Tiras gráficas

Tiras gráficas, Pelaxian for 'graphic strips' and abbreviated as TGs, also referred to as Delepasian comics, is a term used to refer to comics made in Delepasia and Castadilla and written in the country's variety of the Pelaxian language. Castadilla, and the preceding Delepasia, has had a long and established tradition in both comics and drawn cartoons which has emerged independently of the traditions found in Levantia, Alstin, and Asteria. Since the Velvet Revolution period from 1984 until 1996, Castadilla is legally a trilingual country with numerous minority languages; comics written in Reform Tainean, Cartadanian, or any of the many extant regional languages of the country, are typically considered to be tiras gráficas as well despite the fact that the vast majority of tiras gráficas are written in Castadilla's variety of Pelaxian, and even then the comics written in said variety can vary depending on whether the comic was written before or after Isurian revivalism in the mid-to-late 19th Century.

Several tiras gráficas have managed to attain international fame over the years and thus are almost always publishing translated editions. The first tira gráfica to have attained international fame is in fact the first tira gráfica published in a form resembling modern tiras gráficas, that being The Life and Times of Xabier Cabaleiro (originally by Padin & Fidalgo) which had its first story, Xabier Cabaleiro in Argyrea, published in 1927. Other internationally well-known tiras gráficas include, but are not limited to, The Chronicles of Latinia, Xorge the Dimwitted, Gorilla the Conqueror, The Bancos of Cidade Valentines, De la Cruzito, Just the Way You Are, Idiotic, and many others. Tiras gráficas have also influenced the comic industry in other nations which have had Pelaxian influence, such as Tierrador and Lucrecia which have their own comic culture descendant from tiras gráficas.

International extent

Varieties of Pelaxian are the most common in western Sarpedon, particularly in Vallos which has four nations that have a variety of the Pelaxian language as an official language; those being Almadaria, Castadilla, Lucrecia, and Puertego. Despite the common Ænglish term for tiras gráficas being 'Delepasian comics', which gives off the implication that the comics never took off outside of Delepasia, an old name for what is now Castadilla, the fact that these four nations hared a common language, alongside Pelaxia itself on mainland Sarpedon, meant that there is an easy market which transcends national borders. The overall appeal of the tiras gráficas has also seen it extend to places that have had historical ties to Pelaxia, such as Cartadania and the Caphirian province of Isuriana, as well as non-Pelaxian nations which have had contact with Pelaxia or any of its former colonies. The biggest market for tiras gráficas, outside of its homeland in the main pelaxiophone countries of Sarpedon, is in southern Crona, specifically in the Tierrosphere. Tierrador is often considered to be the biggest market for tiras gráficas in Crona due to its influence and historical position in the area; the country has had close historical ties with Delepasia since before the latter's independence in 1852, and the presence of the tiras gráficas allowed for a native Qabóri comics to emerge in stark contrast to the Levantine-based comic traditions of the Ænglish-speaking Alstin and Asteria.

Within Castadilla, there exists numerous "subgroups" of comic traditions which have been influenced by tiras gráficas found amongst the nation's cultural minorities. The most notable of which are the Braivin comics, which are written by the Braivins who are a Cogenio-Sarpic people in southern Castadilla. Initially very similar to tiras gráficas, the cultural renaissance of the Braivins, which had emerged in the late 1940s after the pelaxianisation policies pursued by the Estado Social regime were repealed, would see Braivin comics take on a more divergent evolution as a result of a huge spike in cultural self-determination; Braivin comics are almost always never translated into any language other than the two Braivin languages: Vandonian, and Ialevian. Braivin comics are generally not as internationally successful as their original Delepasian counterparts, with the sole exception being in the nation of Kuronia, whose people are of Cogenio-Sarpic ancestry and speak in a similar language to the Braivins. Regardless, the overall lack of influence of the Cogenio-Sarpic languages in comparison to the Pelaxian language has ensured its overall obscurity outside of Castadilla and Kuronia.

