Recognizing Comics as Brazilian National Popular Culture: CETPA and the Debates over Comics Professional Identities (1961–1964)

Abstract

Comics have been well established as a social practice in Brazil since the 1930s, as Brazilian newspaper supplements regularly published North American syndicated comics during the decade. The following years saw the first activities of major publishers like Editora Brasil América Limitada [Brazil America Limited Publisher], EBAL, and the beginning of a comic book culture in Brazil. During the 1940s and 1950s, discussions about the multiple significances of comics and their limitations for the education of young readers caught the attention of many educators, politicians, journalists, and intellectuals. During the 1950s, comic books starring characters such as Superman, Batman, and Zorro led EBAL’s sales, reaching 150,000 copies; during the period, the same press published more than 30 different comic book titles (Júnior 2004, 284–291). Many important names in the Brazilian press, politics and culture, such as Samuel Wainer, Edmar Morel, Gilberto Freyre, Roberto Marinho, and Carlos Lacerda, were involved in the debates about comics. Despite the political interests of each of these men (Júnior 2004), their engagement with comics controversies demonstrates that comic art was not well-regarded in Brazil. Not only it was considered a kind of pernicious and lowbrow literature that should be controlled, as the US comics industry had been with the Comics Code (Hajdu 2009), it was also considered a foreign contribution to the acculturation of Brazilian readers.