These Tales Would Even Challenge the Man of Steel

A newspaper stand in the heart of East L.A. is the wrong place to look for American superhero comics. But it’s exactly the place to find historietas, their Mexican counterparts.

Instead of clean-cut characters like Spider-Man or Wonder Woman, modern historieta covers display much more shocking--and perhaps realistic--characters. One shows a man who’s been stabbed to death. Countless others display provocatively dressed women.

“They’re just interesting stories,” said a man reading one at the newsstand at 1st and Soto streets.

Historietas, in existence since 1896, have long provided inexpensive entertainment to the Mexican masses. An estimated 5 million sell each week in Mexico, and many more are sold in the United States. With a rich tradition of covering politics, romance and adventure, they also draw from life in Mexico’s cities, with plots that feature dirty cops, orphans and prostitutes.

“There was a crisis after the 1980s, and the classics were lost,” said Juan Manuel Aurrecoechea, who co-authored “Puros Cuentos,” a history of historietas. “Popular historietas don’t look at the young public like [comics] in other countries.”

Early historietas featured families and cartoon characters and were published in newspapers.

Some stories were drawn from Mexican politics, but in the 1940s artists also began catering to women (by featuring romantic themes) and children (by including superheroes), Aurrecoechea said.

In the 1970s, however, murder, rape, terror and the general despair of city life claimed a niche. Today, historias policiacas--police stories--are among the most popular.

One magazine at the East L.A. stand opens with a violent landlord breaking into an apartment and assaulting a young man, taking his jacket because the young man can’t pay the rent. “You should be ashamed of yourself,” a woman yells at the landlord. “Can’t you see he just buried his mother?”

“So what? I’m an orphan, too,” the smirking landlord responds. “The only difference between me and him is that I detest cowards.”

Historietas cost about 25 cents and, in Mexico, they are often passed around for years, until they simply fall apart.