Other regional languages in Castadilla, asides from the Braivin languages, are even less successful in their reach and scope outside of their homelands in the country. Although New Rumian Pelaxian has tried numerous times to get itself reclassified from a variety of Pelaxian into its own distinct language, there are very few comics written in New Rumian Pelaxian, and very few artists from southern Castadilla actually bother publishing their works in New Rumian Pelaxian; Xulian Padin, who was born in Homberia, is a very notable instance as although his mother tongue was New Rumian Pelaxian he never published any of his works, not even the famous Xabier Cabaleiro stories, in New Rumian Pelaxian; all stories in the series were originally published in the Castadillaan variety of Pelaxian so as to ensure the stories' long-term success, and all official translations were done in languages outside of Castadilla rather than in regional languages. A similar instance happened in Pelaxia where the province of Savria has seen very few comics published in the Savrian language while the province of Montanaro has had a thriving tradition in comics published in the Montanaran language.

Terminology

The term tiras gráficas comes from the 18th Century when the first political cartoons were published in the Viceroyalty of Los Rumas; they were called "graphic strips" due to their brevity, often only being one panel, and because they were always accompanied by visual art depicting the messaging used in a given cartoon. The term would carry through the 19th Century when they first began to refer to newspaper comics, which were also works of visual art and were very brief much like the earlier political cartoons. However, the term would only begin to enter common usage in the 1930s as the modern tira gráfica took form. The art form's abbreviation, TGs, was first coined in 1954 as it began to be considered a part of the international pop cultural mainstream.

The term "Delepasian comics" was first coined in 1944 when tiras gráficas began to be published in languages other than Pelaxian and the term was used to refer to the country of origin. The term remains in use to this day as one of the last extant terms which use Delepasian instead of Castadillaan; the main idea behind Delepasian still being used is mostly due to the tiras gráficas being considered an integral part of the Delepasian culture rather than Castadilla in general. Attempts to change the term to "Vallosi comics", "Kindreds comics", or "Castadillan comics" have largely been ignored over the years, and there are currently no efforts to seriously change it. Regardless, the term has never found use in Castadilla or any of the main Pelaxian markets for tiras gráficas due to the ubiquity of the Pelaxian term.

History

Background: 18th Century-1852

The origins of Castadilla's comic tradition date back to when political cartoons began to be published in the 18th Century. These cartoons were designed to a convey a message, often in a satirical manner pertaining to contemporary politics; it first emerged in the Viceroyalty of Los Rumas due to the viceroyalty's relatively relaxed laws in terms of freedom of the press which was largely unprecedented in a monarchy at the time, especially in comparison to the Pelaxian half of the Carto-Pelaxian Commonwealth which had much more restrictive laws. The viceroyalty's press freedoms allowed noted philosophers and political critics to migrate to the colonies where they could be more openly critical of the largely corrupt and unwieldly system of magnates, clerics, and princes without fear of reprisal or persecution. As the 19th Century began, these cartoons started to take on a more exaggerated visual appearance, a more comedic tone, or both depending on the artist; it was an evolution which turned 18th Century political satire into some of the earliest comic strips, albeit still of a political nature at the time.

Even the distribution of political cartoons began to evolve. Earlier cartoons were designed to be distributed as standalone publications as there were no mainstream newspapers which were willing to publish something that was deemed to be very low-brow and gauche; newspapers were once seen in the viceroyalty as more formal and intended for the more refined and consistently literate upper classes rather than the more illiterate lower classes. This changed in the early 19th Century when readership began to be expanded to the emerging colonial middle class; they were literate much like their upper class counterparts, but were still considered commoners even if they were of a social strata higher than the lower classes. They were also the primary audience for political satire as they were the demographic in which the cartoons were the most well-received in. As a result, political cartoons began to be published in newspapers, allowing them to easily spread throughout the viceroyalty and receive an even bigger audience.

After the end of the Pelaxian Revolution and the restoration of the Pelaxian monarchy in 1814, there were efforts by the Pelaxian crown to crack down on the viceroyalty's press freedoms in the first decade, but all of them wound up being resisted and repelled by the Supreme Courts, citing the Charter of San Lina as proof that Pelaxia simply cannot assert its authority over the viceroyalty which had long enjoyed sweeping autonomy unlike the neighbouring Viceroyalty of Puerto Negro (now Puertego).

Newspaper strips: 1852-1927

The end of the Pelaxian monarchy in 1852 would prove to be the beginning of the Delepasian comic industry in earnest. With the brief Delepasian Kingdom having collapsed just a few months after its establishment, the subsequent period of instability had led to numerous artists who had previously created political cartoons to simply create cartoons which were much more divorced from politics than their antecedents and more focused on the humour aspect; the citizenry were more interested in having a form of harmless entertainment in a time of great uncertainty. The first of these newspaper comics was Las Xunglas de la Civilización which was a satire on modern life in general with anthropomorphic animals in various situations which had emerged as a result of industrialisation in Delepasia. Like its more political ancestors, Xunglas was published as one-shot cartoons with only one panel. Some of the situations satirised have included workers having to live in the very factories they work at due to very inconvenient schedules, horse manure piling up so high in the streets that the ground floors of buildings have become basements, and rivers being full of sewage thanks to medieval-era holdovers.

