On the Front Lines of Japanese Popular Culture Research: Toward the Pursuit of New Images of Japan.
Panel 1: “Comparing Manga Cultures: Japan and Mexico”

The “Half-Real” as Created by Photomontage: Acclimated Bodies, Movement, andPhotographs
Yamamoto Tadahiro
Introduction
This paper focuses on photomontage, a technique inphotograph combined with text. In some cases, a

Mexican comics (also known as historieta), to examine

technique that was the reverse of photomontage was

the relationships among media, techniques, andused, with characters drawn onto a photo backgroundcharacters in materials related to the comics artist and(Note 1). Furthermore, photo novels existed not only as

editor José Guadalupe Cruz Díaz (José G. Cruz) and theoriginal stories but also as magazine versions of films,

El Santo series on which he worked.

which were called film novels or film stories. From the

Although further details will be given later in thelate 1920s, photo novels started being published as thepaper, photomontage is a technique that involves cutting

magazine version of films. Through the medium ofout photographs of characters and re-pasting themphotographs, these magazine-films functioned as aagainst drawn backgrounds. Rather than using thebridge between film media and written media (Note 2).

photographs in each panel that is positioned on the

Moreover,when

discussing

the“mediatic”

pages of the comic book, the photographs are cut out,

relationships between the different types of media,

resized, and made to “fit in” with the background

Hidaka Ryōsuke referenced Jonathan Sterne:drawing; this “blending” is a vital aspect ofMedia itself does not mediate reality as an

photomontage. This “blending (acclimating)” of

autonomous entity. It mutually references thedrawing and photography, comics and Mexican reality,

features of other forms of media, quotes them, andis a part of the creator José G. Cruz’s strategy of realism.

recomposes them, manifesting itself in the form ofSuchmedia at that point in time (Note 3).

afusionbecametheimpetusforthetransformation of the El Santo character—the topic of

Hidaka stated that “new media incorporate the ways in

the present paper.

which old media are used” and that in contrast to

Narrative formats that use photographs are by no“remediation,” including the “single-track development

means limited to Mexico. Italian fumetti, Northof new media that perform better mediation,” the term

American and Latin American photo comics, and even,“mediatic”

in the broad sense, photo essays in the American

relationships between forms of media (Hidaka, 2021).

magazine LIFE can be said to have a similar format. In

In many ways, this “mediatic” relationship applies toJapan, so-called photo novels were published in thetheyouth magazines Shōjo no tomo and Nippon shōnen in

photographs/films.

the 1910s. Unlike illustrations for serial newspaper

photomontage can be said to act as a bridge between thenovels, the photographs in photo novels played a major

media types of comics and photographs/films, blendingrole in the narrative, with each panel containing athem together to create new value and a return current

emphasizes

relationshipthebetweenTocross-referential

Mexican

jump

ahead

comicsandsomewhat,

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International Research Center for Japanese Studies, Japanese Popular Culture Research Project
January 21 (Friday)On the Front Lines of Japanese Popular Culture Research: Toward the Pursuit of New Images of Japan.
Panel 1: “Comparing Manga Cultures: Japan and Mexico”

between the two types of media.

introduced.

Here, let us examine how photomontage was
José G. Cruz’s Innovations and Realism Strategy
In the context of Mexican comics, José G. Cruz is

subsequently turned these novels into comics himself.

thought to be the person who first conceived of the

The transformation from serializing fragmented stories

technique of photomontage and put it to use in his art; ato serializing a single story in fragments not only

detailed career history can be found in the materials

enabled the development of the mixture of media

included in this volume (February 2022, forthcoming).

between novels and comics, but also addressed the issue

Cruz was not only an artist but also the founder of hisof realism. Despite the issue of daily publishing cycles,

own publishing house, Ediciones José G. Cruz, and aa story that was updated daily would eventually gain

notable innovator when it came to comics. The Director

continuity, and as the story was told in a single momentof the Mexico Caricature and Comics Museum, Rubén(that is, time) and location (that is, space), the daily

Eduardo Soto Díaz, made the following remarks

format allowed the reader and the story to synchronize

regarding Cruz.

(Note 5).

He made comics more serious, working in a

Cruz also brought realism into the content of his

novelistic style that dealt with humanistic content

works. The following is the opening narration toand introducing the groundbreaking format of

Ventarron (Pepín, 1943):

having the beginning and ending set from the start.

One lonely gray afternoon, there was a grimy old

He started to implement an unprecedented method,

man clothed in rags, in a dark corner between theformulating a novel on the premise of serializing it

old buildings of the factory district. … He was justover a period of two to three months and thenone of many beggars (Note 6).

drawing all the panels using the medio tonoThis opening line clearly shows Cruz’s intention totechnique (Note 4).

connect the numerous poor people of Mexico, that is to

Medio tono, a characteristic technique of Mexican

say, the readers of comics, to the protagonist of the

comics along with photomontage, was invented by one

story. He was attempting to transform comics fromof Cruz’s influences, Alfonso Tirado, in his “El

stories of fictional characters, or stories of “someone

Flechador del Cielo” (Pepín, 1938). The techniqueelse,” to stories of “us.” In Muñequita (Ediciones José

creates a halftone image that is drawn with diluted ink,

G. Cruz, 1952), Cruz presents a comic with a story that

thereby adding rich gradients to the comic images thatfeatures real-life characters as protagonists (Note 7).

used to have stark black and white contrasts.
Furthermore, the comics magazines of the 1940s

Photomontage becomes one element of the realism
strategy Cruz employs in his comics.

Cruz’swere published in a daily format that lent itself tointroduction of photomontage was devised gradually.

sporadic content and was not packaged for long-term

Under José García Valseca, a publishing house owner

narratives. However, Cruz wrote original novels in

who had obtained the rights to use domestic and foreign

advance, on the condition of serialized publication, andfilm images in the 1940s, Cruz produced fotonovelas as
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January 21 (Friday)On the Front Lines of Japanese Popular Culture Research: Toward the Pursuit of New Images of Japan.
Panel 1: “Comparing Manga Cultures: Japan and Mexico”

the comic book versions of films. A fotonovela is thephotomontage was also connected to the issue ofmagazine version of a film in which the original isstreamlining comic book production. The unusual

simplified and its images are put into a panel layout inpublication cycles of daily magazines were unavoidable

combination with lines from the film. However, Cruzfor comics creators, which raised the serious question of

was dissatisfied with the craftsmanship of these

how to make the production process more efficient.

magazine-films. Soto, the Director of the Mexico

Even before photomontage, Cruz had transformed the

Caricature and Comics Museum statedcomic production process. In comics production studios,

These works were too cold, too static, they were

although a “rubber-stamp-based production system was

not quite snappy enough. So when he boldly

created and put to use” (Note 9), its use was limited.

experimentedofConsequently, Cruz made images of the parts ofdrawings and photographs into comics, his works

characters’ faces ahead of time, aiming to maximize thebecame popular with readers, and this is how theefficiency of the process by reusing these images.

byincorporating

collages

photomontage technique came to be (Note 8).
Aside from the issue of realism, the introduction of

Figure 1. Face drawings (from the archives of José G. Cruz’s family)
In relation to optimization, photomontage is a direct
extension of the aforementioned turn of events. The

issue of symbolizing expressions are not in conflict;rather, the two can be understood as able to coexist.

images in Figure 1 are depicted with a touch of comic

It is worth mentioning that only the characters’ heads

strip style, with the characters’ expressions drawn such

were symbolized and reused. Although it is impossiblethat the images can be sorted into symbolic categories;

to fully verify the actual circumstances of production atthese examples show that Cruz approached drawing

the time, the images in Figure 1 suggest a process incomics in a symbolic manner, as with the manga symbol

which the heads were copied and pasted, after which thetheory of Tezuka Osamu. The term “symbolic drawing”

bodies were drawn to fit them. This process itself would

tends to bring to mind rough sketches with sparse lines.

have the same structure as photomontage. In other

However, as Figure 1 shows, the issue of lines and thewords, the mixture of copying heads and drawing
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Panel 1: “Comparing Manga Cultures: Japan and Mexico”

bodies follows the same process as mixing character

Such a melding of reality in storytelling—thisphotographs and backgrounds or special effect lines ininnovation in the images of comics—came to a heada drawing.

with Cruz’s major hit comic El Santo.

The Birth of El SantoEl Santo was a fabled Mexican professional wrestler,

the weak, and those in trouble. The people of Santaknown as a luchador in lucha libre (namely,

Cruz revered him and made him a hero.

professional wrestling); his name means “The Saint.” El

Wherever it may be, if someone is in trouble, thisSanto, or Rodolfo Guzmán Huerta, first debuted as such

mysterious figure will always come to their aid

at the Arena Mexico in 1942. Until his retirement in(Note 10).

1982, his fame was not limited by the borders of Mexico.

However, contrary to the promotional line on the front

El Santo’s popularity grew through film and comic bookcover, the essential figure—El Santo himself—dies inappearances as he became and built a kind of “character”

the first volume.

beyond that of a mere luchador.

Volume 1 can be briefly summarized as follows. To

In 1952, El Santo was brought into the world of

begin with, a burglar sneaks into the mansion of Don

comics when José G. Cruz worked on a script for a short

Samuel, a rich Santa Cruz moneylender. El Santo

series of films that featured him. What kinds ofappears and fends off the burglar after a fight but is shot

expressive devices were used when an actual luchador

in the chest. The moneylender, who had been lining his

became a comic book hero? Here, we will examine El

pockets by charging high interest, was detested by the

Santo’s “debut fight” in the comic Santo elpeople of Santa Cruz, so it might seem suspicious thatEnmascarado de Plata.

El Santo would help him, but El Santo admonishes him

The weekly publication El Enmascarado de Plata

to redress his past behavior and live righteously as he(The Silver-Masked Man) was launched on September

bleeds from his open wound. Then, sensing that he has

3, 1952, featuring the following text on the cover and inreached his final hour, El Santo goes home to the room

the opening narration:of his sleeping son and entrusts the role of “ElStarting today, lucha libre’s biggest idol is the mostEnmascarado de Plata” to his son with his dying breath

exciting comic book hero.

(Fig. 2). Volume 1 is 24 pages long; a period of 15 years

How did the thrilling legend of the character

passes up to page 9, and on the remaining pages, we see

known as “El Santo” or “El Enmascarado de Plata”

the beginning of the depiction of the son as El Santo.

begin? Where was he born? What kind of person

Thus, in his comic book debut, El Santo ends up

was he? No one can say.

passing the baton to the next generation. For an idolized

One day, he appeared out of nowhere. The only

luchador to become a comic book hero, he had to “diething everyone knew, everyone understood, wasonce to be resurrected” as a Christ-like “saint” in the

his love for and profound devotion to the powerless,

Catholic tradition.

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Panel 1: “Comparing Manga Cultures: Japan and Mexico”

Figure 2. El Santo’s “succession” scene
José G. Cruz, El Enmascarado de Plata (Ediciones José G. Cruz, September 1952, Volume 1, p.13)
Naturally, this is Cruz’s realism strategy at work. As

because his father told him to do it. The child’s thefta lucha libre idol, El Santo and his spectators would

demonstrates a direct link to the actual problems of

have had an asymmetrical relationship across the

Mexico in which the child’s father was engulfed. Here,distance set by the ropes of the wrestling ring. However,

too, the child (along with his circumstances) is brought

Cruz, in attempting to meld comics with reality,

into the world of the narrative as an avatar for the reader.

introduced the storyline of a succession as a device toHere, let us discuss the production system and comic

highlight El Santo’s continued connection with anbook page composition. On the title page, in addition to

impoverished public, as a “hero who shows up wherever

Cruz, Trinidad Romero is credited for “Realización”

someone is in trouble in our town.”(production) and Horacio Robles for “Fondos”

In the current world of lucha libre, such a succession(backgrounds). The basic production system for El

is nothing special in itself. The son of Guzmán, the real

Enmascarado de Plata was that Cruz wrote the script,

Santo, also took over the role of “El Santo,” and similar

Romero produced the actual pages of the book,successions have happened for other luchadores such as

including the photomontages, and Robles drew theBlack Shadow and Blue Demon. However, at least in

backgrounds. Since Cruz was working on scripts forthe 1950s, successions had yet to become customary,several projects at the same time, he delegated parts ofand Cruz’s strategy for drawing readers into the comic

the actual production to others.

preceded reality.

Apart from Volume 1, all the title pages of each

Furthermore, the opening narration, similar to that oftheaforementioned

Ventarronandvolume had the same layout, while the other pages

Muñequita,

comprised one of three different types of panel layouts.

connected the ongoing story with the circumstances of

The title page had a large panel, with another panel that

Mexico in which most readers would have been situated.

was demarcated to the lower right and the title andIn the second half of Volume 1, a child is also cast as thenarration written in the upper section. The panel layouts

corresponding opponent of the second-generation El

for other pages were as follows: (1) two panels (upper

Santo. In this episode, the child is caught stealing by El

and lower); (2) three panels in two levels, with one ofSanto; however, the child says that he had no choice

the two segmented; and (3) both upper and lower
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Panel 1: “Comparing Manga Cultures: Japan and Mexico”

sections segmented for a total of four panels on the page.

This is related to the introduction of photomontage: it

In other words, each page consisted of relatively few

seems that reducing the number of panels was a method

panels: between two and four. These three layouts wereto make the photography and panel production morepartially used in Volume 1 as well; however, theefficient after the first volume was produced.

composition of the title page was different, generally

In the next section, we will examine thesplit into three different levels of panels, while the firstcharacteristics of El Santo, who became a comic bookpage had four to six panels—a relatively large number.

hero through photomontage.

