By Nazario, translated by David H. Rosenthal (Catalan Communications)
ISBN: 978-0-87416-000-0
It’s Pride Month and I’m keen to celebrate how far we’ve come as a species and society. Nevertheless – and just because I hate responding to complaints – here’s a note of warning: this book is filled with graphic sexual acts, full frontal nudity and coarse language. If that causes you any offence don’t buy this book and don’t read this review. The rest of us will manage without you.
You know what it’s like: sometimes you’re just in the mood for something challenging, different or just plain nasty, and nothing better sums up that feeling than this startling pastiche of film noir chic transposed into the even grimmer, darker and nastier milieu of the gay-underworld of post-Franco Spain.
Francisco Franco Bahamonde was a right-wing general who ruled the country from 1947 until his death in 1975, “on behalf†of a puppet monarchy helpless to resist him. His repressive, Christian-based attitudes held the country in an iron time-lock for decades as the rest of the world moved an around him.
Vera Luque Nazario was an intellectual, college professor and cartoonist living under the fascist regime, yet fiercely inspired by the freedom and exuberant graphic license displayed in American underground commix, especially the works of R. Crumb, Gilbert Shelton and possibly Spain Rodriguez.
In a totalitarian state that openly advocated the “curing†of homosexuals, Nazario founded an artist’s collective or “contracultural group†in 1971 to produce home-grown underground commix (El Rollo Enmascarado, Paupérrimus, Catalina, Purita and others) frequently incurring the wrath of the Francoist censors and police. Nazario’s work received far fairer treatment outside Spain, appearing in such groundbreaking mature magazines as It, Actuel, Oz, Gai Pied and L’Echo des Savanes.
When Franco died the country opened up and there was a tumultuous cascade of artistic expression. Extremely strident adult material designed primarily to shock began appearing in new magazines such as El VÃbora, Cannibale and Frigidaire. After years of covert comics creation, multi-talented artisan Nazario eventually moved into design and record cover production. In later years he concentrated on painting and his first prose novel was released in 2006. Since then he has become a darling of Spain’s intellectual, educational and art worlds, with his works becoming museum works and national treasures.
In 2016 he published his autobiography The Daily Life of the Underground Artist and the long-awaited third part of Anarcoma as literary release Nuevas aventuras de Anarcoma and Robot XM2. This year at France’s annual Angoulême Festival Anarcoma was nominated for the heritage category, marking it as a work of global importance and influence.
The shocking cartoon rebellion began as strip in a porn magazine, but that quickly folded and Nazario transferred the feature to El VÃbora in 1979, revelling in homoerotic excess in a magazine with no censorial boundaries. It ran for years and this long out-of-print hardcover translation was but the first collection of many – but not, sadly, in English translation.
Symbols of freedom never came more outrageously formed than Anarcoma; a spectacularly endowed, star-struck trans private detective who hangs all-out in the notorious red-light district of Las Ramblas.
A stunning blend of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall she works as prostitute and club entertainer while pursuing her dream of becoming a real gumshoe like the ones in the American movies she adores…
Life is complicated: ex-army buddy Humphrey is her current her boyfriend, but he won’t leave his wife and kids. Moreover, Anarcoma’s hobby has won no friends among both the cops and the criminal gangs run by the ruthless Captain Seahorse. Worst of all, there are even weirder and more dangerous folk lurking around…
After a series of profound prose appreciations from Alberto CardÃn and Ludolfo Paramio plus a thoroughly absorbing cartoon cast-list, the ultra-explicit adventure begins…
The city is in turmoil: Professor Onliyu‘s latest invention has been stolen. Nobody knows what it does but everybody wants it. Anarcoma thinks she has a lead…
The trail leads through all the sleaziest dives and dens, implicating almost everybody at one time or another, but when the manic religious order The Black Count and his Knights of Saint Represent and feminist paramilitaries Metamorphosina and her One-Eyed Piranhas start their own conflicting campaigns for the missing machine, Anarcoma is distracted and almost loses her life to mysterious sex-robot XM2.
Luckily her charms extend and affect even artificial he-men…
Outrageously imaginative, dauntingly brutal and sexually graphic, this devastatingly ironic genre amalgamation is audacious and bizarre, but unflinchingly witty as it probes the role of hero in society and eulogises the heady power of liberation.
Anarcoma was first released in 1980, but even by today’s evolved standards the incredibly violent and satirically, staggeringly baroque pastiche is a shocking, controversial piece of work. Raw, purposefully shocking and wickedly delightful, this is a perfect walk on the wild side for people with open minds and broad tastes.
© 1983 by Nazario. English edition © 1983 Catalan Communications. All Rights Reserved.