Xunglas was a tremendous success, becoming one of the first instances of the newly-independent Delepasian culture emerging after the end of the colonial era. It also inspired the creation of new comic strips under a similar one-shot, one-panel publication scheme. By 1880, there were more than two hundred comic panels being published; their popularity wound up creating a dedicated page in newspapers for comic panels under contract with the given newspaper's publication company. There soon came a demand for longer one-shots making use of more than one panel for whichever joke was being made. This saw a few comics experiment with various amounts of panel with the average amount being three, one for the setup, one for the climax, and one for the punchline. It was at this time that they were officially considered "strips" in historiography despite the fact that the term tiras had already been used for both comics and their preceding political cartoon counterparts since the 18th Century.

Despite the success of these comics, none of them were able to attract international fame with almost all of them being solely remembered in Delepasia even if they managed to remain in publication in the latter years of the first half of the 20th Century. This was mostly due to the brevity of each issue published as well as the one-shot nature of them; once the comic panel or strip was published it was generally never published again even though almost all issues were preserved for posterity. The vast majority of these comics did not survive the chaos and instability of the latter years of the confederation's existence with Xunglas being the first to cease publication in 1906 after the publishing company which had published issues of the comic declared bankruptcy and was subsequently dissolved. By 1920, only fifty of the more than two hundred comics published in the 19th Century had managed to survive the post-First Great War period.

Serialised strips: 1927-1944

A depiction of Xabier Cabaleiro (left) and Fernan Lopes (right) with the caption which translates to "This jalopy will never get us to Tricidade at this rate!" This was drawn in 1929 by Olalla Fidalgo.

The period from 1920 until 1927 was, for the Delepasian comic industry, a dark period as the remaining comics had largely stagnated; they were still published, but readership and humour had both tumbled for the most part. For many, the collapse of the industry was seen as more proof that comics were simply a fad that stuck around for far too long, and thus it was no longer worth reading them when newer, more exciting forms of entertainment existed. The Electronic News Herald, the nation's very popular telephone newspaper, had developed its own form of comics which made use of audio rather than cartoons; these were known as parodias faladas , or 'spoken sketches' and were very well-received for their overall originality and creativity as well as the sheer novelty. Its success was at the expense of the remaining comics still in publication, with a few newspapers even ceasing publication of comics altogether, reducing the fifty surviving comics in 1920 to only twenty in 1927. The industry was widely considered to be dead at that point, and anyone who tried to enter the industry were highly discouraged from doing so lest they wanted to have a very brief career.

Xulian Padin, a recently-hired commercial artist for Teléfono y Telégrafo Campána (TTC; now CastaTel), had gotten tired of seeing his work disappear within a week, but he knew that leaving would be a risky, if bold, gamble. At the urging of his wife Olalla Fidalgo, Padin looked over his contract and saw that there was a loophole which would allow for him to create children's comics. He and Fidalgo would soon set off to figure out what to write about; he had no intentions of doing a one-off strip as those too would disappear fast, but he had to think of an innovation that would ensure that such a comic would not only have a good longevity, but to also keep his work from disappearing. The couple decided to take a cruise to Burgundie to take their minds off of this conundrum, and while there Padin would come across some of Burgundie's most prolific comics and several of them were in a format that was never attempted in Delepasia. Burgundie's comics were, in the 1920s, becoming serialised with a larger stories spanning across multiple publications of a newspaper, and some were even in their own dedicated comic books separate from the previous reliance on newspapers.