Half-Real Physicality
In El Enmascarado de Plata, El Santo is frequently

is positioned at a downward slant with his arms and legs

shown as flying from high places such as trees andstiffly stretched out and white flight effect lines drawn

house windows (Fig. 3). However, even if the real Santoin. If he were merely leaping down from a high place,might have dove off the top rope of the ring, he could

there would be no need for such a pose, and a feet-first

not move around by flying freely, and, in the same vein,

descent posture would have been sufficient. Thisneither can his comic book equivalent (Fig. 4). This

peculiar kind of “flight” (which abides by gravity but ismanner of limited “flight” is made possible with Cruz’s

expressed such that it seems as though he can fly) forms

photomontages and is something that emblemizes El

a standard for the realism of the heroes in Mexican

Santo as a comic book hero.

comics and assures readers that the hero is—just like the

One key characteristic about his flight is that El Santopeople of Santa Cruz—human. In fact, the Santo in thisdoes not fly freely against gravity, namely, from below

story has a vulnerable physicality, which includes his

to above, but is made to fly downward from, forbleeding and eventual death in Volume 1.

example, a window. The photograph cutout of El Santo

Figure 3. El Santo’s gravity-bound “flight”
José G. Cruz, El Enmascarado de Plata (Ediciones José G. Cruz, September 1952, Volume 2, p.33)

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Panel 1: “Comparing Manga Cultures: Japan and Mexico”

Figure 4. A soaring vampire and El Santo
José G. Cruz, El Enmascarado de Plata (Ediciones José G. Cruz, October 1952, Volume 9, p.4)
Initially, El Santo’s villains are primarily humans who

Video games and comics are, of course, different kinds

commit theft and other crimes; however, nonhuman,of media, and comic book readers do not play anything.

imaginary monsters are also introduced later. For

However, in lucha libre itself, the showdown schema

example, there is a vampire in Volumes 7–10 (thisbetween the face or heroic character (técnico) and thevampire also wears wrestling leggings and is drawn likeheel (rudo), along with the masks of the luchadores,

a luchador). The showdown scene, as shown in Figure

present a fabrication that interweaves fiction and reality

4, depicts the vampire soaring freely through the air, on

in a similar “half-real” entertainment form. Based on

cape-like wings, while El Santo, who is unable to fly,

this form, readers of the comic El Enmascarado decannot chase him. Instead, a scene is depicted with a

Plata, which was produced with photomontage, may“witch” who carries both herself and El Santo while

experience a further fictionality that is akin to that of theflying on a broom. Regarding this question of reality

aforementioned video games.

and fiction, Jesper Juul stated the following about video
games as a kind of “half-real” phenomenon:

The rules of El Enmascarado de Plata are as follows:“El Santo’s physicality is nearly identical to that of aVideo games are real in that they are made of realliving human being, and he exists in the same world asrules that players actually interact with andthe reader.” Photomontage is the technique that makes

winning or losing a game is a real event. However,these rules even more applicable; photographs thatwhen winning a game by slaying a dragon, theconnect the real Santo to the comic book Santo reinforce

dragon is not a real dragon but a fictional one. To

the rules that constitute the foundation of the comicplay a video game is, therefore, to interact with real

book’s world. However, this version of El Santo fights

rules while imagining a fictional world, and a video

with unreal adversaries, such as vampires, whichgame is a set of rules as well as a fictional world

characterizes the comic book’s world as fictional. In(Note 11).

other words, the (real) luchador El Santo, the (half-real)
comic book El Santo, and the (unreal) opponents that
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Panel 1: “Comparing Manga Cultures: Japan and Mexico”

serve as fictional symbols are all established in the
integrated “half-real” world of the comic book.

In this manner, comic books and photographs/films
have a mediatic cross-referential relationship. The

The photomontage technique that Cruz introduced

magazine versions of films were created in comic books

prompted the rewriting of the “half-reality” of lucha

using photographs from existing films, but Cruz, still

libre to the “half-reality” of a comic book. Regardlessunsatisfied, created photomontage by combiningof how many vampires, witches, or other unreal beings

photographs and drawings, spurring innovation inappear to attack people, suck their blood, or fly around,comics. Although the comic-book Santo retains his

the comic book El Santo remains firmly human to the“half-real” lucha libre physicality, as his masspoint that his “half-real” flight is created throughpopularity grew, he gradually began fighting highly

photomontage. The hero depicted in El Enmascarado

fictional, unreal opponents. The films starring him thatde Plata is not immortal (and cannot fly), while thewere made around this time of popularity primarily

lucha libre luchador unleashes superhuman moves thatfeature the motif of showdowns with these unreal

do not seem human: paradoxically, these two characters

opponents.

share the same physicality. This kind of “half-real”

In summary, the format of taking photographs fromphysicality is renewed by means of photomontage andfilms was used to create a mediatic relationship in comicshows readers a world that is considerably more

books, with the photographs subsequently coded in

fictional.

accordance with the style of comics (with the

The appearance of unreal villains is also related to theintroduction of photomontage). Specifically, whilefilms in which El Santo starred. El Santo’s film debut

maintaining the rules of El Santo’s “half-real”

occurred in two 1958 collaborative works with Cuba:

physicality, which was associated with reality through

Santo contra el Cerebro del Mal (Cerebro del Mal) andthe use of photographs, new value was also createdSanto contra los Hombres Infernales (Cargamento

through certain means, such as confrontations with

Blanco). El Santo films were made and released nearly

unreal opponents, which would not have been a part ofevery year, following the success of Santo contra losreality. Subsequently, films proactively adopted theZombies in 1961, until approximately 1973. As the titles

aforementioned new value and depicted El Santosuggest, these works express a marked tendency toward

confronting various unreal opponents; in this manner,

mass-market

each media type was transformed in a cross-referential

entertainmentthat

centeredon

showdowns with unreal villains. There may have been

relationship.

some influence from B movies imported from theIn the next section, we will examine the question ofUnited States; however, there are numerous interesting

Cruz, the man who was unsatisfied with the magazine

aspects that also show common ground with local

versions of films and whose dissatisfaction led to the

Mexican culture, such as the appearance of vampires

introduction of photomontage.

(Note 12).
Constructed Movement
For Cruz, the fotonovela magazine versions of films,

in which individual panels from a film reel were used
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Panel 1: “Comparing Manga Cultures: Japan and Mexico”

for the same individual comic panels, were “cold andof panels on a single page. The narrative progression is

static.” The reverse of this descriptor would be “hot andaided by the text in comic books; this progression anddynamic.” In other words, Cruz seemingly sought

its reception occur in a shorter period of time in comics

movement that could not be expressed in the magazine

than in films to help the reader continue to read actively

versions of films. One might say that he invented(that is, if a 90-minute film were remade into a manga,

photomontage based on a strategy of realism to create

reading the manga would take less time). Because this

this dynamic movement.

feature inevitably allows a substantial portion of theIn what manner did the magazine versions of films
lack the movement of comics? This “movement”

narrative to progress in a few panels, it is possible toleave out similar panels within the same scene.

concerns two aspects: a “spatial kinesis on the page

For composition within a panel, screen images andthrough the layout of panels that have different angles

still images must use different methods to show

and sizes” and a “temporal kinesis that represents

movement. To indicate that a character is “moving” in aphysical movement of the characters from one panel tostill image, the artist uses the “cross-time projection

the next or within a single panel.” These two types ofmethod” and indicates time by drawing the samekinesis cannot be isolated in production or reception;

character multiple times within the same panel or byboth are required to express “movement” on the page

providing additional depictions via photography orfor both Mexican comic books and Japanese mangadrawing, such as how El Santo’s “flight” was enabled(Note 13).

through the positioning of the character and effect lines.

It would be possible to show the movement ofFurthermore, because the composition within an

characters by positioning successive frames from a film

individual panel is also related to kinesis on the page,reel on the page, like a series of photographs, but thisthe difference from the adjacent panels must be shown.

would have been impractical in terms of cost; therefore,

In comic books, as layouts can be created by making

arbitrary photographs were selected and positioned. Itmontages of photographs during production without

might also have been possible to indicate character

necessarily taking photographs in actuality, the artist

movement with a series of arbitrary photograph panels.

can easily create kinesis on the page by changing the

However, because the camera position does not change

angle or size of an image on the same page (Note 14).

as drastically in films as the perspective changes in

The movement Cruz sought for El Enmascarado decomics, only certain photographs could be selected in

Plata was characterized by the need for a mixture ofsome scenes, such as conversations (Fig. 5). Once thisphotography and illustration. Photomontage makes it

was done, the comic book page would end up repeating

possible to retain the realism of film by using

similar layouts and character size images, thereby

photographs while escaping a uniform composition

losing kinesis on the page. By refusing to rely on

through the addition of new photography, photo

photographs from films and instead taking new ones, it

recomposition, and drawing. Thus, it allows the

became possible to use multiple angles to fit the comic

representation in comics of temporal and spatial

book page (Fig. 6).

“kinesis”, as well as physical movement.

Although not from the same scene of the same story,
Figures 5 and 6 are examples of two different numbers
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Panel 1: “Comparing Manga Cultures: Japan and Mexico”

Figure 5. Examples of page layouts in film and photonovels
Dino Risi, Pane, Amore e …, (Scandal in Sorrento) (1955) film photonovel
Baetens, Jan. The Film Photonovel: A Cultural History of Forgotten Adaptations. University of Texas Press, 2019, p.91.

Figure 6. Kinesis on the page created by different angles
José G. Cruz, El Enmascarado de Plata (Ediciones José G. Cruz, October 1952, Volume 8, p.8)
Photomontage allows for a composition of movements

El Enmascarado de Plata. The characters’ heads fromand character positioning that would be impossible in

the neck up are photographs, and the rest of the body,

images created through the lens of reality. In El

from the chest to the limbs, is drawn. Instead of making

Enmascarado de Plata, this technique is used flexibly.

subtle adjustments to hand and foot positions and thenNot all the panels involve the use of photomontage;

photographing them, it was more efficient to decide therather, the technique is partially used, and some panels

size of the head to fit the panel, resize the photograph,are completely hand drawn.

and then draw in the remainder of the body. In panel

Prior to employing photomontage, Cruz had

images blended with hand-drawn backgrounds, clothing

streamlined his production process and used a stock ofdetails (for example, textile patterns) did not have to bevarious head illustrations that he prepared ahead of time.

drawn at high resolutions.

The same method is also used in the photomontage ofSituations that would have been difficult to
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Panel 1: “Comparing Manga Cultures: Japan and Mexico”

photograph or were not suited to photography, such as

background, and drawn highlights were occasionallythe presence of blood, water, or other liquids, wereadded. If there was a loss in consistency in El Santo’s

depicted with drawings instead of photographs, likely

physique when his torso was drawn, including in terms

because drawing was more efficient and better suited forof the musculature, the connection with the real Santothe depiction of the movement of flowing liquids thanwould have been lost. Thus, more so than the otherphotography, in terms of the costs of photography andcharacters, the protagonist alone was given a powerful

the costs on the page (Note 15).

overlap with reality. Avoiding combination with

However, in the sole case of the protagonist El Santo,

illustration when depicting his body and insteadhis body was generally depicted with cutouts ofmaintaining a photograph-based “index” with the real

photographs rather than with a combination of head andSanto might have constituted an essential rule for the

body sections. It may have been difficult to draw thereaders of this work.

skin texture of his nude upper body. Although

In the final section, we will examine the indexed

photographs of his body were used, his body was

nature of photo media as it relates to Cruz’s use ofoutlined in white to differentiate it from the hand-drawn

photomontage.

Sameness and Resemblance, Character Identity
In relation to the Mexican fotoesculturas or photo

past, the past in which the photograph was taken, asculptures, also known as photo portraits, which

fotoescultura occupies the eternal horizon of thedecorate the homes of Mexicans and Mexican-

present. The photograph may speak of theAmericans (see, for instance, Fig. 7), the photo historiancatastrophe of time’s passing, but the fotoescultura

Geoffrey Batchen stated the following about “thespeaks as well of eternal life; it posits thecollapse of the distinction between absence andpossibility of a perpetual stasis, the literal, fully

presence” in the indexing of photographs:

dimensioned presence of the present (Note 16).

Where the photograph normally speaks to us of the

Figure 7. Fotoescultura (photo sculpture). Combination of a photographed head and a sculpted body.
Batchen, Geoffrey, Kai Yoshiaki, and Kohara Masashi. Toki no chūzuri: Sei, shashin, shi [Suspending Time: Life,
Photography, Death]. Izu Photomuseum, 2010, p.69.
According to Batchen, fotoesculturas were made by“Mexican artisans from the late 1920s through to the11International Research Center for Japanese Studies, Japanese Popular Culture Research Project
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early 1980s” to “memorialize the dead, to honor

if they were in trouble.

individuals, and even to promote the images of certain

This duality of the character of El Santo, with its

celebrities.” The head section was a hand-colored

return current, is related to the “blending” ofphotograph, which was combined with a carved chest

photomontage. The indexing of the photograph, which

section and frame and then placed between sheets ofis its connection to the real Santo through sameness, isglass. These sculptures were particularly popular during

blended with his resemblance to the illustrated comic

and right after the Second World War as families

book hero.

mourned the loss of their sons (Note 17).

The question of sameness and resemblance is one thatTo situate the concept of “absence, presence, and thesimultaneously carries the meaning of “being” thecollapse of both” in the structure of photomontage, thecharacter and the meaning of “being like” the character.

correct analogy might be that while El Santo could onlyThis question is one that was taken up as of the mid-

be seen at the Arena Mexico (absence), readers could

19th-century by the “father of early modern comics”

encounter him at any time in the comic book stories

Rodolphe Töpffer and the portrait photographer(presence).

Gaspard-Félix Tournachon (known by the pseudonym

The combination of a photographed head andNadar). Benoît Peeters, a researcher as well as an author

sculpted chest in a photo sculpture—the mixture ofof Bandes dessinées or Franco-Belgian comics,

multiple formats—aligns with the combination ofdescribes

photographs and illustrations in photomontage. As aconfronting the same questions as follows:

the

two

aforementioned

individuals“tangible metaphor” (Note 18), a photo sculpture

Like the other comic book artists who followed

ensures more presence than looking at a photograph ofhim, Töpffer faced the following problem: namely,

someone who is absent because the viewer can touch

the problem of how much faces could be changed

the photo sculpture. This kind of tactile perception

without becoming unrecognizable (Note 19).

might have also entered readers’ lives, as a morefamiliar kind of presence, through the creation of a

How does one discover the impact of caricature“touchable El Santo”, that could be owned and carried

within the technique of photographs, which run

around, flipped through and read, and displayed in one’s

counter thereto? How does one achieve the powerroom.

of icons (showing resemblance to the object, as in

By means of indexing, the real Santo and the photo

a portrait or metaphor) within the index system (inSanto are powerfully connected. However, naturally,

Peirce’s semiotic, a symbol that has a physical andthe lucha libre idol and the comic book hero created bydirect connection with the referent, as smoke

Cruz are two different characters. Because these

indicates fire)? (Note 20)

different characters were linked together through the

In Töpffer’s case, while creating sequential narrativeindex of photographs, paradoxically, the comic bookworks, unlike paintings, he was confronted with thehero overlapped with the real Santo. El Santo standingneed to draw multiple depictions of the same characterin the ring at Arena Mexico was not merely ain panels that were positioned on a single page. For

professional wrestler fighting with another luchador: heexample,was a hero who would rescue the impoverished public“impermanent,” as when the character shows emotion

when

a

character’s

face

becomes

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with a facial expression, there is the risk that “it might

photographs that were cut out for photomontage created

no longer be clear who they are, and the story will fail.”

an index between the real Santo and the comic book

However, if the expression is too exaggerated in an

Santo. Cruz bestowed a hero-like image that was typicaleffort to show the features of the character, “that uniqueof comic books on El Santo by mixing and processing

drawing style” will “harden into something permanent,”

his photographs with drawings and having the character

thereby causing “excess typifying” (Note 21). In his

seemingly fly, hand down his title, and confront unreal

drawing, Töpffer had the foresight to grasp the question

opponents.

of the contradiction between sameness and resemblance
in sequential art.

