Sensational comics: erotic comics, women, and popular subjectivity in neoliberal Mexico

ABSTRACT Adding to the extant literature literature, we propose to approach Mexican comics as literary objects within which sociopolitical, economic and cultural processes of Mexican society are expressed. Instead of focusing on Golden and Silver Age Historietas or contemporary artistic and/or politically aware creations, we address the popular eighties’ erotic Sensacionales. Drawing on literary theory and interviews with cartoonists cartoonists, we argue that these comics enable us to understand how changes in gender, class and racial/ethnic relationships in Neoliberal Mexico are symbolically elaborated around female’s body and desire, displacing them into arousing narratives about sexually insatiable women.