Getting the idea to publish a serialised comic, Padin now needed to actually create a comic. He was an avid casual sketcher who often drew characters whenever he was bored; among the things he drew during his time in Burgundie was an anthropomorphic dog, but it was Fidalgo who had decided to draw her own take on the dog character, giving it a set of vestments that no Delepasian had ever really worn given the overall warm and tropical climate of the nation but were distinctive enough to become memorable. Her design of the character also saw him as being pudgy and below-average in height compared to the more lanky and cartoony build Padin had initially given him. Upon their return to Delepasia, Padin reached out to a friend who ran one of the nation's most-subscribed papers asking if he would approve of his and Fidalgo's proposed comic's publication for his paper. Although skeptical, the friend agreed to publish the work under the condition that the first story published be propaganda against the recently-established socialist regime in Argyrea to convey an anti-Bolshevist message to kids. Padin hated the idea, not wanting to tie his work to something so explicitly political, but he had no choice but to accept the conditions. With publication assured, Padin and Fidalgo began to work on the comic with the former working on the concept and the writing and the latter working on the illustration for the beginning of a serialised story about their anthropomorphic dog character's experiences while visiting Argyrea. The character was soon given the name Xabier Cabaleiro and was given a second anthropomorphic canine companion by the name of Fernan Lopes, named after a friend of Padin's. The work would be published in 1927 as Xabier Cabaleiro in Argyrea.

Xabier Cabaleiro in Argyrea would prove to be a huge success and would ensure the creation of the series The Life and Times of Xabier Cabaleiro of which the Argyrea story was the first entry in. Its success also saw a resurgence in Delepasia's comic industry, with the number of comics in publication going up to one hundred by 1930; quite a few of those new comics had also taken advantage of the new serialised format which allowed them to have a coherent plot that was not trapped in one, single issue or punchline like previous comics from the turn of the century were. The Second Great War would prove to be a very big boon for Delepasia's comic industry as a great many of the comics made for quick and easy entertainment for the nation's armed forces which in turn would result in them getting read by the armed forces of nearby allied countries, marking the first time that Delepasian comics were read in a large scale by non-Delepasians despite them not being intended to be read by them. Regardless, it gave the comics their first international readership and allowed other comics to reach levels of popularity never before seen in previous decades.

Into the international mainstream: 1944-1997

Prior to the end of the Second Great War in 1943, Delepasian comics were largely exclusively published in Delepasia save for publications in Pelaxia, Puertego, Almadaria, Vallejar, and Lucrecia with even some limited publications in Tierrador due to its sizeable Pelaxian-speaking minority. This would change in 1944 when publishing houses started to express their wish to publish Delepasian comics for their respective countries, complete with full translations. The first Delepasian comic story to be fully translated in another language for publication in another country was Xabier Cabaleiro in the URA which was about the titular Xabier Cabaleiro's adventures in Alstin; it was the first official Ænglish language translation of a Delepasian comic, though unofficial translations of earlier comics were published as unauthorised bootlegs which were often low quality, but are considered highly valuable these days due to their rarity with copies of an unauthorised Argyreo-Istroyan translation of Xabier Cabaleiro in Argyrea being appraised at monetary values of up to $10,000,000.

Other Delepasian comics which saw an original publication for Delepasian readership in the postwar period would also be published shortly afterward for foreign publishing houses such as The Chronicles of Latinia, which is a series of comics and stories about a fictionalised Latin vassal kingdom during the Undecimvirate era as it survives both ploys to destroy it from within from disgruntled Tainean nobles and Vallosi people who wish to not be assimilated into Latinic culture, and ploys to destroy it from without from both rival vassal kingdoms which wish to steal the kingdom's future tributes to Casphiria and from Caphiria itself for suspected insubordination and missed tribute payments. Just the Way You Are, Idiotic was another postwar comic that saw foreign publication come shortly after its first stories; it is currently a long-running comic strip about a middle class Delepasian family and their lives after the Second Great War. It was unique for being a strip in which the characters aged in real time, thus meaning that some characters could die and others could be born. The main characters are currently the great-grandchildren of the original parents from the strip's earliest issues published in 1949.

There were also a few Delepasian comics which were made exclusively for foreign publication which never saw a major release in Delepasian markets; these are typically known as tiraxportacións, or 'exportation strips', due to their intent of being exclusively for foreign audiences. Gorilla the Conqueror is considered to be one of the first Delepasian comics intended for exportation only. It catalogues the misadventures of a gorilla living in Levantia and finds himself getting into various hijinks in his daily life; the 'Conqueror' moniker is mostly meant as a sarcastic term in reference to the gorilla being more of a blunderer than an actual threat to human civilisation in general. It was created by Marco Dali (1924-2011), the grandson of the original illustrator of Las Xunglas de la Civilización and much of Dali's illustrations take some inspiration from the illustrations of Xunglas, albeit with a more refined and modernised look to it. Some series and strips which were not intended as export only publications have also done some experimentations by publishing export only issues and albums, often as a spinoff such as Fernan Lopes in Alba Concordia which was intended as a promotional piece for the League of Nations after Alba Concordia's designation as the League's main headquarters; it was exclusively released for the Levantine markets. It was also the rare instance of an export only story which actually saw domestic publication in Delepasia, with a "domestic release" happening in 1964.