Although Töpffer and Nadar sought the object ofidentity in the molding or expressions of the face, theFor his part, Nadar approached the same question in

object of Cruz’s art, El Santo, wore a mask;

the space between photography and the method ofconsequently, he was unable to show the character’s

caricature. Because he started out as a caricaturist andfacial expressions in his work. However, this mask,

later transitioned into photography, he also sought

along with the photographs, further reinforced the index

resemblance in his photography, with its strong sense ofwith the real Santo. Figure 8 shows a page with a mask

index. Through “frank communication with the model”

gift campaign run in El Enmascarado de Plata. The

in his photography sessions, Nadar achieved “the most

lower part of the page has a row of three panels in a quizfamiliar, most desirable resemblance, a resemblance

format, saying, “Tell us how you think today’s episodethat lets one feel the expression of the interior” rather

will be resolved,” and the prize for the first eight readersthan “a dull reproduction.” Furthermore, without

to guess the ending correctly was an El Santo mask. In“caricaturizing the photo” by using distortion lenses or

short, the mask is a device: anyone with the mask on canprocessing, he grappled with this question purely

be like El Santo (Note 23). Foreshadowing the depiction

through photography (Note 22).

of the masked man’s succession at the beginning of the

The question facing both these artists was that ofstory, the comic book creates a situation in which theproving who the character was and their essence; inmask can become an index between El Santo and theother words, it was a question of identity. The

readers themselves.

Figure 8. Mask gift advertisement
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José G. Cruz, El Enmascarado de Plata (Ediciones José G. Cruz, September 1952, Volume 4)This El Santo, a mixture of reality and fiction as linked

indexed. Guzmán entered the ring as the real Santo withby photomontage and masks, was “split” by an incident

the mask and appeared in the pages of the comic booksin the mid-1970s. Cruz and the “man behind the mask”

through his photographs; however, both the mask andof El Santo, Guzmán, began a legal dispute over thethe photographs were unable to become indicators of

copyright and rights to the usage of the image of El

Guzmán himself.

Santo. Guzmán argued that Cruz had attempted to create

Subsequently, the comic book Santo’s appearance

new comic books of El Santo without permission,changed with the introduction of the replacement Pliego.

whereas Cruz claimed that he held the copyright to the

The forehead section of the mask was engraved with thecharacter. As a result of the dispute, the originality ofletter “S,” a belt was placed around his waist, and hethe comic book Santo was recognized, and Cruz won

wore simple wrestling shorts instead of tights, thereby

the copyright to the character; instead of Guzmán, thecreating an update of the index. It was said that Guzmán

series continued with a new “man behind the mask”: thenever removed the El Santo mask in public—even when

bodybuilder Héctor Pliego.

he was in transit during tours for wrestling matches.

The issue concerning the ownership of this character

However, as perhaps fated for a masked man, Guzmán’s

evinces a split in the duality of reality and fiction in thetrue face was eventually exposed, in the newspapers

character of El Santo that we have examined thus far.

when he lost the lawsuit (Note 25).

Instead of the reality, the fiction, conversely, wasConclusion
José G. Cruz was a self-aware media artist. Involved inthemselves using photographs. This kind of “photo

the creation of novels, films, and comic books, hemedia and photo processing” has stories and charactersdeveloped his own works by mixing different forms ofthat cross over multiple forms of media, and goes so far

media. Upon traversing media forms, he invented

as to function as an infrastructure supporting “trans-

methods that best suited the media in question and mademedia storytelling” in which readers and fans canfurther innovations with respect to said methods.

actively participate (Note 26).

Photomontage, as a technique, symbolizes his creative

Therefore, the photomontage technique as invented

work; in addition, the technique can be said to be

by José G. Cruz can be considered a trailblazing

relevant to the issues of the modern media landscape. In

approach in terms of media theory.

an era wherein computer graphics and motion capture
are incorporated into filmmaking as a matter of course,
the issues related to photographs and drawings inphotomontage

are

also

directly

relevanttocontemporary issues. Furthermore, even in manga, there
are numerous artists who use backgrounds that are madefrom processed photographs or draw characters
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Notes
1 For example, in the photo novel “Isamashiki shussei [Courageous Departure for War]” (Nihon shōnen, Jitsugyo no
Nihonsha, October 1914), the characters are drawn on photograph backgrounds.
2 A detailed analysis of “ambiguous” and “layered” experiences of film media and written media, focusing on viewing
films in theaters and cinema programs. Kondō, Kazuto. Eigakan to kankyaku no mediaron: Senzenki Nihon no “eiga oyomu/kaku” to iu keiken [Cinema and Spectator Media Theory: Pre-War Japan’s Experience of “Reading/Writing
Films”]. Seikyūsha, 2020.
3 Hidaka, Ryōsuke. “Fōmatto riron—Chakumelo to chakuuta no sai ni miru MIDI kikaku no sayō” [Format Theory—
The Effects of MIDI Standards as Seen in the Differences Between Ringtone Chimes and Songs]”. Posuto media
seoriizu: Media kenkyū no shintenkai [Post Media Theories: New Insights in Media Studies], edited by Itō Mamoru,
Minerva Shobō, 2021, p.121.
4 Soto Díaz, Rubén Eduardo. José G. Cruz’s Autobiography Notes—Supplement by Eduardo Soto. Mexico Caricature
and Comics Museum, 2018.
5 Aurrecoechea, Juan Manuel, and Armando Bartra. Puros Cuentos II: Historia de la Historieta en México 1934–1950. Editorial Grijalbo, 1993, pp.179–182. This book mentions that Mexican readers received fictional characters as
if the characters were real. It notes that in particular, due to the continuity of serial films and comic books and the cyclic
nature of comic strips that were published daily, these characters became “a part of the readers’ lives, of their everyday
worlds.”
6 Soto Díaz, Rubén Eduardo. José G. Cruz’s Autobiography Notes—Supplement by Eduardo Soto. Mexico Caricature
and Comics Museum, 2018.
7 Soto Díaz, Rubén Eduardo. José G. Cruz’s Autobiography Notes—Supplement by Eduardo Soto. Mexico Caricature
and Comics Museum, 2018.
8 Soto Díaz, Rubén Eduardo. José G. Cruz’s Autobiography Notes—Supplement by Eduardo Soto. Mexico Caricature
and Comics Museum, 2018.
9 Soto Díaz, Rubén Eduardo. José G. Cruz’s Autobiography Notes—Supplement by Eduardo Soto. Mexico Caricature
and Comics Museum, 2018.
10 Cruz, José G. El Enmascarado de Plata. Ediciones José G. Cruz, September 1952, p.4.
11 Juul, Jesper. Hāfu riaru – Kyojitsu no aida no bideo gēmu [Half-real: Video Games between Real Rules andFictional Worlds]. Translated by Matsunaga Shinji, New Games Order, 2016, p.9.
12 Ishii, Noboru, “Mekishiko no Dorakyura hakushaku—Karurosu Fuentesu no ‘Vurado’” [Mexico’s Count Dracula:
Carlos Fuentes’ “Vlad”].” Renikusa: Gendai bungeiron kenkyūshitsu ronshū 2 gō [Renyxa: Modern Literary Theory
Department Journal], Volume 2, 2010.
13
Itō, Go. Tezuka izu deddo—Hirakareta manga hyōgenron e [Tezuka is Dead: Toward an Open Theory of
Expression in Manga]. NTT Shuppan, 2005, pp.199–207. These two types of kinesis are premised on “frame
indeterminacy” in the two frame types of the panel and the page. Both must be kept in mind not only in terms of thereception of the comic book but also during the production of the comic book pages.
14 Aurrecoechea, Juan Manuel, and Armando Bartra. Puros Cuentos III: Historia de la Historieta en México 1934–1950. Editorial Grijalbo, 1994, pp.451–471. Bartra refers to John Heartfield and others, observing similarities withphotomontage in Dada. To a certain extent, there may be some congruence in terms of the creation of new meaning
through cutting, pasting, and reconstructing photographs that are meaningless on their own. Alternatively, as a meansof communicating left-wing messages, there is a shared resemblance in terms of the situation during the Mexican
revolution. However, photomontage in comic books is a technique for narrative exposition that is shown throughout
multiple panels and multiple pages, which, as Bartra points out, differs from literal photomontage.
15 For example, as with the “tears” clip in Chris Marker’s La Jetée (1962) and the erasure of speech bubbles in Ōshima
Nagisa’s Ninja bugeichō [Ninja Martial Arts] (1967) (made by photographing Shirato Sanpei’s original manga to turnit into a film), aspects that are difficult to express in the installed format are expressed in the format or code of theoriginal media.
16 Batchen, Geoffrey, Kai Yoshiaki, and Kohara Masashi. Toki no chūzuri: Sei, shashin, shi [Suspending Time: Life,
Photography, Death]. Izu Photomuseum, 2010, p.69.
17 Batchen, Geoffrey, Kai Yoshiaki, and Kohara Masashi. Toki no chūzuri: Sei, shashin, shi [Suspending Time: Life,
Photography, Death]. Izu Photomuseum, 2010, pp.67–68. This kind of photography, which is linked to a particular local
culture, is defined as “vernacular photography.”
18 Batchen, Geoffrey, Kai Yoshiaki, and Kohara Masashi. Toki no chūzuri: Sei, shashin, shi [Suspending Time: Life,
15International Research Center for Japanese Studies, Japanese Popular Culture Research Project
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Panel 1: “Comparing Manga Cultures: Japan and Mexico”

Photography, Death]. Izu Photomuseum, 2010, p.68.
19
Groensteen, Thierry, and Benoît Peeters. Tepfēru: Manga no hatsumei [L'invention de la Bande dessinée].
Translated by Furunaga Shinichi, Hara Masato, and Morita Naoko, Hōsei University Press, 2014, p.26.
20
Groensteen, Thierry, and Benoît Peeters. Tepfēru: Manga no hatsumei [L'invention de la Bande dessinée].
Translated by Furunaga Shinichi, Hara Masato, and Morita Naoko, Hōsei University Press, 2014, p.63.
21
Groensteen, Thierry, and Benoît Peeters. Tepfēru: Manga no hatsumei [L'invention de la Bande dessinée].
Translated by Furunaga Shinichi, Hara Masato, and Morita Naoko, Hōsei University Press, 2014, p.63.
22
Groensteen, Thierry, and Benoît Peeters. Tepfēru: Manga no hatsumei [L'invention de la Bande dessinée].
Translated by Furunaga Shinichi, Hara Masato, and Morita Naoko, Hōsei University Press, 2014, p.63.
23
Ōtsuka, Eiji. Mikkii no shoshiki [Mickey’s Writing Style]. Kadokawa Gakugei Publishing, 2013, p.88–95. As
shown in references in letters to the editor to “Shō-chan’s hat”, which is worn by the protagonist of Shō-chan no bōken[Shō-chan’s Adventures], the hat serves as an index or an indicator of the protagonist for the readers, linking reality andfiction.
25 The following websites have information on this topic that has been collected by fans. “José G. Cruz y Santo El
Enmascarado de Plata.” Elazotevenezolanoelblog, http://elazotevenezolanoelblog.blogspot.com/2015/05/jose-g-cruzy-santo-el-enmascarado-de.html; “Hector Pilego y El Santo De La ‘S’.” Remembersanto
http://remembersanto.blogspot.com/2016/03/hector-pilego-y-el-santo-de-la-s.html; “José G. Cruz: El hombre que
desenmascaró al Santo.” Codigoespagueti.com https://codigoespagueti.com/noticias/cultura/jose-g-cruzdesenmascaro-santo/. All accessed 20 September 2021.
26 Jenkins, Henry. Konvājensu karuchā—Fan to media ga tsukuru sankagata bunka [Convergence Culture—Where
Old and New Media Collide]. Translated by Watabe, Kōki, Kitamura Sae, and Abe Yasuhito, Shōbunsha, 2021, p.54.

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Rhetorics of the Mask and Interconnected Realities in El Santo, el enmascarado de plata[El Santo, The Silver-Masked Man]: Commentary on "The ‘Half-Real’ as Created by
Photomontage” by Yamamoto Tadahiro
Laura Ivonne Quiroz Castillo

The inheritance he was left
was a very big dilemma
His father was a legend
and it couldn’t be overI had to growbecause he wouldn’t crack-Ballad of The Son of SantoBaby Richard (2012)

Illustration: Pablo Rincon Santana

Introduction
Wrestling is among the most prominent symbols of
Mexican popular culture around the world, and its mostemblematic figure is that of El Santo, also known as“the silver-masked man.” According to Paola Aguilar
and Andrés Giraldo (2018), the comic El Santo, The
Silver-Masked Man by José G. Cruz is the core work on
which the fictional universes of both this character andwrestling have been built (1). However, transmedia
fiction is usually approached through films about
wrestlers, of which El Santo was also a pioneer. For thisreason, it is significant that Yamamoto Tadahiro chose
El Santo as an object of analysis, to explore the functionof the hybrid technique of photomontage and halftone

illustration used by José G. Cruz to produce this comic
and to build a universe that is both parallel to, but also
in constant dialogue with, the universe manifested in thering and its surroundings.
Although for Yamamoto, the photomontageillustration technique is the vessel for communicating
between realities, I would like to delve into therhetorical constitution of El Santo’s body image within
the comic strip. My aim is to broaden the sociocultural
panorama in which this graphic narrative became thecore work of the worlds of meaning generated aroundthis character and around wrestling, both of which aresettled within Mexican glocal cultural baggage.

Comics, wrestling, and peripheral modern narratives
El Santo is a character in Mexican popular culture thatoriginated in post-revolutionary Mexico alongsidevarious processes of modernization, such as thephenomena of migration, urbanization, culturalindustrialization, and particular conditions of thenation’s reformulation of identity narratives. According
to Illescas (2012), these processes required theimplementation of cultural and educational policies thatunited a population that was culturally diverse (2) andstill divided by the Revolution (approximately 1910-

1920), within the same identity crossed by discourses of
tradition and modernity. For this purpose, in addition to
generating an ideology of the New Mexican, which was
being constructed through the film industry (3), it wasnecessary to ensure the formation of a literate andtrained citizenship to build a modern state. Due to the
low cost, comics served as the main means of building
literacy. They also became the main diffuser of popular
culture, since these publications portrayed both daily
life and the most valued recreational activities in
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underprivileged neighborhoods, such as boxing and
wrestling.
For its part, wrestling also arises in the urban
periphery as a spectator sport, in which the arena
functions, more than as an allegorical scene of struggle
between forces of good (técnicos; faces) and evil
(rudos; heels), as a liminal space in which situations ofconflict between rules and anomie, between the properand the strange, are re-experienced. A space ofpossibility where the rival, rather than the contending
fighter, represents the daily vicissitudes to be overcome
either with ingenuity or brutality, by adhering to thenorm (faces) or violating it (heels). It is the staging of astate of exception and catharsis in which authority,
embodied in the referee, returns to present itself as arival or ally, depending on who is favored; and whosetransgression by the fighters is valid and even necessary(Lieberman, 2009). In this way, the wrestlers, ascharacters that are delineated in the ring, become
vigilantes acting in response to the social and culturalproblems of the poor, the anonymous, and the marginal,
as well as popular heroes faced with the challenges of
the transformations of modernity (Illescas, 2012;
Aguilar and Giraldo, 2018).
In this sense, the comics, rather than presenting theirtarget readers with narratives and identities alien toconvention, presented narratives based on readers’ life
experiences, such as cultural shocks derived from
migration, and situations of marginality, poverty, andvulnerability. But also, through the main character, theypresented possible resolutions traversed by a kind of readaptation of value systems and ways of making thechallenges and changes experienced both traditionaland modern.
These situations were expressed and represented incomics and movies by means of the narrative tropes andvisual vocabularies available at the time, many of themfrom North American film. Hence, El Santo’s fiction
and wrestling go from the realistic, such as fights
against gangsters and the mafia in local neighborhoods,
to the most fanciful, such as battles against both
domestic supernatural beings like “La Llorona” (4), andthe foreign imaginary like vampires, werewolves,zombies, and aliens. Thus, according to Illescas (2012)
and Aguilar and Giraldo (2018), in wrestling fiction,
new concerns were represented that emerged from theeveryday life of the neighborhood to become possible
domestic and international dangers that gave thewrestling heroes a more cosmopolitan dimension, andalso linked the Mexican audience with the internationalsocio-political and cultural scene.

