La Bogotá distópica: los cómics sobre una ciudad en caos

Abstract

This paper explores the narrative and visual resourcesused in Colombian comics, from 1992 to the presentday, in order to describe dystopian representations of Bogotá city. Dystopia is generally understood as a negative view 28La Bogotá distópica: los cómics sobre una ciudad en caosSergio Roncallo-Dow - Daniel Aguilar-Rodríguezy Enrique Uribe-Jongbloedfor humanity either of a possible future or an alternative present. These fictions are classified here as dystopias about a technologi-cal failure, dystopias about a symbolic/physical coercion, apocalyp-tic dystopias about zombies/infected individuals and apocalyptic dystopias about supernatural/non-human events. For this research study, printed publications available since 1992 (130 items) were collected. Out of these fictions, those that were set in or made re-ference to the city of Bogotá were selected. Of the 45 comics that met this criterion, 28 were identified and analyzed that contained a dystopian setting. One of the major findings was that violence and conflict, both symbolic and physical, are constant in the diffe-rent dystopic settings identified in the study sample, which reflects and projects the historical violence experienced in Colombia.

Keywords

• dystopia
• colombian comics
• bogotá
• graphic novel
• graphic art
• violence