Another new development at this time was the emergence of comic magazines which were published independently from newspapers. The most prestigious of these magazines was Xabier Cabaleiro which saw its first issue published in 1948; it was an idea that Padin and Fidalgo had thought up in 1932 as a way to promote what was fast becoming a comics renaissance in Delepasia, but the advent of the Second Great War in 1934 had put those plans on hold. After the end of the Second Great War, the idea was brought up again both to promote a cultural facet of Delepasia and to give hopeful comic artists a chance to get their works noticed by the general public and even published by newspapers. The magazine would have issues from not only a Xabier Cabaleiro story in progress, but also issues from other notable Delepasian comics such as the Chronicles of Latinia and Just the Way You Are, Idiotic. The magazine would also accept fan art submissions, questions from readers, and comics made by new artists looking to get noticed. In the 1970s, the magazine would be published outside of Delepasia for the first time with select issues being sent to Urceopolis, Alahuela, Alstin, Taisgol, and Port Diteaux. The magazine was a success in all five test cities and soon international editions of the Xabier Cabaleiro magazine would begin to enter official publication. The idea of gaining an international audience further enticed new artists to submit comics. Likewise, the magazine would also receive submissions from international readers who also wished to gain an audience as well, with early pioneers in what would become the modern era of the Qabóri comics industry in Tierrador which already had taken significant influence from Delepasian comics ever since they were first exported to Tierrador in the 1930s.

With the rise of television since after the Second Great War, there were also calls to create adaptations for some of the nation's best-known comics for television audiences. Unsurprisingly, Padin and Fidalgo were the first to express a desire to take advantage of this new medium and so would produce the domestically-animated Padin & Fidalgo's Xabier Cabaleiro which ran from 1954 to 1961. Most of the episodes were original adventures, some of which would eventually be adapted into comics in later decades, but a few episodes were modernised adaptations of existing stories. Of course, despite the fact that the episodes took place in the 1950s, the Xabier Cabaleiro still wore his iconic outfit, itself having fallen out of fashion since even before the first Xabier Cabaleiro story in 1927, because it had become his trademark and thus was sort of "grandfathered in" as a result. The 1952 television series would prove to be a success and further television adaptations would be run, with there being the Delepasio-Oyashimane anime The Life and Times of Xabier Cabaleiro which ran from 1978 until 1983, and the Delepasio-Tierradorian animated series The Adventures of Xabier Cabaleiro which ran from 1993 until 1995. The former exclusively consisted of original stories, and the latter exclusively consisted of very faithful adaptations of existing stories which kept to the eras that each given story was published in.

Overall, Delepasian comics sold tens of millions of copies throughout the second half of the 20th Century and were published in all six continents in more than one hundred countries from Tierrador to The Cape, from Urcea to Faneria, from Oyashima to Zaclaria, and from Cartadania to Kiravia, and in more than fifty languages from Cartadanian to East Gothic, from Burgoignesc to Lebhan, and from Blairian Ænglish to Qabóri. Even during the Velvet Revolution which generally lasted from 1984 until 1994 did not put a stop to the international success of Delepasian comics; there were more than enough issues preserved by various newspapers and magazines that reruns could easily be published if necessary should the creation of new issues be put on hiatus. In 1996, the new Castadillaan government would induct The Life and Times of Xabier Cabaleiro, The Chronicles of Latinia, Gorilla the Conqueror, and Just the Way You Are, Idiotic into the National and Cultural Monuments registry; a designation given to objects, buildings, and works of art considered to be of either national or cultural significance. Copies of the earliest stories of The Life and Times of Xabier Cabaleiro, The Chronicles of Latinia, and Just the Way You Are, Idiotic were also archived in the Imperial Institute of Artistic, Literary, and Musical Works.

See also

• Electronic News Herald, for further information on so-called "auditory strips".
• Popular culture in the late Estado Social, for early television adaptations of tiras gráficas.
• Qabóri comics, for tiras gráficas-influenced comics published in Tierrador.