The mask, handling of symbols, and narratives
El Santo, The Silver-Masked Man was the spearhead forthe construction of a universe of meaning around
wrestling, which integrates and re-articulates as ametalanguage (5), the symbolism of the ring – masks,
corporealities, and movements – with other symbolisms
and moral, identity, and thematic references shared by
the readers.
In wrestling, although daily conflicts and tensions
are usually staged and re-experienced in a cathartic andoutrageous way, it is a non-narrative representation. The
metalanguage that emerges and is used in the arena
scenario mainly fulfills a descriptive function for the
wrestlers in their double role as athletes and characters.
That is to say, in the name and in the body image (masks,
wardrobe, and appearance as a character) of the wrestler
there are metonymically established traits that refer tohis corporality, strength, dexterity, personality, attitudes,
and ways of causing or facing trouble (6). It can beargued that the descriptive and narrative functions of arepresentation are closely linked, since the constructionof the fighter as a character is related to his stories ofcivil and sports life. However, these tend to be known
to a greater or lesser extent in situations and settings
where people talk about the ring, such as in the press
and popular speech, but also in fiction, such as comics
and wrestling films.

In this sense, the comic El Santo, The Silver-Masked
Man is interesting, since it is the cornerstone of auniverse of meaning that gives life, strength, andstructure to the character dimension of this wrestler.
First, his argument is not about what happens in thearena, but about the situations that are dealt with in it.
For this reason, as Yamamoto points out, El Santo isinserted into a daily life that is oblique to that of his fans,giving the impression that it takes place in real time, but
in a parallel way to what happens in the tangible realityof the ring. Second, from the first pages of the first issue,
El Santo is presented as a character making use ofreligious, moral, and identity symbols that challenge
readers.
In the first issue of El Santo, The Silver-Masked Man,
the hero and his story are introduced. This story would
unfold not only throughout the comic, but would
continue in parallel in later years in film. In the first two
pages (Fig. 1), both the protagonist and the target
audience are outlined and linked by making use ofsymbols and narratives that have been present in theconstruction of national identity, as well as in thefounding myths of Mexico; a fact that accounts for thepedagogical dimension of this comic. The first page
features an image of El Santo kneeling in front of theVirgin of Guadalupe, to whom he is presented as a
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devotee and protegé. This symbol, besides being themost important within local Catholic religious beliefs(7), is strongly linked to the mestizaje as a Mexican
identity (8), and to the War of Independence, in the
beginning of which it was used as a political flag of theinsurgency (9). For its part, the almost sacrificial givingof self to others, by which El Santo gets his name, ispresent in the Catholic, gender, and state moralities that
configure this character as a religious devotee, an idealof protective masculinity and civil authority, who hopes
to serve as an example to children, who are presented
on the second page as objective readers and “future
citizens.”

Fig. 1. Character presentation pages and dedication to “the children of Mexico and the world” in El Santo, The SilverMasked Man (José G. Cruz Publishing, September 3, 1952, Vol. 1, pp. 1-2)
Next, the story of El Santo begins, placing him as an
inhabitant of a neighborhood called De la Santa Cruz.
His identity is unknown, although he is recognized as
an anonymous hero. As Yamamoto mentions, the story
begins with the death and resurrection of the character,which forms the basis of both a notion of heroic legacy
and a mandate of justice transmitted from father to son,as well as a notion of mysticism that surrounds El Santoand establishes him as an authority. In this sense, rather
than being part of a state police force, this hero
embodies a popular authority emerging from andlegitimized by the neighborhood, which together withfamily and school are the main social institutions thatshape subjects (Aguilar and Giraldo, 2018).
The above premise, in addition to being thefoundation of the adventures that take place throughout
the four decades that the comic was published, alsofunctions to duplicate and form a semantic juxtapositionof the athletic and artistic career of Rodolfo Guzmán

Huerta as El Santo. In biographies of this wrestler(Fernández, 2004; Jiménez, 2010), it is said that
Rodolfo Guzmán began his wrestling career in the early
1930s. However, it was not until 1942 that he made his
debut as El Santo, an identity that he would expand
upon until his death. This name came as a proposal fromhis coach, Jesús Lomelí, who had the intention of
forming a team of wrestlers with silver masks. Lomelí
offered the name options of “the angel,” “the demon,”and “the saint” [el santo], and Guzmán adopted the thirdname in irony, since he fought as a rudo (“bad guy”).
However, his change to técnico (“good guy”) was
related to an increase in popularity, either because at thattime the public favored this side, or because he sought
to present a good image to a growing fanbase that
already considered him an idol. In this sense, the life
story of many Catholic saints who left a disordered life
for the path of redemption is also shared by El Santo in
his journey as a fighter.

The legacy of the mask
We find in the wrestler’s mask an object of great
symbolic power to be protected, honored, and latertransferred through a diegetic and extradiegetic legacy.
The first transfer, as mentioned, was shown in the comicbook with the death and reincarnation of the avenging
hero through the inheritance of the mask. This transfer

also then actually occurred in 1982 with the retirementof Rodolfo Guzmán and the passing of the mask to hisson, who became “The Son of El Santo”; the tradition
continued with the transfer to the third generation
wrestler “El Santo Jr.” in 2016 (“Debutó El Santo Jr”,
2016), and through other legendary fighters such as
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Blue Demon, El Rayo de Jalisco, and Dos Caras, tomention a few (10).
The extradiegetic legacy involved fans, particularly
young fans, in appropriation of the character, with thepossibility of incarnating El Santo, by granting masks toreaders who guessed how the episodes end. Althoughcommercial use rights to the character are not explicitly
provided, there is the possibility that the character may
be replicated and settle in the popular imaginary in its
double meaning as reservoir and semantic process(Machado da Silva, 2007). In this way, we find several
references to this character in derivative products, bethey franchise licenses, such as the Cartoon Network

cartoon El Santo vs. The Clones, comic strips, films, andthe print album of “The Son of El Santo" (Aguilar and
Giraldo, 2018: 157); or professional output produced byfans, such as the comics El Santos (11) by Trino, thesatirical novel Xanth: Novelucha libre by José Luis
Zárate (1994), the songs Los luchadores by Pedro
Ocadiz and El Guacarock del Santo by the band
Botellita de Jerez, and the comics (12) El Santo y El
Hijo del Santo from former wrestler and referee Baby
Richard. We must also note the official and unofficial
merchandise, art and popular culture that makereference to El Santo, for example through dress.

In conclusion
El Santo is a hero and protagonist of the different
processes of modernity that reconfigured the social andcultural life of Mexico. He was a pioneer in building atransmedia universe, using a network of representations
in modern mass media such as comics, film, andtelevision. It was comics that offered the possibility of
being present for an almost indefinite period of time,
positioned as an epic hero in Mexican popular culture,
uniting time and space in a mask. In this sense, we findthat the wrestler’s mask is the vessel for communicating
the multiple realities in which he presents himself,
reactivating, re-semanticizing and putting into dialogue
different experiences, values, and meanings that provide
feedback into the transmedia universe built around El
Santo and wrestling, which are also then integrated into
the contemporary cultural baggage of what is Mexican.

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Reference list
Aguilar, María Paola, and Andrés Felipe Giraldo. “El Santo y la lucha libre en México: una narración transmedia [ElSanto and Wrestling in Mexico: A Transmedia Narrative]”. Arqueología transmedia en América Latina:
investigaciones, identidades y convergencias, edited by Camilo Tamayo Gómez et. al. Medellín, Editorial EAFIT,
2018.
Crespo, Julio. Lucha Libre Mexicana. Máscaras a través del tiempo [Mexican Wrestling: Masks Through Time].
De la Vega Alfaro, Eduardo, and Rosario Bonifaz Vidal. “Travelling histórico de la industria del cine en México
[Historical Travelling of the Film Industry in Mexico].” Revista de la Universidad Iberoamericana. El prodigiosocine mexicano, vol. 53, Dec. 2017-Jan. 2018, pp.9-17.
Fernández Reyes, Álvaro. El Santo, el enmascarado de plata. Mito y realidad de un héroe mexicano moderno [El Santo,
The Silver-Masked Man: The Myth and Reality of a Modern Mexican Hero]. Zamora, El Colegio de Michoacán –Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, 2004.
Hipsters Posmos. “La importancia de El Santo en el cine mexicano [The Importance of El Santo in Mexican Film].”
YouTube, 15 March 2020, https://youtu.be/pjLf2l1sz-0
Illescas Nájera, Francisco. “¿Hasta qué punto fue El Santo, ‘El Enmascarado de Plata’, definido por la ascendente cultura
popular mexicana del siglo XX? [To What Extent was El Santo ‘The Silver-Masked Man’ Defined by the Ascendant
Mexican Popular Culture of the 20th century?].” EnClaves del Pensamiento, vol. 6, no. 12, 2012, pp.49-66.
Jiménez Ruiz, Orlando. Santo Guzmán. Anti-biografía de un superhéroe de la industria cultural mexicana (reportaje)[Santo Guzmán. Anti-biography of a Superhero of the Mexican Cultural Industry (Interview)]. 2010. National
Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), Bachelor's Thesis in Communication Sciences.
Lieberman, Evan. “Mask and Masculinity: Culture, Modernity and Gender Identity in the Mexican Lucha Libre filmsof El Santo.” Studies in Spanish & Latin American Cinemas, vol. 6, no. 1, 2009, pp.3-17.
Machado da Silva, Juremir. Les technologies de l'imaginaire. Paris, La Table Ronde, 2008.
“Debutó El Santo Jr., tercera generación de plata” [Debut of El Santo Jr., the Third Generation Silver]. Medio Tiempo,
14 August 2016, https://www.mediotiempo.com/lucha-libre/independientes/debuto-el-santo-jr-tercera-generacionde-plata
Schechner, Richard. Performance Theory. Routledge, 2003.
Turner, Victor. The Anthropology of Performance. PAJ Publications, 1987.
Notes
1 Like El Santo, other renowned fighters such as his rival and ally Blue Demon were the protagonists of comics andlater of film and television productions, as is the case of Tinieblas. Comics were also predecessors of so-called wrestlingfilms, from which characters exclusively created for this cinematographic universe emerged (Hipsters Posmos).
2 The population came from different parts of the country with different regional and ethnic origins. Also, there were
foreign minorities such as Spaniards, Lebanese, and Chinese, who for various reasons congregated in Mexico City andother urban centers.
3 Particularly during the so-called Golden Age (approx. 1936-1960), when there was a boom in film production,
reaching a film a week. This ideology was built not without certain tensions and conflicts, particularly during the21
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Cardenismo (1934-1940), between different power groups that defended traditional values or that appealed to a
nostalgia for the Porfiriato, for the revolutionary ideals of freedom and social justice with a modern and cosmopolitan
approach that sought to replicate a North American way of life (Illescas, 2012; De la Vega and Vidal, 2017-2018).
4 A supernatural entity from Mexican folklore that emerged in colonial times. The story is about the soul of an
indigenous woman who is saddened by the death of her children who she murdered as a result of deceit andabandonment by her Spanish lover. It is said that this woman appears at night near water sources such as rivers andlakes, seducing and drowning her victims.
5 In anthropology and studies of performance (Turner, 1987; Schechner, 2003), all representation fulfills a dual
function: on the one hand, it is referential when presenting an idea, situation, or object; and on the other, it
communicates and reactivates one’s own experience or that of third parties, from which emerges a metalanguage
expressed in different sensory codes to talk about what was done or what is being done.
6 The name and configuration of the mask usually associate wrestlers with supernatural beings, which may be divine,
dark, or animals or natural phenomena, from whom their strength and physical abilities could be derived (Crespo).
7 According to the national population census carried out in 2020 by the National Institute of Geography, Statistics,
and Information (INEGI is the Spanish acronym), 77% of the Mexican population subscribes to this religious belief.
See https://www.inegi.org.mx/temas/religion/#Informacion_general
8 The Virgin of Guadalupe is the local manifestation of the Virgin Mary. It is said that she appeared in the Cerro delTepeyac, north of Mexico City, in the early years of the Colony. It was one of the evangelization devices used in New
Spain, since it integrates the symbolism around the maternal deity of Catholicism (Virgin Mary) with that of
Mesoamerica (the goddess Tonantzin).
9 To learn more about the relationship between Latin American baroque religious beliefs and identity processes andpolitical subjectivation, see the following essay by Narváez Lora, Adriana. “Guadalupe, cultura barroca e identidad
criolla”. Historia y grafía, vol. 35, pp. 121-149, 2010. Retrieved on December 19, 2021, fromhttp://www.scielo.org.mx/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1405-09272010000200005&lng=es&tlng=es.
10 All of them add “Son” or “Jr.” to the fighter’s family name.
11 El Santos is a character by José Ignacio Solórzano and José Trinidad Camacho (Trino) who parodies El Santo. While
this character has an outfit similar to El Santo, the content is intended for an adult audience.
12 From a musical genre that emerged from Mexican oral history, in which the adventures and exploits of commanders
and popular heroes are related; songs feature historical and important figures, and in recent decades, also drugtraffickers.

