The Future Has Already Passed: Urban Apocalypse, Futurism and Dystopia in four Contemporary Argentine Comics

Abstract

The subject of this article is the relationship between urban spaces and a fictional present time in an apocalyptic or dystopian key. The city is no longer the place where progress takes place, but where social relations are defined by the destruction and the end of Latin American aspirations for a better future. Taking into account four contemporary Argentine graphic novels, I propose to review the role of the city as a space for action in Argentine comics. The objective is to verify what political and aesthetic readings of the Argentine and Latin American reality can be found in line with the context of the last decade, but also with the tradition in the use of science fiction as a privileged genre for social criticism.