the purpose of the celebration and its spaces.

In one of the workshops, Guerra tells young students who are enthusiastic about illustration and children who are part of a school visit to draw one of what, he says, was one of the most popular characters in the country’s cartoons: Copetín .

This was a blonde boy, a street dweller, who appeared with his two friends in the pages of the newspapers El Tiempo and El Espectador between the 70s and 90s of the last century.

The challenge that Guerra sets is to draw it from scratch, as the participants think of and without help, and meanwhile explain the character’s history.

Copetín “was created by a man named Ernesto Franco (…) and through this character he wanted to represent a problem of the 20th century that, fortunately, has already disappeared, as was the problem of street children,” he explains.

Colombian comic news

The centennial commemoration includes debates on the current situation of comics in Colombia, with the participation of national artists and writers.

Colombia is a country where the public consumes foreign comic productions but the national ones, according to their own creators, are not as well received “as they do not receive institutional support and have a weak connection with the book industry.”

Despite this, for Pablo Guerra and his team, Colombia “has a good and vital current situation”, with a lot of talent within the ninth art industry, even with participation in international fairs such as those in Guadalajara (Mexico) or Frankfurt (Germany). ), and have won awards in countries such as Japan.

That optimism is also shared by people like Heidi Muskus, who was the main illustrator of the graphic novels of the writer Mario Mendoza, and who has been able to captivate book consumers with these works.

“We have seen how new generations are approaching, among them many female readers who are liking and following other Colombian authors,” he explains.

Counting the achievements and challenges that lie ahead, the greatest exponents and fans of cartoons hope that “when the next hundred years of comics are celebrated in Colombia there will be a transformed scene.” EFE

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