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The Development of Horror Historietas and Rental Horror Manga:
Local Acclimation of Genre-based Imaginative Capacity
Saika Tadahiro
Introduction
The exhibition titled Unknown Mexican Comics‘Historieta’ – Expression as Folk Culture (Historieta
Exhibition hereafter), held at the Kyoto International
Manga Museum between December 7, 2019, anddifferent from the “superheroes” of American comics.
Meanwhile, charros are emblematic icons that evoke
Mexican identity (*1).
Fundamentally common to the expository texts by

February 25, 2020, introduced the history of historietas(Mexican comics), valuable original drawings, and themodern-day trends of historieta authors. Meanwhile, thefocus was also on the following seven major themes
developed within historieta culture: humor, romance,
heroines, child protagonists, heroes, charros (Mexican
cowboys), and educational works.
These themes provided visitors to the exhibition witha viewpoint on the path taken by historietas in connection
to the characteristic national frameworks of “Mexico.”
For example, “heroes” are linked to the historical figures
who led the Mexican Revolution, such as Emiliano
Zapata and Pancho Villa, which suggests something very

historieta researchers Juan Manuel Aurrecoechea andArmando Bartra is the perspective that historietas are “animportant introduction to an awareness of Mexican
imagination in the 20th century,” (*2) and the positioningof historietas as part of Mexico’s popular and national
culture (*3).
In this chapter, within the framework of “historietas
as part of Mexico’s popular and national culture,” I willreconsider these works, albeit in a scope limited to thosepositioned within the horror genre, which, despite being
one of the major themes of global comic culture, wasmostly omitted from the Historieta Exhibition.

Section 1 A terrifying tale that nobody knows or has ever known…
The primary development of the horror genre in Mexican
historietas occurred in the 1940s at the peak of popularity

Let’s consider the 34-page episode (*6) “Sepulcro
Blanco” from the December 5th, 1952, issue as anof the daily historieta magazines, which, while labeled“adult” entertainment, were actually read by children andadults (*4).

example (Figure 1). This story, which starts with themonk saying, “Yes, the strange incident of the Sepulcro
Blanco is a truly terrifying tale… you are sure to enjoy

Above all, one of the foremost early horror historietas
was the El Monje Loco (The Crazy Monk) series by Juan
Reyes Beiker et al. Launched in 1942 in the daily
historieta magazine Chamaco, this series was based on aradio drama that had been broadcast on Radio XEW from1937 (*5). This historieta takes the form of a series ofshort episodes featuring a crazy monk as the storyteller,
imprisoned in the ruins of a monastery after once having
committed a crime.

it… Hahaha,” revolves around the talented young wax
figure maker Andrés and his lover Lucia (Figure 2).
Andrés, who has left his lover behind to refine his skills
in Paris, is also loved by Sonia, the assistant to Andrés’teacher Sergei, but Andrés is unmoved and sets out toreturn to Mexico. Sonia, full of jealousy of Lucia, learns
a black magic ceremony from Sergei and puts a deadly
curse on Lucia.

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Figure 1 Cover page, Carlos Del Prado & Héctor Gutierrez, “Sepulcro Blanco,” in El Monje Loco no.5, Corporación
Editorial Mexicana, December 5, 1952.

Figure 2 Page 1, Carlos Del Prado & Héctor Gutierrez, “Sepulcro Blanco,” in El Monje Loco no.5, Corporación Editorial
Mexicana, December 5, 1952.
However, Andrés is unable to accept the death of his lover.
He digs up Lucia’s grave and, with the help of a friend,seemingly brings her back to life by making a wax modelof the decomposed corpse, to whom he promises
everlasting love with a kiss. With a look back at his

astonished friend, he seals himself in a boiling wax
container. Guessing his intentions, the friend places thewax model of Andrés next to that of Lucia. Meanwhile,
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Lucia, becomes furious, kills Sergei, and throws herself
into the Seine River.
While there are no monsters as such, this episode isfull of a wide range of elements suited to the horror genre
across its few pages, such as melodramatic plot
developments about the love and death of men andwomen; the grotesque imaginative capacity to produce

ailments caused by a magic spell, and the making andkissing of a wax model of a dead lover; and the final
shocking scene of Lucia’s decomposed corpse andAndrés’ wax model, which André turned himself into bysealing himself in a boiling wax container while still alive(Figure 3).

Figure 3 Andrés’ last moment, p. 27, Carlos Del Prado & Héctor Gutierrez, “Sepulcro Blanco,” in El Monje Loco no.5,
Corporación Editorial Mexicana, December 5, 1952.
In this way, from his location in the “black church” thatcrosses space and time, the monk tells the reader various
tales. Often employing a format that concluded with a

Mexican popular culture of the 1950s as follows:
In the 1950s, as we shared in the immediate
sensations provided by the culture industry, we

moral lesson about the wages of sin, this series, which
continued intermittently until the 1970s with various
publishers and illustrators, used far-reaching horror genre

Mexicans truly became Mexican. At school, theteachers told us of the “founding fathers,” but on thestreet, people spoke of “the crazy monk.” This

motifs, such as the revenge of the dead, magic ceremonies,
terrible spells and ailments, murders and cruel deaths, andgrotesque monsters (*7).
Through the long history of the El Monje Loco series,
which adopted and appropriated a wide range of horror
story patterns, the narrator, “the crazy monk” who hasappeared in various media, has been passed down as an
icon of Mexican pop culture, much like the characters of
Memín Pinguín and La Familia Burron. Bartra described
the presence of the “crazy monk” across media in

historieta that had made its way into society from thehands of Carlos Liberol del Prado and Juan Reyes
Beiker featured a man who wore gloomy black
headgear. Before long, a radio program wasproduced featuring Salvatore Carrasco as thischaracter, and it was Carrasco who played this partin the film and stage production directed by
Alejandro Galindo. Furthermore, the famous phrase“A terrifying tale unknown, never known by anyone”
became something that people hummed to a swing
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song by Ernesto Riestra (*8).
In addition, Cecilio Jacobo González, in his Mexican
comics critique blog, Comikaze (*9), said that, as anarchetypal work, this series can be seen to have produced
derivative variations in succeeding historietas, such as
EDAR’s El Abate Negro published in the 1950s, Editorial
Ortega Flores’ El Monje Místico in the 1960s, andEditorial Tanya’s La Llorona y El Monje Infernal in the
1990s. González also mentions the comedian Eugenio
Derbez, who became well known on late 1990s television
for his parody character El Lonje Moco (Figure 4), andthe musical group Míster Chivo, who wrote a song basedon the motif of this series.

Figure 4 Antonio Derbez playing the parody character El Lonje Moco on a comedy TV program
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaQR82pt_rI
This way, El Monje Loco and the iconic character “thecrazy monk” have become a focal point in the network of
the Mexican popular culture industry in connection withhorror historietas through reference, transformation,
quotation, and imitation. González concluded his critique
blog posts about El Monje Loco thus:

In some way, even as a parody in the rebroadcastingof Derbez’s TV program on platforms such as TV
and Blim (Mexican subscription services), the crazymonk (El Monje Loco) has lived on (*10).

Section 2 The “crazy monk” as a form of acclimating genre-based imagination to the locality
As a work of horror in which a wide range of motifs arefor the idea that the question “Why is this scary?” must

presented as short stories with an element of “anythinggoes”, it is difficult to explain El Monje Loco solely fromthe “why it is scary” perspective of genre-based text
entertainment. Research and criticism on movies and therest of the horror genre, particularly critiques adopting a
post-structuralist, psychoanalytical approach, tend to
explain horror entertainment from a thematic or authorcentric understanding of the universal cultural codes often
incorporated into specific texts (*11). In contrast, rather
than taking a textualist approach, Andrew Tudor argues

be asked from the perspective of the ways in which worksof horror are given meaning and utilized by consumers
within specific temporal, regional, and social contexts(*12).
From the latter perspective, when looking at El Monje
Loco, attention is drawn, more even than to the content of
the stories, to the processes of cross-media reference,
imitation, quotation, and mimicry of this work and theiconic character of the crazy monk in Mexican society. In
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this regard, it should be noted that Bartra followed thequote given above with the following:
We must not forget that what we are talking about is
not a historieta by a single author but a historieta
industry where the rules have penetrated deeply
through the repetition of the same descriptive
formats and models. This repeatability is not limited
to a single medium, but rather formed of a complex
network of mass media, a kind of conduit system
mutually interconnected to form a composite

melting pot. Monitos [a term for Mexican comics]
revive tales of chivalry, draw on folklore, andreconstruct modern popular myths.
Our realism is a product of reading Tarzan, Flash
Gordon, Terry and the Pirates, and The Phantom. It
results from the effort made to replace imports,
driven by the brazen desire to imitate models fromthe north. This approach is baroque, irreverent andself-centered, but it is unique to us… Our monitos
are something more than an imported cultural

structure (*13).
Rather than ascribing El Monje Loco to a specific origin
in terms of a “single author,” here, a standardized cultural
product repeated throughout a cross-media network
collectively, as an industry, is perceived to be merging
into a mass received experience. Thus, we can see theestablishment of a popular, or national, “Mexican”
identity with the same shared imagination. While
traversing Benedict Anderson’s concept of “imaginedcommunities” (14), Bartra’s perspective is connected to
the viewpoint wherein attention is drawn to theinvolvement of “imagined communities” in the landscapeof the collective imagination cultivated in mass media
offerings, as described by the cultural anthropologist
Arjun Appadurai, where “sensitive communities” areformed through an understanding of, criticism, andsensitivity to such landscapes and the construction,
deconstruction, and reconstruction of “race, that is,

fashion; they have formed one of the major factoriesof the dreams of contemporary Mexico, as Mexican
as those who read them, and as culturally syncretic
as we Mexicans are (*16).
Here, historietas are not only said to be a melting pot of
the popular/national Mexican imagination, but are also
positioned as incorporating an imagination external to
Mexican nation–state frameworks to enable acclimation
as a property of internal popular/national communities.
The presence of “the crazy monk” in Mexico’s mass
media is easily understood as part of this acclimation
process. The use of the classical format in which the crazymonk appears on the opening page to recount to the reader
the “tale” of a horror story is a device that allows forinclusivity in overdrive. From monsters from
Hollywood’s horror movies to adaptations of Edgar Allen
Poe, from the disturbing deaths of gothic horror to thecriminal suspense of film noir, everything is fair game asnationhood” (15).
When seen from this “imaginative media-cultural
anthropological” perspective, with regard to the forms ofpart of the repeated “descriptive format” of horror
historietas, enabling “scary” genre entertainment in all its
diverse forms to be appropriated as “historieta

historietas in the popular/national Mexican imaginative
landscape formed through mass media offerings, thefollowing passage from Puros Cuentos (Weird Tales), a
three-volume tome by Aurrecoechea and Bartra that
traces the history of historietas from 1874 to 1950, isnoteworthy:
There are no alien others in Mexico’s historietas,
where the flow of realism intermingles withtraditions, fashions and national aspirations; where
gigantic public obsessions and dreams integrate in a

Mexicana.”
On the other hand, the crazy monk is different fromthe symbols of historietas read as manifestations of
Mexican identity, history, or nationality, such as the“charros” or the “heroes” resembling the leaders of the
Revolution, or even Memín or Familia Burrón. Whereas
these symbols represent an indigenous Mexicanism in the“content” interwoven into the text (work), on the contrary
the crazy monk moves between—and is accepted in—short stories, movies, comics and other cultural products
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crossing national borders. This character functions in an
unfettered form that has gained local acceptance byconferring a framework of “popular/national Mexican
imagination” on the transnational “horror” genre
imagination (*17).
The power of the crazy monk as a form of thisacclimation and proximization has been further enhanced

through his becoming the property of the Mexican
popular/national imagination as a cross-media character.
As such, the opportunity for the crazy monk to shift fromthe impression widely formed by the voice in the
narration of the radio drama to a visual focus andcharacterization through the historieta will likely bepositioned as important.

Chapter 3 “Where do historical facts end and legends begin?”
In the 1950s, the Mexican horror historieta industry was
greatly influenced by American horror comics. In termsof the development of the El Monje Loco series from the1940s to the 1970s, the series published under the 1967
Editorial Temporae label, often praised by historieta
enthusiasts, was a notable success. In the historieta

archives of the National Newspaper Library of Mexico(*18), the series is introduced as a work influenced by
1950s American horror comics with an even more
grotesque and terrifying pictorial style, as seen in Figure
5 (*19).

Figure 5 Editorial Temporae El Monje Loco cover page. The cover image also highlights grotesque drawing in thestyle of 1950s American horror comics.
Editorial Temporae, 1967.

Author unknown, “La Cabeza Macabra Blanco,” in El Monje Loco no.2,

While El Monje Loco took on the pictorial aesthetic
style of American horror comics using distinct line
drawings in its own way, in the same 1960s anotherrepresentative horror historieta series that produced manyof its own successors was born: Tradiciones y Leyendas
de la Colonia (Traditions and Legends of the Colony;
Legends hereafter), published by Editorial Gutenberg(later Ediciones Latinoamericanas). This series was
exhibited at the Historieta Exhibition as “Mexico’s mostloved gothic historieta” (*20).
While El Monje Loco incorporated wide-ranging horror
genre-based motifs, in the Legends series, which logged
1500 issues between 1963 and 1983, the primary motifs
are (as the title suggests) dramatizations of many of the
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traditional tales about Mexico City during the Spanish
colonial period, as described in Luis González Obregón’s
1922 Las Calles de México: Leyendas y Sucedidos. For
example, the first issue engages readers with the famous

traditional tale “La Llorona,” about a female ghost (oncefeatured in a movie) who grieves after killing her own
child in anger over her husband’s adultery (Figure 6).

Figure 6 Cover page, “La Llorona,” in Tradiciones y Leyendas de la Colonia no.1, Editorial Gutenberg, 1963.
The content of the third issue, “La Leyenda de la Calle deOlmedo” (“The Legend of Olmedo Street”), presents the
typical narrative flow of the series that would later befeatured repeatedly. The narrator, a middle-aged
gentleman (modeled on Boris Karloff, an actor known for
American gothic horror movies) in his study, who appearsin every issue, says the following as he lures the reader inwith a terrifying traditional tale from the colonial period.
Legends are formed of interweaving narratives,

which is probably how the most terrifying legends ofcolonial-era Mexico came about… Maybe you haveheard of “La Leyenda de la Calle de Olmedo”?
You’ve probably walked through this area countlesstimes, but did you know that this cobblestoned street
was once so terrifying as to make one’s hair stand on
end? … Where do historical facts end and legends
begin? (Figure 7)

Figure 7 First page, “La Leyenda de la Calle de Olmedo,” in Tradiciones y Leyendas de la Colonia no.3, Editorial
Gutenberg, 1963.
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Then the readers are lured into the Mexico of 1731 in theera of the Viceroyalty of Nueva España, where they aresucked into the mysterious reimagining of a murder thatonce took place on Olmedo Street as they listen in on aconfession from a dead person, heard by a Catholic priest.
This way, Legends tells various traditional tales about
the fate of the dead and spirits through horror stories inan “anecdotal” format using the classic device of anarrator, which is superficially the same as what El Monje

Mexican popular/national identity. Experiences throughmass media assume the “texture of everyday experience”(*22), and as noted by Appadurai with reference toFrederick Jameson’s theory that the element of nostalgia
is an important focal point in modern cultural products(*23), the nostalgia and familiarity evoked by mass media
cultural products need not be connected to actual lived
experiences of the chronological past. Rather, the originof their authenticity is the retrospective recreation of

Loco does. However, the differences between the twoworks are notable with respect to the framework of“historietas as Mexican popular/national culture.”
As touched upon earlier, the stamp of Mexican locality
in El Monje Loco is not found in the “content” but in the“format” where the “crazy monk” tells tales as a template
to produce “historieta Mexicana”. Entertainment fromvarious horror genre-based texts became part of Mexico’s
popular/national property through the tales of “that”
monk, who himself became the property of Mexico’s
popular/national imagination by means of cross-media
use and repeated reference.
In contrast, Legends recalls for the reader a specifictime and place within the anecdote. Therefore, what
incites the awareness of the reader is the past and presentof Mexican localities, connected in imaginative
landscapes where familiar locations provide the settings
for traditional tales and fateful stories of spirits and the

media experiences.
The Mexico of the past depicted in Legends is not anauthentic recreation of a lived past but a recreation within
the imagination formed through mass media. Just as thestoryteller who lures you into the traditions of the past ismodeled on an actor from Hollywood horror movies, thepast shown in Legends is partly constructed from local
folk culture traditions. Yet it is also greatly dependent on
the cross-media imagination of the transnational horror
genre (including horror movies) that is part of Mexican
popular/national experience and that has undoubtedly
been appropriated in forms such as El Monje Loco. Hereit is difficult to distinguish the gaze on the past as ahistorical source shared by a national collective from thenostalgia and intimacy felt with regard to reimagined
shared media experiences.
The technique of medio tono used in Legends enables
an overlap in the imagination of this gaze on the historicaldead (*21). The use of the locality of the traditional tale
as a device of proximization creates the pleasure ofimagined horror. At the same time, the “horror” genre

past and the nostalgia for media experiences. According
to Aurrecoechea and Bartra, this characteristically
expressive technique depicts halftone gradations using aformat, through the visual recreation of tales of the deadand spirits, operates as a means of proximization of thepast around local places, firing the imagination of themodern reader. As such, the transnational imagination of
the horror genre forms a more integrated and complex
relationship with the locality of Mexico.
However, in contrast to El Monje Loco, it is likely illjudged to see the connection and proximization of the pastand present of Mexico through the “horror” genre format
in Legends as an evocation of a “true” past that forms the

special combination of ink and pencil that can becompared to café con leche. It was created on the basis ofa desire to make the visual expression of historietas morenaturalistic and full of ambience. In the historietas of the
1940s, readers in Mexico appreciated black and sepia
monochrome pictures rather than color, especiallyhistorieta drawings depicted in medio tono, as such
depictions were seen as reimagining a realistic ambiencereminiscent of black and white movies and photographs(*24).
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Panel 1: “Comparing Manga Cultures: Japan and Mexico”

Nonetheless, the preference for the realist ambience of
medio tono would be unintentionally derailed bynaturalist realism through collage techniques using
monochrome photographs, that is, photomontage. As
Aurrecoechea and Bartra wrote:
The desire for realism ended up chasing its own tail.
The technique intended to make historietas moretruthful enabled the fragments of ‘reality’ that arephotographs to create a doubly destructive illusory
world in accordance with the demands of wildboundaries between existing specific locations and thepast settings of traditional tales about the dead via a
realism rooted in monochrome media experiences. Thiscan be seen, for example, in the specific depiction of the“places” used as settings in Legends. As for the cobbled
streets of Mexico City endlessly depicted in medio tono,
including Calle de Olmedo, their visual authenticity is notsupported by historical investigations about the accuracyof the depictions. Rather, the imaginations of the readersof Mexican popular/national historietas who enjoy

imagination. (*25)
The monochrome characters and backgrounds in thehalftone gradations formed by medio tono, along with thephoto collages, brought about a distinctive sensation on
the historieta page, imploding with naturalist realism.
In this way, expressive endeavors in Legends to depict“truthful” horror settings in a horror historieta
paradoxically brought in a transversal capacity for
imagination, which allowed historietas to cross themaking connections between the supernatural traditional
tales of spirits and the dead and actual place
names/memories of urban spaces are given form. This isdone through continuity with other re-imaginings in past
media experiences, including movies, such as the screen
projection of the sets of past city streets and houses fromthe 1933 Mexican horror film of La Llorona (Figure 8)(*26).

Figure 8 The streets of Mexico in La Llorona (1933), one of Mexico’s first horror movies, and the setting for “TheLegend of Olmedo Street.”
Legends acclimates post-El Monje Loco transnational,
genre-based imagination within a national framework.
While building on the lineage of “historietas Mexicanas”
as a means of seizing the pleasure thereof, Legends can
now be positioned as presenting the new directionality ofreimagining/rediscovering national motifs within aformat that localizes the imagination of genre for the“historieta” as a “work of horror.” Thus, just as with El
Monje Loco, as a point of transition in the history ofhorror historietas, Legends gave rise to spin-offs andfollow-up historieta series (*27). There, in contrast to El
Monje Loco, local motifs were reimagined in “horror
historietas” as a genre-based form of transnational
imagination.
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Section 4 The use of genre-based capacity for imagination in rental gothic manga and horror historietas
One topic that invites a comparison with these horror
historietas from the perspective of the form of the“acclimation to popular/national culture of a transnational
genre-based capacity for imagination” is the heyday ofJapanese rental gothic manga.
In Japan, one of the epochal moments in thedevelopment of gothic manga was the evolution of rental
manga between 1955 and 1965. For example, in themonster cat movies, such as Daiei’s Ghost of Saga
Mansion (1953).
Born in 1949, writer Kikuchi Hideyuki, in his
postscript to the anthology he compiled of rental ghost
story manga, wrote the following about his childhood
memories of frequenting rental bookstores:
The turning point came when a certain book arrived.
Even now, I can clearly remember the title, Ma nolineup from Taiheiyō Bunko, one of the foremost
publishers of rental manga in terms of the number ofpublications, about a sixth were gothic publications (*28).
In addition, the publications of Kaidan and All Kaidan,
rental short story magazines from Tsubame Shuppan(1958) and Hibari Shobō (1959), respectively, werehighly significant in terms of the emergence of specialist
publications in the horror genre (Figure 8). Following
these, rental short story magazines focusing on gothic
themes were successively issued until about the mid1960s, leading to a craze for rental gothic manga (*29).
Incidentally, on the shelves of rental bookstores, there
were also novels meant for entertainment, such as
historical novels and detective stories by domestic andforeign authors, whose elements were introduced into
rental manga in response to reader demand (*30). In thiscontext, as noted by Yonezawa Yoshihiro, from the late
1950s to the early 1960s, as rental gothic manga

Hyakumonsen, a period gothic manga. It was an
adaptation of the famous Dracula movie, with which
I was obsessed at that point… It worked in part
because Dracula was a black-caped Westerner, notawkwardly Japanized (*32).
While Kikuchi’s experience was derived from theappropriation of monster representations in Hollywood
horror movies, the success of ghost stories in view of thecraze for ghost movies cannot be described here in full.
For example, Kojima Gōseki, the vanguard author of
Kaidan and All Kaidan, created fantastical short mangathat combined classical ghost stories, such as “Dōjō-ji”
and “Yotsuya Kaidan,” or “The Reed-Choked House”
and “The Peony Lantern” from Ugetsu Monogatari, withromantic melodramas. In the late 1950s, Tokunami
Seiichirō, who now has an almost cult-like following,
published seven books with Akebono Shobō under thetitle Tokunami Seiichiro Ghost Cat Series, seemingly

proliferated, overseas gothic/fantasy novels poured into
Japan, including Tokyo Sōgensha’s The Complete
Collected World Horror Short Stories, edited by Hirai

against the background of the popularity of ghost cat
movies.
In addition, while it is well known that the rental

Teiichi (1958), and Hayakawa Shuppan’s anthologies
Great Tales of the Supernatural and Uncanny (1956) andOutlandish Short Stories (1960) (*31). Also, during thesame period, on the one hand, foreign horror movies,
including Hammer Films’ Dracula (1958), Roger
Corman’s House of Usher (1960), and Hitchcock's
Psycho (1960), as well as Tōhō tokusatsu (special effects)
horror movies, such as The H-Man (1958), were released
one after the other. On the other hand, there was a revival
in ghost story movies, originating from the popularity ofgothic manga The Underground Footsteps (Akebono
Shobō, 1962) is an early adaptation by Mizuki Shigeru of
H. P. Lovecraft’s The Dunwich Horror set in Japan, in theearly 1960s, in the period gothic manga series Mizuki
Shigeru’s Fantasy Roman there were many additional
adaptations of foreign horror and SF novels, such as thoseof Poe, Jack Finney’s The Body Snatchers, and Guillaume
Apollinaire’s “The Disappearance of Honoré Subrac”(Figure 9) (*33).
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Figure 9 “Kaidan kaeribune,” from the series Mizuki Shigeru’s Fantasy Roman. This episode was inspired by W.W.
Jacobs’ classic horror story, “The Monkey’s Paw.”
Mizuki, Shigeru. “Kaidan kaeribune.” Mizuki Shigeru Complete Manga Works, Rental Manga Compilation 10, Kaidan
kaeribune and others. Kodansha, 2020.
Just as horror historietas took on a wide range of horror
genre-based motifs, including through adaptation andappropriation, in the realm of rental gothic manga, thetransnational and transmedia capacity for genre-based
imagination was frequently borrowed such that it was
linked to the contemporaneous development of movies
and novels. This process can largely be divided into threemodes, namely, (1) the appropriation of representationsof monsters from horror movies (this can be seen in bothmagazines and rental books), (2) the recreation of stories
of fate based on the format of ghost stories, and (3)Kang compares the rental gothic manga writers Mizuki
Shigeru and Takeuchi Kankō, who worked on GeGeGeno Kitarō and had both started out working on kamishibai
picture card storytelling. While Takeuchi’s Kitarō does
not pictorially harmonize the manga-like Kitarō with theother, more realistically drawn, characters in the same
frame, Mizuki’s Kitarō was able to have both the mangalike Kitarō and Nezumi Otoko together with depictions ofmore realistic human characters without any sense of
discomfort, using frame composition and connection
methods.

borrowing and adapting the plots of foreign gothic and SF
novels. Regarding this directionality, Yonezawa views(2) and (3) in particular as contrastive. While (2) aimed

According to Kang, this disparity can be referred to asa “conflict between the orality and textuality of the image”(*36). Essentially, Takeuchi’s work was affected by his

for iconographic and pragmatic horror that conformed tothe model of revenge stories, (3) placed greater emphasis
on a story with a shock punchline or ending. Yonezawa
states that, in its late period, rental gothic manga became
more aware of sophisticated “urban horror” in the style ofmode (3) (*34).
When viewing these works as “forms of acclimating
genre-based imagination,” an additional line of reasoning
can be employed with reference to Kang Jun’s theory
about the rental gothic manga GeGeGe no Kitarō (*35).

history with kamishibai ghost stories and horror stories,
where the jumble of different coexisting standards ofimages (content) could be integrated or canceled out by
the “narration” of the kamishibai narrator, who was
intrinsically “external” thereto. On the other hand, Mizuki,
while similarly having started out in kamishibai, aimed toachieve integration by enhancing consistency in theautonomous text of the “work” of manga as anindependent book through awareness of the method of
uniting connected frames and refinement of the plot and33

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setting. Thus, while Mizuki’s Kitarō later developed as aunique “work” connected to a specific “author,”
Takeuchi’s Kitarō failed to become a manga “work” andpetered out with the decline of rental manga.
To expand on the differences between Mizuki and
Takeuchi with relation to the modes of borrowing genrebased imagination in rental manga cited in the foregoing
text, it can be said that mode (2), which places emphasis
on appropriated and borrowed individual elements ofshock while attempting virtual unification by the use of“stories from the crazy monk” and “Mexican traditions,”
simply served as external bounds for the internal logic
and pleasure of individual short texts in the horror genre,
consistently broadminded enough to permit divergencefrom organized consistency where “works” could be
ascribed to a specific author. In addition, as highlighted
by Bartra, the formation of a collective readership with ashared, specific, genre-based imaginative capacity
through horror historietas was connected to the nationalframework of “the Mexican masses” founded on cross-an existing shared ghost story or stories of fate as thenarrative format, conflicts with mode (3). This is becausemode (3) assimilates and conceals the appropriated andborrowed sources and tries to move towards an integrated
autonomous text. This is a conflict also because actual
rental gothic manga frequently collided and disintegrated
between the two modes, leading to overly abrupt
punchlines and the introduction of illogical shocking
scenes (these would later be rediscovered and appraised
as “cult literature” and “B-grade horror”).
This way, manga was similar to historieta in terms ofthe transnational relocation of horror genre
representations and the cross-media appropriation ofplots and motifs for transformation into local cultural
products. However, manga made the shift from rentals
toward magazine media issued by major publishers andfinally became individual, autonomous “works,” boundup with the authors’ names and giving rise to author-

sectional mass media experiences. However, manga,
through the change to youth culture, is instead heading
toward forming a subculture collective founded on
specific media, that is, “manga readership,” articulated
and separated inside the national framework.
In his essay in the illustrated text for the Historieta
Exhibition, Ōtsuka Eiji connected the Bartra andAurrecoechea view of historietas to the context in which
manga forms a “folklore” as an expression of a“commons” originating in a “group of authors” who canno longer be seen as the modern concept of individual“authors” (*37). It is significant that, as an example of the“folklore” approach, Ōtsuka cites Hakaba Kitarō, which
existed in various versions before being attached to theauthor Mizuki Shigeru. The role of horror historietas in
the landscape of Mexican popular/national imagination
originating in “the crazy monk” can perhaps be likened tothe existence of Kitarō and its non-convergence withcentric standards of appraisal, including in terms of theoriginality of ideas and skillful adaptations. On the other
hand, the narrative devices/formats of historietas, such as

GeGeGe no Kitarō.

Conclusion“Tradiciones y Leyendas de la Colonia: A brutal, sepiacolored comic that was widely available when I was a kid.
Brutal.” (*38) In 2015, Guillermo Del Toro, the Mexican
movie director known for Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) andother grotesque and fantastical works, posted this tweet
on his Twitter feed alongside a grotesque cover image
from Legends.

This post, which shows that Legends is one of the rootsof the imagination of this globally active director known
to be a fan of Japanese manga, anime, and tokusatsu
movies, nicely demonstrates the interaction between the
movement of imagination across national borders andexperiences of its reception in local media as argued by
Appadurai. As a melting pot of Mexico’s
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popular/national imagination, and as an appropriation ofa transnational imaginative capacity, the world ofhistorietas may be an important point of comparison
when reassessing the development of the realm of
imagination in manga, which tends to be positioned solely
within the framework of “Japan.”

35International Research Center for Japanese Studies, Japanese Popular Culture Research Project
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Panel 1: “Comparing Manga Cultures: Japan and Mexico”

Notes*1 Hernández, Alvaro, editor. Unknown Mexican Comics ‘Historieta’: Expression as Folk Culture. International
Research Center for Japanese Studies, 2019, pp. 52–81.
*2 Aurrecoechea, Juan Manuel. “Mexican Popular Comics in the Transition from historieta salvaje to Graphic Novels.”
Unknown Mexican Comics ‘Historieta’: Expression as Folk Culture, edited by Alvaro Hernández, International
Research Center for Japanese Studies, 2019, p.11.
*3 Bartra, Armando. “Crowd Reading: Birth, Splendor and the Agony of the Great Illustrated
Whale. Historical Recounts of Mexican Comic Books, From Lithography to the Internet.” Unknown
Mexican Comics ‘Historieta’: Expression as Folk Culture, edited by Alvaro Hernández,
International Research Center for Japanese Studies, 2019, pp. 114–115.
*4 Soto Díaz, Rubén Eduardo. Historietas de Horror en México. Editorial Mucachi Metiche, 2019.
*5 For details of the El Monje Loco bibliography, see the website of the historieta archives of the National
Newspaper Library of Mexico. https://pepines.iib.unam.mx/serie/1113*6 Del Plado, Carlos and Héctor Gutierrez. El Monje Loco, vol.1, no.20, Corporación Editorial Mexicana, 1952. Thisepisode has been published online by a collector. http://monjeloco6771.blogspot.com/search/label/1952*7 El Monje Loco, after being published in the daily historieta magazine Chamaco in 1940, was issued as a book in
1952 by Corporación Editorial Mexicana. In the 1960s, a short series comprising only three volumes was issued by
Editorial Continente (1967), with later developments including the publication of the successful Editorial Temporaelabel series (1967–1971), followed by the 6-volume, short-lived Grupo Editor de México series (1972).
*8 Bartra, Armando. “Crowd Reading: Birth, Splendor and the Agony of the Great Illustrated
Whale. Historical Recounts of Mexican Comic Books, From Lithography to the Internet.” Unknown
Mexican Comics ‘Historieta’: Expression as Folk Culture, edited by Alvaro Hernández,
International Research Center for Japanese Studies, 2019, p.110. Here, the description gives thesense that the 1937 radio drama was produced after the historieta.
*9
González, Cecilio Jacobo. El Monje Loco: una breve semblanza del abad maldito, 2021.
https://www.comikaze.net/el-monje-loco/*10
González, Cecilio Jacobo. El Monje Loco: una breve semblanza del abad maldito, 2021.
https://www.comikaze.net/el-monje-loco/*11 Jancovich, Mark. Horror. Translated by Endō Tōru, Seikyūsha, 1997, pp. 15–16.
*12 Tudor, Andrew. “Why Horror?: The Peculiar Pleasure of a Popular Genre.” Cultural Studies, vol. 11, no. 3, 1997,
pp. 443–463.
*13 Bartra, Armando. “Crowd Reading: Birth, Splendor and the Agony of the Great Illustrated Whale. Historical
Recounts of Mexican Comic Books, From Lithography to the Internet.” Unknown Mexican Comics ‘Historieta’:
Expression as Folk Culture, edited by Alvaro Hernández, International Research Center for Japanese Studies, 2019,p.110.
*14 Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Translated by
Shiraishi Saya and Shiraishi Takashi, NTT, 2004.
*15 Appadurai, Arjun. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Translated by Kadota Kenichi,
Heibonsha, 2004.
*16 Aurrecoechea, Juan Manuel and Armando Bartra. Puros Cuentos III: Historia de la Historieta en México 19341950. Editorial Grijalbo, 1994, pp.18–19.
*17 As with “the crazy monk,” as a means of acclimating transnationally shared horror genre-based motifs as local
products, battles with monsters from various horror movies appear in historietas featuring luchador heroes such as
Santo: El Enmascarado de Plata.
*18 See the National Newspaper Library of Mexico website, https://pepines.iib.unam.mx/serie/1113*19 Based on plots under the signature of Salvatore Carrasco, who played the crazy monk in the radio drama andmovie, with the narrator of the tale thus evoking “that” cross-media monk for the reader, the series, drawn by artists
such as Rubén Lara, José Pacindo, Carlos Moro, Juan Rangel, and José Barradas, was published weekly, reaching 169
volumes between 1967 and 1971. Refer to González, El Monje Loco: una breve semblanza del abad maldito, 2021.
https://www.comikaze.net/el-monje-loco/*20 See Soto Díaz, Rubén Eduardo. Historietas de Horror en México. Editorial Mucachi Metiche, 2019.
36
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January 21 (Friday)On the Front Lines of Japanese Popular Culture Research: Toward the Pursuit of New Images of Japan.
Panel 1: “Comparing Manga Cultures: Japan and Mexico”*21 Also, as an element that suggests the Mexican locality of Legends, Alvaro David Hernández Hernández points
out the many Christian motifs in this work. See Hernández’s presentation “Expressions of horror in Mexican historieta”(at the Media, Media Expressions and Fan Culture MANGAlabo 7 workshop, International Research Center forJapanese Studies, Japanese Popular Culture Research Project, 2019). These Christian motifs are also an important shareddevice within the Mexican popular/national imagination for framing vice and devilishness by way of inciting horror. In
contrast, Aztec/Mayan indigenous motifs tend to be more widely used in action and adventure historietas rather thanhorror works, a point to be studied in the future. Regarding the text in this section, Alvaro Hernández and Gen Leonardo
Ota Otani provided important suggestions.
*22 Silverstone, Roger. Why Study the Media? Translated by Yoshimi Shunya et al., Serica Shobō, 2003.
*23 Jameson, Frederic. “Postmodernism and Consumer Society.” Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture,edited by Hal Foster, translated by Muroi Hisashi and Yoshioka Hiroshi, Keisō Shobō, 1987.
*24 Aurrecoechea, Juan Manuel and Armando Bartra. Puros Cuentos II: Historia de la Historieta en México 1934–1950. Editorial Grijalbo, 1993, p.192.
*25 Aurrecoechea, Juan Manuel and Armando Bartra. Puros Cuentos II: Historia de la Historieta en México 1934–1950. Editorial Grijalbo, 1993, pp.197–198.
*26 The period from the 1950s to the 1960s was also when many horror movies were produced in Mexico. The
connection between these movies and horror historietas is an important issue when considering this fictional universe,
which requires further study in the future.
*27 Among the series of horror historietas which, following the success of Legends, used local motifs, the historieta
website “tebeosfera” lists El Caballo Del Diablo by Ediciones Latinoamericana (1969) and El Jinete De La Muerte(1974)
amongothers(https://www.tebeosfera.com/colecciones/tradiciones_y_leyendas_de_la_colonia_1963_latinoamericanas_gutenberg.html). The former presents crime and horror stories that intermingle legends and superstitions in the local setting ofmodernized Mexico, while the latter depicts the legendary adventures of a charro carrying the souls of the dead.
*28 Yonezawa, Yoshihiro. A History of Postwar Gothic Manga. Tetsujinsha, 2019, p. 25.
*29 Book Rental Manga History Study Group, Rental Manga RETURNS. Poplar, 2006, pp. 194–196.
*30 Nakano, Haruyuki. Understanding the Manga Industry. Chikuma Shobō, 2004.
*31 Yonezawa, Yoshihiro. A History of Postwar Gothic Manga. Tetsujinsha, 2019, pp. 73–75.
*32 Kikuchi, Hideyuki, editor. Rental Ghost Story Manga Masterworks Compilation: Phantom Volume. Rippū Shobō,
1991, p. 325.
*33 Yonezawa,Yoshihiro. A History of Postwar Gothic Manga. Tetsujinsha, 2019, p.61.
*34 Yonezawa, Yoshihiro. A History of Postwar Gothic Manga. Tetsujinsha, 2019, pp.73–81.
*35 Kang, Jun. Kamishibai and “the Spooky” in Modern Times. Seikyūsha, 2007, pp. 169–178.
*36 Kang, Jun. Kamishibai and “the Spooky” in Modern Times. Seikyūsha, 2007, p.178.
*37 Ōtsuka, Eiji. “Rediscovery of ‘the People’s Manga’: Historieta as ‘Folk Culture’.’” Unknown Mexican Comics‘Historieta’: Expression as Folk Culture, edited by Alvaro Hernández, International Research Center for JapaneseStudies, 2019, pp.156–59.
*38 @RealGDT. “TRADICIONES Y LEYENDAS DE LA COLONIA: A Brutal, Sepia-colored comic that was
widely avail. when I was a kid. Brutal.” Twitter, 29 Sep. 2015, 4:48p.m.,https://twitter.com/RealGDT/status/648766182791753728

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El Monje Loco from the View of Saika Tadahiro
Olivia Domínguez Prieto1
In Mexico, there is a very old tradition of exploring
themes from the horror genre, particularly in terms ofwhat is referred to as literary creation, traced fromcolonial legends2 , that has since developed importantroots in popular culture and been repeated andreinvented over the centuries. However, it is also
possible to go back to the history of the pre-Hispanic
peoples3 to find elements in oral tradition and myths
that, due to their function as social regulators, could beclassified as belonging to the horror genre, and that eventoday can be found to play a role in determining cultural
traits in many communities in this country.
However, the genre of horror began to be
integrated into Mexican culture between the 1930s and1960s4, making itself present first in the restoration andpublication of collections of chronicles and old legends,
in parallel with radio programs, and later in film. Since
the 1920s, the Coahuila writer Artemio del Valle Arizpe
began to compile the tradition of New Spain in his work,and specifically in 1936, he published the book Storiesof the Living and the Dead: Legends, Traditions, andEvents of Viceregal Mexico. Just one year later, in 1937,
radio broadcasts would begin where the character
chosen by Saika Tadahiro, El Monje Loco [The Mad
Monk],5 would appear. El Monje Loco’s stories were

narrated by Salvador Carrasco, who would later become
known as one of the first Mexican dubbing actors who
had the opportunity to travel to the United States. Afterthe voice of the presenter who announced, “From thegloom of his chapel, the terrifying narratives of El
Monje Loco reach you,” a macabre laugh could be heard,
followed by the sound of a baroque organ and special
effects that were interrupted with the phrase, “Nobody
knows, nobody knew,” followed by a gruesome
narrative. It wouldn’t take long for the character to bebrought first to the big screen 6 and later to print,
specifically in comic strip format, as Eduardo Soto
notes:In Chamaco, starting in 1942, the “El Monje
Loco” series was published by Juan Reyes Béiker
and other prominent cartoonists from the same
publication based on the radio series of the same
name, written by Carlos Riveroll de Prado andstarring Salvador Carrasco (Soto, 2010: 5)7.
Possibly, one of the elements that has most drawn
attention to the figure of El Monje Loco has been his
positioning as a narrator-storyteller, a very common
device in classic texts, but also in many famous horror
and suspense series8. El Monje Loco would become awitness and at the same time a narrator, both in his radio

Head of Research at the Postgraduate and Research Section of the School of Engineering and Architecture (ESIA
Tecamachalco) at the National Polytechnic Institute (NPI), Mexico.
2 In the book Leyendas y Sucedidos del México Colonial [Legends and Events of Colonial Mexico] published by El Libro
Español (1963), some of the best-known legends are compiled, although not all would be classified as belonging to thegenre of horror. However, one of the best known, “La Llorona,” occupies a key place in the framework of this genre.
3 In his book Leyendas del Agua en México [Water Legends in Mexico] (2006), Andrés González Pages compiles someof them, particularly those that refer to water, such as that of Nahui Atl (The Fourth Sun or Sun of Water), Hapunda,
Tajín and the Seven Thunders, The Weeping Trees, and The Tlalocan or Paraíso de Tláloc.
4 Previously, at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, Legends and Events by Luis González Obregón,
Guillermo Prieto, and Vicente Riva Palacio was published. The reprints of this work, according to an advertisement fromthe publishers in the Traditions and Legends of the Colony magazine recovered by Miguel Ángel Morales and Eduardo
Soto in their book Traditions and Legends of the Colony: Novohispanic Horror in Comics (2020), “were out of print or
prohibitively expensive”.
5 In the archives of the W, one of the oldest and most recognized radio stations in Mexico, there are some files fromthe aforementioned programs. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTYjO2JtbPU
6
The movie El Monje Loco was shown for the first time in 1940, directed by Alejandro Galindo.
7
Cecilio Jacobo González from Comikaze provides further information, stating that El Monje Loco: “(…) started weekly
in 1940 as part of the famous publication Kid, from Publicaciones Herrerías. By the 1950s, the stories appeared on thepages of Grandpa’s Tales, from Corporación Editorial Mexicana. Then, with its own title, it had a brief run of only threeissues at Editorial Continente, published in 1967. At the end of that same year, Editorial Temporae, a sub-label of
Editorial Novaro, took up the title. To do so, it used great talents of the time, such as Salvador Carrasco for the storylines
and Rubén Lara (Fantomas), José Pacindo, Carlos Moro, Juan Rangel, and José Barradas for illustration. This was thelongest and most famous stage of the character, since between 1967 and 1971, 169 weekly issues were published.”
Originally published in Comikaze no. 35, URL: https://www.comikaze.net/el-monje-loco/.
8 Among them, the Alfred Hitchcock series Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955-1965) and The New Alfred Hitchcock (19851989) and the famous skeleton narrator of Tales from the Crypt (1989-1996).
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form, as well as in his film and graphic versions in the
comic:
With El Monje Loco, the comic not only
welcomes tasty tales of mystery and horror, italso receives from radio theater the dramatic
structure of the short story… [contributing] thefirst narrator character of our comics: a hooded
man who with his mysterious characterization
defines the tone of the series (Aurrecoechea andBartra, 1994: 265-267).
However, despite the peculiarity of the character El
Monje Loco and his famous parodies, there are few texts
that analyze this comic in depth. In the text “TheDevelopment of Horror Historietas and Rental Horror
Manga: Local Acclimation of Genre-based Imaginative
Capacity,” Saika Tadahiro reflects with insight on
Mexican comics and wonders why there are few
references to the literary genre of horror, compared to
the “seven predominant themes in that country, among
which humor, romance, and heroes stand out, among
others9.”
For Saika, the narrative in El Monje Loco breaks
with the frameworks and themes developed in otherMexican comics at the time, an observation that
perfectly indicates the political project promoted bypost-revolutionary governments in Mexico, whichsought to build a national identity, based on theassimilation of certain shared cultural symbols. Thesesymbols were presented through music, muralism, anddifferent literary genres, including comics 10 . Saika
writesOn the other hand, El Monje Loco is different
from the symbols of comics read as
manifestations of Mexican identity, history, or
nationality, such as the “charros” or the “heroes”
resembling the leaders of the Revolution, or even
Memín or Familia Burrón. They represent an
indigenous Mexicanism in the “content”
interwoven into the text (work), as the mad monk
moves between—and is accepted in—shortstories, movies, comics, and other cultural
products crossing national borders (Saika).
El Monje Loco, based on what is said from its semantic
explicitness, sticks to universal frameworks, connectingwith the transnational node of the narrative and theaesthetics of horror with a particularly North American

influence that Saika discovers not only in the storyline,
but also in the plot.
The search for parallels and contrasts is key in
Saika’s text: in principle he compares El Monje Locowith the series Traditions and Legends of the Colony
which, from the 1960s, led the horror comics market in
Mexico, recovering locations and local imaginaries,
unlike the stories of El Monje Loco, which could evenbe placed in other locations around the world.
However, the most interesting comparison that
Saika makes is spatially located across the Pacific, inthe rental comics that circulated between the 50s and60s in Japan, where gothic themes would occupy an
important position, along with in novels and later,
imported films. Western influence, according to Saika,
appeared at various times, through the adaptation ofBram Stoker’s work Dracula as the manga Ma no
hyakumonsen; in the ghosts of Kojima Gōseki’s manga;in books by Tokunami Seiichirō; and even in theadaptation of English-language works by H.P.
Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe by Shigeru Mizuki.
However, the reception of manga by readers inJapan would follow different paths than those of
Mexican comics, as suggested by Saika following
Bartra. While in Mexico, comics—with a few
exceptions—became another instrument of thedominant national culture, in Japan, reading manga
would lead to the formation of communities of meaningor to so-called youth cultures, which have transcended
generations and have been transnationalized whencrossing borders:
In addition, as highlighted by Bartra, theformation of a collective readership with ashared, specific, genre-based imaginative
capacity through horror historietas wasconnected to the national framework of “theMexican masses” founded on cross-sectional
mass media experiences. However, manga,
through the change to youth culture, is instead
heading toward forming a subculture collective
founded on specific media, that is, “mangareadership,” articulated and separated inside thenational framework (Saika).
Undoubtedly, themes that revolve around horror
continue to have an important function in different
cultural expressions in Mexico—despite not being thepart” from a television horror series produced in Mexico
that was titled Hora Marcada and broadcast in the late1980s and early 1990s.
10 Due to their low cost and wide dissemination among
the reading audience, comics played a fundamental rolein circulating social imaginaries about the constructionof Mexican national identity.
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January 21 (Friday)
The episode he has chosen is number 34, titled “TheWhite Sepulcher,” in which a necrophilic theme isdeveloped, where the protagonist unearths and coexists
with the corpse of his beloved. This is a recurrent themein Latin American narratives; it is also found in the lyricsof the song by Ecuadorian Julio Jaramillo called “Bodas
Negras,” as well as in the episode “Until death do us
9On the Front Lines of Japanese Popular Culture Research: Toward the Pursuit of New Images of Japan.
Panel 1: “Comparing Manga Cultures: Japan and Mexico”

most popular genre—both in literature and in film 11 .
However, it is seldom chosen as a subject for criticalanalysis by academia, indicating the need to developinterpretations and observations such as those made by
Saika, who has identified the contrasting perspectives
within the historical understandings of horror comics in
Mexico. In Mexico, there is no single image of horror,
nor is there a “pure formula,” since, for several decades,
the symbolic elements of the narratives have been
hybridized in their contact with the transnational
imaginaries of this genre.
As Silvana Flores writes – with reference to film,
but her comments can be applied to Mexican comics –understandings about horror abound:(…) when we talk about horror and fantasy films
in Mexico, we cannot stick to a mere formula for
preparation, but to a range of understandings thatarise from the influx of creators (both domestic
and foreign, who act as a reference) and from thetarget audience, which expects from the film a
product aligned with that imaginary.
To conclude, it is important to emphasize the need toreturn to comics as materials for historical study,
from the perspectives of the history of mentalities
and from the semiotic analysis of culture, for anumber of reasons: the ability of comics to condense
images and discourses into the same object
reproduced from reality or fantasy, and to passthrough different aesthetics and integrate social
imaginaries related to a certain time orunderstanding of the world; as well as theirintertextuality. In this sense, Saika’s reading
provides important clues to unravel the narrative andconfiguration of El Monje Loco, as well as its
intersections with other comics, from its creation toits final reception. As Saika suggests, imagine theone who imagines, years and miles away, while
listening to a voiceover that vehemently assures
them: “no one knows, no one knew.”

Reference list
Aurrecoechea, Juan Manuel and Armando Bartra. Puros Cuentos III. Historia de la Historieta en México 1934-1950[Pure Stories III. History of the Comic Strip in Mexico 1934-1950]. Grijalbo/ Conaculta, 1994.
Flores, Silvana. “El cine de terror en México: entre monstruos, leyendas ancestrales y luchadores populares [Horror
films in Mexico: Amidst Monsters, Ancestral Legends, and Popular Wrestlers].” Secuencias, vol. 48, 2019, pp. 9–
34. https://doi.org/10.15366/secuencias2018.48.001
González, Cecilio Jacobo. “El Monje Loco. Una Breve Semblanza del Abad Maldito [The Mad Monk: A Brief Portraitof the Cursed Abbot].” Comikaze, https://www.comikaze.net/el-monje-loco/. Accessed 25 November 2021.
“Salvador Carrasco.” Doblaje Fandom, https://doblaje.fandom.com/es/wiki/Salvador_Carrasco. Accessed 10 December
2021.
El Monje Loco (film). Directed by Alejandro Galindo, Estudios Azteca, 1940.
“El Monje Loco [The Mad Monk].” YouTube, uploaded by musicasinfinal, 29 October 2021,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTYjO2JtbPU.
González Pagés, Andrés. Leyendas del Agua en México [Water Legends in Mexico], México: Instituto Mexicano deTecnología del Agua (IMTA), 2006.
Leyendas y Sucedidos del México Colonial [Legends and Events of Colonial Mexico]. México: El Libro Español, 1963.
Soto Díaz, Rubén Eduardo. Historietas de Horror en México [Horror Comics in Mexico]. Editorial Mucachi Metiche,
2019.
Soto Díaz, Rubén Eduardo and Miguel Ángel Morales. Tradiciones y Leyendas de la Colonia. Horror Novohispano en
Historieta [Traditions and Legends of the Colony: Novohispanic Horror in Comics]. Editorial Mucachi Metiche,
2020.

form: Cristhian Chavero, Óscar Álvarez Freeman,
Vianka Mildred, Daniel Drack, and Itzel Santos, among
others.
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There are many contemporary authors who have
opted for this genre, choosing the story, as a narrative11

On the Front Lines of Japanese Popular Culture Research: Toward the Pursuit of New Images of Japan.
Panel 1: “Comparing Manga Cultures: Japan and Mexico”

Modernity and Innocence:
Commentary on the Comparative Analysis by Ota Otani of the Mexican Comic “Almasde Niños” [Children’s Souls] and the Japanese Manga “Batto-kun”
Fernando Ruiz Molina12
The analysis in Ota Otani’s article is expertly enrichedthrough the interpretation of the child’s gaze as acoding/decoding device. Through the child's gazeaffections, materialities, experiences, and precise
conditions of existence are assembled, in the midst ofindustrialization and modernization in Mexico’s case,and in the political readjustment that occurred after
defeat in World War II in Japan’s case.
Perhaps the closest theory for interpreting this gazeas assemblage is Benjamin’s, which does not disregard
the shock of modernity, and ruin, as an object ofsociological or philosophical reflection. Along theselines, the child’s gaze uses innocence to assimilate thesymptoms – new emotions or those that did not yet havea name – of abrupt social, political, and economicchanges. Ruin, human loss, and demolition, what theJapanese coined kyodatsu: a collective depressive
feeling, which before celebrating the martial spirit of
war and, the sometimes saturating and selfcommendable Japanese spirit, enhanced the feeling ofirreversibility, one of the qualities that VladimirJankelevitch associates with time, the feeling of deathand the Nothing. Melancholy that moves, on the one
hand, towards what has been lost and feeds on the dreamof modifying the irreversibility of time (in Memín’s case,which invites the general public to think and remember
childhood as a “sacred treasure”), and, on the other hand,to the war experience of Japan, the shock, the sense ofloss, to the expectant and careful life and thereconfiguration of everyday practices, in this new
reality and logic of “Americanized” existence, in which
Batto-kun tries to insert himself and adapt through hisrise in baseball.
Through the child’s gaze, Ota Otani reconstructs, in
Mexico’s case, the lives and experiences of the peopleof the urban peripheries, which he indicates are theproduct of a migratory phenomenon in Mexico thatbegan to take shape during the transformations of the
1940s, with the reforms that made possible prosperity
and balance between the countryside and the city, under
the shelter of civil (not military) governments and theemergence of public education. In the case of Japan, thefocus is on the reconstruction of the future for children
through sports meritocracy, the aura of effort, and theconstant overcoming of obstacles.
Through the visual experiences in “Alma de Niños”
12and “Batto-kun,” both works reconstruct the concept of“childhood innocence” through a gaze that crudely
reads life in the city, within a context of urban upheaval,
and in the midst of constant transformation towards themodern industrial paradigm. The tension between ruin
and reconstruction, after World War II, is perhaps one ofthe perspective lines within Ota Otani’s comparative
work. Ruin in this sense expresses the materiality of
decay, disaster, a crisis in the notion of “purity” (whose
expected antimony is “decomposition” and“corruption”), and destruction. However, reconstruction
incorporates elements that allude to the operative
processes of technical reproducibility, and changes
concerning the experience of work under this new logic
of material ordering, and the subjectivity that this
implies (the reconfiguration of the worker, life itself inperipheral and underprivileged territories after the endof the War, the emergence of a culture of scarcity orsavings—for example, the collective consumption of
the same comic— and the appearance of the “new rich”
and the “new poor”), as well as a geolocalized andglobal experience of ruin, which would transform thepolitical space in all senses.
Ota Otani promptly points out the marks of the riseof a kind of military culture in both the Mexican andJapanese contexts, whether in the form of propaganda,
or life within an occupied territory, censorship, or the
corporeality of the protagonists (the fact that bothMemín and Batto-kun are bald, which is due to specificpostwar conditions). The Mexican text offers elementsthat refer to a call for collectivity, while the Japanese
text presents a call to effort through sports meritocracy,
which nevertheless eliminates structural elements fromthe panorama to focus only on individual development
as a condition for problem solving.
John Seymour (2019) points out that baseball,“rather than connecting Japan with other countries,
became another way to reinforce domestic control”(2019, 6); it provided a fast track to Americanization,with the military initially funding the Japanese league.
As a technology of military subjectification, it
accommodated the idea of individuality necessary forthe establishment and transformation of militaristic
imperial Japan into a Westernized “democratic” country,
and at the same time, allowed the survival of the maximof self-sacrifice in the name of a higher sense or precept

National School of Anthropology and History (Mexico City) /Universidad Autónoma de la Ciudad de México

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January 21 (Friday)On the Front Lines of Japanese Popular Culture Research: Toward the Pursuit of New Images of Japan.
Panel 1: “Comparing Manga Cultures: Japan and Mexico”

such as a nation or group. Among other things, baseball
allowed the continuity of a certain predisposition to thecult of martial discipline. In Batto-kun’s manga,elements of the urban context, traces of war and baseballare problematized as means for the harmonious
construction of everyday life, forming a field of
possibility and advancement for the poor Japanese.
Ota Otani points out that while “Alma de niños” isintended for a wider and more general audience, Battokun is entirely aimed at children. While in the Mexican
work the resource of “memory” operates, in the
evocation of the past and of a “good childhood” as a sortof “affective escape” from an increasingly crude reality
or present, it would be interesting to explore if in Battokun, as it is aimed at children, the idea of playful
adaptation to the new order, with an eye towards the
future, is presented. We see two similar realities afterWorld War II, two representations of similar social
classes, but different affective strategies to face thesame reality.
Although in the Mexican text the idea is put forwardthat the characters, coming from different classes,
coexist in the same spaces, such as the public school –a sort of commendable portrait of the new Mexican
ascending order of social welfare – as Ota Otani rightly
points out, it is of interest for the historiography of
Mexican comics to note that the crudeness and realism
represented in a comic that portrays the urban context
differs strikingly from the comics that portray stories inrural contexts, where elements of the supernatural or
fantastic are often used to solve conflicts, or to give an
outlet to plots involving searches for treasure or villains.
This element is not superficial in terms ofunderstanding the importance of representation of the
Mexican urban context, and is in keeping with thenature of subjectification under colonial rule and thepostcolonial Mexican condition, that is, centralism.
From this point of view, nationalism and the interior andexterior of purported national hegemonic modernity,
whose maximum expression is the pairing of rural andurban, emerge. Centralistic dreamlike aesthetics,
representations, gazes, and daydreams are contained in
the exoticized, eroticized, and supernaturalized
centralist fantasy of the provinces (the rest of thecountry, the non-center, the non-capital), and there areparticular ways of thinking about the modernity andtemporality of the non-centric (or the provincial). The
imagery of the provinces obeys a real order and purpose.
In this case, for the state and cultural centralism,
emanating from a specific distribution of institutions
and work, based on the agreement of the dominant
Mexican business and political elites, whose successes,
technological and cultural advances, and so on, aredistributed with extreme inequality between the central
commandment, where most of the elites gather, and theother territories, which are subordinated to the center for
regulation and whose residents are mostly confined toagrarian work and the processing of natural resources.
Barbara Arneil (2017) calls this domestic colonialism.
The crude, ruinous, and problematic appearance oflife in the cities is a kind of narrative that denounces thedifficulties and vicissitudes of living or growing up in
the city. Outside the city is seen as a paradise, withoutcars, massive congregations of people living their lives,
public transportation, or broken sanitation services;where the supernatural, the magical and fantastic, even“purity,” can survive or exist. In other words, theseurban narratives provide clues to better understand theimageries presented within comics whose narratives
mostly occur within rural contexts.
The imaginary of the child revived by Ota Otani, inturn, accounts for the diegetic position of Mexican
comics: vulnerability, the permissibility to solve certain
problems through “innocence,” the permanence of“purity” in the world, or on the contrary, the ability torepresent malice and mischief in a caricatured way
through children. In Japanese manga, however, thepossibility of weaving even stronger bonds of solidarity
is established during childhood.
To conclude, and with the intention of contributing
to the detailed analysis by Ota Otani, I would like toemphasize the importance of the anthropologicalmapping that the author revived in order to reuse andreconstruct the affective atmosphere after World War II.
In this sense, the comparative analysis of two comics
with similar plots, published in Mexico and Japan, is
helpful for understanding the materiality of culture in atime of global rearrangement, and could be a thoughtprovoking model for understanding the ways in which
the same set of crucial problems for humanity (from theimplementation of neoliberal models to the postpandemic economies created by COVID-19) areexperienced through forms of communication such ascomics, manga, or film.

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Panel 1: “Comparing Manga Cultures: Japan and Mexico”

Reference List
Arneil, Barbara. Domestic Colonies: The Turn Inward to Colony. Oxford University Press, 2017.
Cassegard, Carl. “Shock and Modernity in Walter Benjamin and Kawabata Yasunari.” Japanese Studies, vol. 19, no. 3,
1999, pp.237-251.
Seymour, John. “By Means of Sports”: U.S.-Japan Baseball Exchange and the Construction of Post-war Japanese
Identity. 2019. Georgetown University, Master’s thesis.

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